Online Surveys for Cash - Legit surveys for cash

When looking to join in some paid surveys websites, do some research. In this page, there is some survey companies that I have been a member for a couple of years. I get some surveys from them, and, the most important thing, I got paid.

There are many review sites on the Internet that can give some insight. Many of course, are from people that also belong to those sites and promote them to get referrals. Dont worry about that, this is a normal thing on the surveys sites. The more people you refer, the more money you can make also besides the normal surveys routine you do. In fact, I do recommend everyone that joins any survey company, to use the referral system, just remember, dont spam other people. Besides of seeing like a bad practice, people will not believe you. Provide good information about the site and use your referral link.

When doing research to avoid scams, always try to find out what company owns that particular site. Many survey sites, are owned by larger companies that are in the market research business. If you spend some time doing this kind of research, you might get good results.

Some companies also will give you more, or less surveys depending of many factors. The country where you live is much important, if you live in the United States, chances are that you will get many surveys from those companies. Also many companies only accept members from certain countries. The big countries that have the most opportunity to join some of the best surveys companies are, United States, Canada, UK and Australia.

Another aspect to have into account, is that you cannot expect surveys everyday unless you belong to 20 companies or more and do surveys for all of them. When starting a survey, you will have a "mini-survey" before the actual survey, this is called the "screening survey". Some companies are only interested in a certain demographic group, that can be by age, location, consumer habits, etc, so dont expect to be selected to every survey that will pop up in your Email box.

If you want to get paid to take surveys you really need to get your feet on the ground and stop believing in the high pay "hype" that every scammer preaches on the Internet. Most of the times you can expect a normal survey to pay something like $1 to 5$ dollars. Some say that pay $100 or even $200 dollars for a survey, that is pure BS!

Sure, there are companies that can pay to you like $100 dollars but for a "focus group". A focus group, is a "gathering" of people that are together to participate in a experiment, It can be to watch a video trailer, test a product and so on. Usually those are the best paid since it focus in several people talking and testing the same product live.

On normal surveys that you make at home, where you spend like 5 to 30 minutes filling out forms, the pay is much less. Let´s be realistic ok?
In a survey, the reward depends of how many people the company wants in the study, the length of the survey and if you fit the profile they are looking for.

YES!

But it is a bit more harder to get surveys. Basically in the US, there is thousands of companies. For those living there it is much more easy to join.
But there is also companies that work worldwide.
I´m a good example, I live in Portugal so I must work for international companies. Many of them even change the language to Portuguese. Others stick with English, but I guess if you are here and do not live in the US you know how to read English! :))

The most countries that have good surveys and many people can make some extra cash are United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Australia. There are also some countries on Europe that have some decent survey companies, German, Italy and France are some.

Other companies, for example Toluna, are almost worldwide but the preference on many studies are in the major countries.

First things first!

You need to get some organization. And by that I mean on your computer. If you are one of those people that uses the computer for everything, it is a good idea to separate your normal activities from the ones you going to have in paid surveys.

No matter how many times you heard this, safety is very important. Make sure you have a good anti-virus and firewall software. There are free and paid software, I do recommend a paid one since you get all in just one package and it is always updated.

Here are some good free ones:

Free AVG Anti-Virus

ZoneAlarm Free Firewall

I recommend you open a new Email account just to be used for this. You might get like 4 or 5 surveys in a month if you only work for 1 or 2 companies, in that case you can use you personal Email. But the point is to join as many companies you can. So you will get a lot of emails and you need to get organized. Also, that new email will also be used for you to get paid.

Most survey companies pay by check or by paypal.
You can get a free account at www.paypal.com

If you already have a paypal account, you can add your new email to the existing paypal account instead of creating a new one. Yes you can have several paypal accounts.

For Email accounts, I recommend to use Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo.

www.gmail.com
www.hotmail.com
www.mail.yahoo.com

AOL users should avoid registering. Create a new email account. It seams AOL Mail spam filters really work too well!

Most windows based computers have Internet Explorer installed. I do recommend to use Mozilla Firefox. It´s fast, reliable and secure. Also you can organize your bookmarks in a more efficient way. There is thousands of add ons but I wont put my hands on the fire for many of them.

Get it at: www.mozilla.com Windows, Mac Os and Linux versions. Many languages to chose from.

It´s a password and form manager. Very useful. You can store several sites and logins and also helps you to fill out those registration forms when you apply for a new company. You can use a master password that will be encrypted in RoboForm and use different passwords to login into the different sites. Also it provides a "quick login" function to the sites you wanna go and automatically will open the page and fill your login details of the current website.

Forms can be filled with 1 click. You fill out a very well design master form with all the possible different information like address, zip codes, phone numbers, age, gender and so on. It gives you also the option to store more sensitive information like credit cards and/or bank details all encrypted. With Roboform you only have to fill out a form once. It is not a free program but when safety is in the line you really want to leave all that information and login details to free ones?

Download RoboForm free trial

This are some of legitimate paid surveys companies that I have been working for and until now I´m very happy.

International

Just because some can accept members from all over the world, make always sure that your country is listed. Many accept members from USA, Canada and Europe and others do indeed accept members from all over the world.

So, here you have a small list of survey companies that really pay. I am a member of some of them, and others that I did not joined, I had the assurance of close friends that they work. Other survey companies listed here also, are some that I am testing. Some of the "criteria" that I use to know if a survey site is good or not, is the time they take to send me my first survey, how many of them I get in a month and of course the most important, if I get paid..

All survey companies listed here are free. Dont pay for membership in a survey company. If they want your opinion they have to pay you, not the other way around! I am a strong believer in FREE PAID SURVEY SITES

If you joined any of the survey companies listed here, please come back latter and drop me a comment to know how well you did with them. Also let us know if you are getting any surveys at all and if you are getting paid.

CashCrate is a great add on for those that are thinking joining all these sites. They have cash-back offers on products you buy on the site, online surveys, contests and a great referral program. If you want to increase your gains even more, and if you are from the United States and Canada, you must join them. They work worldwide, but residents in the US & Canada have the most benefits. Also, if you are active member of social sites like facebook, and so on, or if you have a blog, you can cash in a good amount of money just by referring people to them.
In my honest opinion, I think CashCrate is one, if not, the best survey site someone can be a member of.

Highly Recommended!

To learn more, read the full CashCrate Review.

A good and respected survey company, Survey4Profit, pays good money for each survey you make. They have monthly draws for prizes for some cool items and coupons. Survey4Profit is a company owned by by Sayforexample, Inc. The company was founded by a former IBM architect in 2004.
This must be one of the survey companies that I have seen paying the most. It might worth to check it out. At the moment the only countries that can join are United States, Canada, UK and Australia.

Register and join for free at Survey4Profit

Highly Recommended!

This is one of my favorites. They don´t give me many surveys but again, I mention that all depends of your country.

GlobalTestMarket have been around for years, they are the leading company in surveys. They accept international members but it is not a worldwide company. At this moment, they accept people from 49 countries, from the US, Europe, South America and Asia. Check their F.A.Q. before joining to be sure your country is listed.

I really recommend this one over all the others. This is a serious company and always paid me with no problems.

Highly Recommended!

Valued Opinions, is another great survey company. They don´t cover much countries but they pay and thats what matters. They have many options to collect the money you make while doing surveys. This can go from Amazon E-Vouchers to ITunes gifts cards. At the moment the only countries that can join are UK, New Zealand, Ireland, Australia and United States.

Registration is free.

Recommended!

Toluna is one of those survey companies that is really fun to be around. I have been a member or Toluna for couple years now. They have a lot of different ways to reward you from the participation you give.

Besides the normal surveys you get, you can also test products. In this case you register for a study. Let´s say some company wants to know feedback of a new LCD TV for example. If you are selected to test their product, in this case the LCD TV, they will send the TV for you to test it for a time. After that you answer any input from them and most cool thing is, you keep the TV!
Unfortunately I have never been selected for a TV, but I already tested some basic products, like cleaners and other stuff, even pens. You always keep the product. It is their way to reward you for the participation in the study.

Toluna pays in points for the surveys. You also gain points for quick votes about a theme or question someone wants to know. There is members all around the world and no matter what country you live in, the site adapts to your language. Most members come from Europe, Australia and from the United States.

Membership is free.

Toluna UK

Toluna Germany

Recommended!
For other countries any of the links will redirect you. Membership is worldwide.

Opinion Outpost is another "old" marketing research company that is around since 1980. They focus more on US and Canada and they have a particularity of having research surveys dedicated also to the Hispanic people living in those countries. This survey company is also a good addition to join.

Registration is, of course, free.

Ipsos I-Say is another great company to join. Joining them will add up to all the good ones that I already mentioned here. They have a nice program to everyone that is active in the surveys. They use the points system where you redeem them for money (check), American Express gift cards or you can also donate to charity. The difference is the incentive bonuses they offer to the members, that are active. After 5 surveys they will give you an additional bonus of 25 points into your account, 10 surveys, 50 points and so on. The minimum amount of points where you can redeem is 1000 points. Depending of your demographic group, that might be easy to achieve.

Also they offer every new member a chance to win $1000 dollars in a draw. They also have a contest draw of a random give away to 10 members every month and the winners win 2500 points into their account.

Ipsos is another legitimate survey company that is really worth to join and participate.

United States and Canada only.

Join Ipsos for free

ECN Research is another online marketing company that pay you for your opinion on several products. Some of the offers besides the surveys can be discounts on shopping, coupons, "buy one, get one free" shopping style, testing of products and much more. They also have draws for prizes too. Registration is free also.

United States & Canada only!

Join for free at ECN Research

Palm Research is a very simple survey company. They dont pay much for each survey, usually its around $0.75 cents for each. So why mention them? Because they offer simple short surveys everyday! Most of them have a 10 to 15 minutes duration. Some times you can even have more then 2 or 3 surveys everyday. The tricky part is to qualify in the screenings for them. They have worldwide surveys and national surveys specific for a certain demographic group.

If you participate in more then one company of surveys, Palm Research is a good "add on" to the collection and of course every company that pays is a good addition. When using several survey companies, all of them top up at the end of the month.

Registration is free.

Permission Research is a bit different from the normal survey companies. Here you will need to install a little piece of software on your computer. This might be a turn off for many people worried with spyware and such. The software is harmless, it is used to collect information in how you use your computer and the Internet. It will not get private data from you, but it will check your type of computer and your web browsing habits. No personal information will be used for other purposes. From time to time, you will get surveys to answers about specific topics.

This is a legit survey company, even if the method used can cause some suspicious thinking, it is a different way of collecting information.

Registration if free.

I have been trying more survey companies. I recently joined a few more but it is too soon to talk about them. When I have good (or bad) results, I will recommend the ones that have been paying out.
I really hope this Lens will help some people to get some insights of paid surveys companies.

There are companies that you can join by paying a fee. Some are scams, others are really good and pay very well. Since I never joined any of those (yet) I can´t recommend any. Also, I believe, if a honest market research company wants my opinion, I don´t have to pay anything to give that same opinion. Maybe i´m wrong, but for now I prefer free ones. There are companies that ask a small fee just because they want serious people.

The paid survey world on the internet is full of scams and it makes sense some companies want to stay in higher standings. Also, usually the rewards are much better for who participates.

Soon I will try to give my thoughts about those and see how they go.