I see the survey sites all over the internet claiming to pay for your time, etc. Are there any real ones? How do you tell if it’s a scam or not? Has anyone actually gotten rewarded for taking a survey? What are some reliable sites? Thanks. Just wondering.
Here is a survey site that I belong to. They pay cash depending if you qualify on certain surveys. My friend has gotten a couple checks from them and I should be getting one in a day or two.
How much do you typically get? Is it worth the time?
Depends on the survey and how much of your time they take up. Typically it is at least a dollar and they send you a check (unless you request it before then) when your balance reaches 50 Dollars.
Once you sign up and go through all the profile questions, ie; are you married, kids? Industry you work for, etc. they send you emails letting you know there is a survey waiting for you. You take it and if you qualify (meaning don’t work in the industry that is being question in the survey, ie You wouldn’t qualify for the survey if it was about bank rates and your SO works for a bank, etc) you take the survey.
At the end of the survey it will tell you an amount that as been credited to your account. Mine has never been below a dollar and never above 3 dollars.
The surveys that you see that will give you 20 dollars or 50 dollars for signing up or creating an account for some service like ebay, Netflix, etc, they are out there but I don’t do them. I am not to keen on giving out my credit card info or getting a ton of spam. I like the surveys that you give your opinion on a product and they pay you for it.
The site I gave you above, some of their surveys have been about car dealerships and certain types of commercials they are thinking about putting out. You watch it and then answer questions about if you are more apt to buy a car now then you were before, etc.
I probably went into far more detail then you wanted, but hell… when I can’t talk a lot… I write a lot. 
LOL
No, that was exactly what I wanted to know.
Is there a list of trustworthy surveyors anywhere?
Not really sure about that…
I am going to keep an eye on this thread to see if any other dopers have any other cool sites.
There was another one that I am a member of, but they pay pennies and it isn’t even worth mentioning it. I don’t even bother with that one anymore.
Ya, I want to see if anyone else has some good recommendations too. I just signed up for the one you recommended.
I’ve been a member of Harris Poll Online for a few years. You answer the surveys and are awarded points, which vary from one poll to the next. You can save up your points and redeem them later for various “prizes”. They also have a $10,000 sweepstakes drawing for every survey.
ETA: Also, no spam, and they don’t sell your info.
I’ve used Survey Savvy for quite some time. I usually don’t qualify for the surveys, or if I do the reward is not worth it, but they are sending me $52 in the mail right now, so over the past couple of years I’ve made $68.
Upromise hooked me up with e-rewards, which lets me earn credit in my Upromise account. In only a few months, I’ve earned a $50 credit. The great thing about this one is I can earn credit for surveys I don’t qualify for, too.
Here’s a link to Opinion Outpost. I’ve gotten one check for $20.00. You get X number of points for each survey. You have to have a certain # of points to cash in.
For Upromise, do you get a check? Or just points…
Thanks for all the ideas so far.
I don’t get checks through the Upromise site. Just money that can be put in a college savings account or go toward my student loan.
I am not sure that you are interested in taking surveys in real life (as opposed to online), but I used to make decent pocket money taking part in focus groups and product testing. It required me to get into my car and drive to some office, but I usually made $30 to $75 to sit in a room and talk about phone service, or listen to 300 music snippits and rate how much I liked each song, or smell a scented bug spray and pick which name I thought matched the smell. I am at least partially responsible for which trailer to “Daddy Day Care” that you got to see. It all started when I got on a list at my University’s employment office, then the survey people called me about every few months for a “job.”
I used to do MyView some. But they’ve changed their payment rules, the surveys are getting “cheatier”*, etc.
I would use the money to keep some small bucks in my PayPal account to pay for totally frivolous online things like really geeky message boards (y’know).
I did once do an in-house thing where a Major Electronics Maker brought over a new in-the-box huge plasma TV. They taped me setting it up and all. Asked a bunch of questions. Got some non-trivial money for that. But I did it mainly for the fun-with-new-tech joy.
I do get a lot of emails from them to sign up for focus-group type things. But it’s a bit of drive, takes too long for the money involved, etc.
It is kind of frustrating when you ream them a new one over some idiotic seafood chain’s proposed new ad campaign and then the ads still end up airing. The same chain is also obsessed with coming up with new shrimp platters. Problem: I hate shrimp. Maybe they could get more customers by highlighting non-shrimp offerings. Feeling like I’m not making a difference like this just makes me less interested in doing them.
The weirdest one I did was soon after the school shooting in Virginia. It was clearly done on behalf of the University and was one of this “How do we spin this?” kinda of polls. The cynical nature of the “which would you prefer” options wasn’t pretty.
*“Cheatier”: You answer 20 pages of questions only to find you don’t “qualify” for the survey and don’t get paid.
I used to do the Harris one and some other surveys. You only make a few dollars at a time, and while I did get forty or fifty dollars, looking back it wasn’t really worth it. Only because I didn’t have any other source of income besides my parents did I put any time into them.
I do e-Rewards, where you purchase your rewards with money you earn for taking surveys. I use it to buy frequent flier miles, mostly.
Thanks for all the input!