Making money online sounds like a scam, but I assure you that not every online money-making process is false. I have tried and tested some paid online surveys, and I will share how these paid online survey sites work and the legit paid survey sites you should try.

Paid survey sites are a great way to make extra money at home while doing the most random things. Imagine getting $175 credit by answering questions online for 20-30 minutes daily.

Sounds good, right?

While you have legit paid survey sites, there are some sketchy ones, too, so make sure you get your information from reliable sources. Any site that isn’t locked when you look at the URL is most likely sketchy. Similarly, you shouldn’t trust sites with an overwhelming number of ads.

Also, if you can’t identify the author/owner of a website, you probably shouldn’t trust that site.

Learn how online survey sites work with a few housekeeping rules under your belt.

Photo by Celpax on Unsplash

How do online survey sites work?

The process is fairly similar and easy for the survey sites in general.

Create an account using the survey app or their website
Select the types of survey questions you would like to answer
Dedicate some time of your day to answering these questions
Connect your preferred bank account when prompted
And voila, keep earning!!!

POINT TO NOTE: I do not advise opening an account with all of these sites to avoid email spamming. Decide on 3-5 sites and be committed to answering the survey questions on the respective site or app.

Paid online survey sites to earn extra income

Here are the 14 paid online survey sites that I recommend.

Swagbucks

Swagbucks is a top-rated online survey site that is reliable across France, Germany, the UK, Canada, and Australia. For 15 – 25 minutes dedicated to each survey, you can earn from $0.50 to $4. It takes 100 Swagbucks (SB) to make $1.

Swagbucks pays within 24-48 hours, but the first payment can be delayed due to account confirmation.

The age requirement is 13 years old, which is pretty young; hence it’s advisable to have parents’ approval and supervision.

The minimum cashout is 2500 SB, equivalent to $25, into your PayPal account, while the minimum for gift card payment is 300 SB, equal to $3. The gift card can be sent as vouchers to your email, and you can use the voucher code to make purchases online.

Some Swagbucks pros:

Once you reach the first 2500 SB or 300 SB for gift cards, their minimum cashout limit stays at $3 compared to other survey sites that require much more.
Swagbucks have over 100 fun surveys for you like online games, trivia, video watching, etc., making it less tasking to do the surveys.
Swagbucks gives Target, Amazon, Apple, or visa gift cards as cashout rewards with 10-13% off discount on purchases.
You get compensation SB points for trying a survey even if you don’t eventually qualify.
Gives survey recommendations similar to your interested survey options.

These are some of the exciting pros. SIGN UP FOR SWAGBUCKS

Survey Junkie

Survey Junkie is another reputable online survey site that is free to use. Survey Junkie has an SJ Pulse digital behavior tracker to help businesses and brands track online consumer behaviors around their products and services.

Like Swagbucks, Survey Junkie also populates your surveys based on your tried surveys, and it’s pretty tailored to your interest.

Much isn’t known about point allocation, but the minimum cashout is $10 sent via PayPal or electronic gift card to a chosen retail company.

On average, you can earn $1-$3 from each survey. Survey Junkie is easy to use, and you can take surveys while you carry out your regular day-to-day activities.

The age requirement is 13 years old, and the survey site is available in the United States, Canada, and Australia. But, if you live in California, the minimum age requirement is 16 years old.

Inboxdollars.

Inbox dollars is one of the top-rated survey sites available online. It pays its users for completing tasks, taking surveys, and playing games.

Although the primary way you earn is by taking surveys, this site also offers other ways to make money, including:

Inboxdollars Search
Inboxdollars winit
Inboxdollars coupons
Watching videos
Playing games
Reading emails

Each of these methods has its pros and cons, of course.

Read more here.

New members get a $5 sign-up bonus, although you won’t be able to withdraw until you have $30 in your account dashboard, which is the minimum withdrawal.

Surveys are low priced and can be as low as $0.30. This makes it challenging to meet the minimum threshold, except you answer many surveys.

Toluna.

Toluna is a survey site that pays you cash rewards and gift cards for answering survey questions. What’s unique about this site is that you can either take the profile survey or longer surveys.

The profile surveys are shorter, and questions are usually centered around the user’s interest and profile. This is like answering a background check exam sheet.

The longer surveys take longer to answer, as the name implies, and are usually interactive and in-depth. These are questions about brand products and services, so they focus on your experience and feedback.

The minimum cash out is 30,000 points which is equal to $10. You can cash out your dollars via PayPal or turn them into gift cards from name brands like Starbucks, Walmart, Amazon, Apple, etc.

Your Toluna points can also be used to enter the sweepstakes contest, where you get a chance to draw big wins with a minimum of 500 points.

Opinion outpost.

Opinion Outpost is a survey site owned by Dynata, a worldwide sampling and survey company. This site allows users to earn real cash by taking and answering surveys from some of the biggest brands in the world.

Trustpilot says Opinion Outpost is one of the most reliable survey sites, and rightly so. Their reward system is advantageous to users. You can exchange points for Amazon e-vouchers, retail gift cards, PayPal payments, Visa prepaid cards, iTunes gift cards, and even make donations to the American Red Cross.

Signing up is easy and efficient, and you are requested to fill out a user profile to match users to suitable surveys. Each survey ranges between 5-50 points, with 50 points equivalent to $5.

Unlike other survey sites, cash-out is fast and doesn’t take hours or days. It’s easier to earn on Opinion Outpost than on most survey sites.

One Poll.

OnePoll is a survey site that pays you in cash for each survey completed, unlike most survey sites that reward users with redeemable points.

The minimum age is 18 years, and the minimum cash out is a whopping $40. This has discouraged many users from signing up, but you can get more cash by referring friends or participating in their periodic sweepstakes on Twitter and Facebook.

The website has a good user interface, and you can start answering surveys as soon as you sign up with your email and set up your profile.

Surveys are given based on your profile, particularly your gender, age, and demographic. Some demographics, however, get more surveys than others. Depending on your location, you can get surveys daily or have to wait weeks before you see one.

If you are actively involved in making earnings using paid survey sites, use OnePoll as a supplement site.

OneOpinion.

Founded far back in 2011, OneOpinion is another survey site that pays users purely for taking surveys. It rewards users with redeemable points for cash or virtual gift cards. Cash is delivered to your PayPal account, and it also offers physical gift cards that you can also use to shop in-store, although delivery time can take longer.

Signing up is easy, and all you need to do is confirm your email and have access to several surveys. Earning points on OneOpinion is not as difficult as on other sites, but it might take longer to reach the withdrawal threshold.

The minimum cash out is 25,000 points which equate to $25.

An interesting thing about OneOpinion is that they take their surveys very seriously and disqualify users when they don’t meet the criteria. Still, you get paid for each disqualification as high as 300-500 points.

A user can get a lot of surveys per day, and the disqualification rate isn’t that high. If you’re looking for survey sites that give you a lot of surveys, this is it.

Branded Surveys.

Branded Surveys is a market research community that rewards users for purely answering surveys.

The user profile is matched with the available surveys so that a user does not answer surveys that come foreign to them.

There are surveys with points as low as 46 and as high as 200. A single point on Branded Survey is equivalent to 1 cent (USD).

The amount you can earn depends on how much time you can dedicate. Longer surveys pay more compared to shorter ones.

On the website, the entire process is divided into three:

Sign up: On the website, you sign up with your email account and password or your Facebook account.
Create a profile: When creating your profile, you need to give honest answers as your account will be verified.
Cash-out: When a user answers a survey, the answers are sent to the market research clients who review and approve it. When your surveys are approved, you get rewarded with points that can be redeemed as cash or gift cards.

Branded Surveys is affiliated with big-name brands like Forrester, Nielsen, Harris interactive, Amazon, etc. It also offers referral bonus points for each referral.

Payment is received within three business days through PayPal, Dwolla, or Branded Pay. You can also exchange your cash for gift cards from affiliated stores and restaurants.

The minimum cash out is 500 points, equivalent to $5, and you get a sign-up bonus of 50 points.

Google Opinion Rewards.

The Google surveys team created Google Opinion Rewards to get feedback from customers and enable them to improve their services where it matters.

There are affiliated brands and market research clients who send surveys to get feedback from customers. When you sign up and create your profile, you get shown surveys that these brands think your profile fits.

The selling point of Google Opinion Rewards is that surveys are relatively short (as short as 4-5 questions) and easy to answer. When you sign up and set up your profile, you are given a test survey to carry out, which you also get rewarded for. You will be shown a confirmation page to confirm the payment into your Google account.

Available on Google play store and Apple Store, users get rewarded with Google play credits you can use for in-app purchases or in-game purchases. Surveys can range from opinion polls to product and service reviews, and Google Opinion Rewards do not offer PayPal payments.

Most reviews complain about not getting surveys for months, but a helpful hack is to set your location on, and you’ll get more surveys.

Requirements: You must have a valid Google account and be above 18 years.

Harris Poll Online

Harris Poll Online is a market research company that is a subsidiary of Nielsen. If you are skeptical about this website, then here’s a fun fact. The Better Business Bureau(BBB), a site to check out user complaints, has Harris Poll Online as an A-rated site.

One of the oldest market research companies, they have a massive reach and are affiliated with brands across several industries. The website is easy to use and navigate, making signing up pretty easy. You need to fill in some of your basic information with your email address, and you will receive a login password, and you’ll be good to go.

How do you earn?: You earn rewards by answering different surveys. Unlike some other survey sites, you do not get cash rewards, but your points get redeemed for gift cards from brands like Amazon, iTunes, Walmart, Starbucks, and other big-name brands.

Surveys can be as short as 5 minutes or as long as 20 minutes and more. You get shown surveys based on your information like age and gender.

A particular disadvantage is that you are not informed of the reward for a survey before answering it. This might be their way of getting honest feedback instead of users just answering because of the reward, but it can be frustrating to not get an expected amount after completing a survey.

When answering a survey, a user can be disqualified if the answers do not match the type of specific audience the brands want to hear from, but you do get a part of the reward for starting the survey.

Users are notified of available surveys that they qualify for through their email.

Requirements: The age requirement is 13 years and above. Some of the website’s affiliated brands have the younger age group as their target audience.

The minimum cashout is 1250 points, equivalent to $10.

If you are looking for a legit and trusted site to earn extra cash doing surveys, you might want to opt-in for the Harris Poll Online.

LifePoints

LifePoints is an online survey site that rewards you in points for completing surveys. Surveys on LifePoints are uploaded daily and often have user limits. For instance, an uploaded survey can have a user limit of 500; this means that you might not be able to complete that survey if the 500 mark is reached.

When this happens, you get paid a small number of points as consolation. Points are redeemable for gift cards from known retailers and can also be used for charity donations.

Available surveys are listed on your LifePoint dashboard along with a timeframe. Email notifications are also used to notify users of available surveys. Gender, location, and age are considered before giving surveys.

Mypoints.com

This survey site lets users earn points for completing tasks, including answering surveys. One can exchange these points for real money, travel miles, retail e-vouchers, or gift cards.

The website is user-friendly and easy to navigate, and signing up is free.

Unlike some other survey sites, users can also earn from MyPoints by playing games, shopping (Cashback), watching videos, and printing coupons.

It offers users daily to-do lists and challenges that they can participate in to earn extra points. Cashback is the fastest way to earn on MyPoints.

To earn through surveys, you can go to the survey tab on the website and start taking surveys. MyPoints reviews surveys and revokes those that do not make the cut.

You can earn up to $2-$3 per hour on MyPoints.

The minimum cash out is 700 points, equivalent to $5.

Valued Opinions

To earn through Valued Opinions, all you have to do is sign up, answer surveys and earn. You are expected to fill out a member profile that qualifies you for surveys that fit your data when you join. If you want to earn more, you have to fill out your profile, but you do not get points for it.

Users are notified through shared email if there is a survey that they are fit for, and you get rewarded with cash that is redeemable for gift cards. Each survey reward ranges from $1-$5 and takes a minimum of 15 mins to complete.

Gift cards are given based on your geographic location and are from retailers like KFC, Amazon, and UNICEF (for charity donations).

The minimum payout is $10.

Ipsos i-Say

Limited to residents of Canada and The United States, Ipsos i-Say is a survey site that pays users primarily for completing surveys and pays for referrals, contests, and loyalty programs.

To start earning, you have to sign up with your email address and fill out your user profile which links you up with specific surveys that fit your profile.

It is also available as an app on the Google play store and Apple Store.

Why you should use survey sites.

A lot of people are skeptical about survey sites, and understandably so. There are various scams out there, and you don’t want to waste your time and get your hopes up.

Here are some reasons why you should use survey sites:

You get paid for giving your opinion
Easy and fast way to earn extra cash
No capital needed
You can earn at your leisure

Final thoughts

There are many survey sites available online, and while some are relatively good, there are terrible sites that are just a waste of time. You might also have to try out a few before you get the one that fits.

Paid online surveys aren’t the best ways to make money online, but they can be one of the ways to earn extra cash or gift cards during your leisure.

Since most survey sites send a list of available surveys via email, it is best to use an alternative email when setting up to prevent overcrowding in your inbox.

Have you made any cash through survey sites? Have you had a bad experience using any of these? Which of the sites in this post do you think is the best and why?