Survey sites guide discussion

blackaqua

I have to agree great list.

Although you may have missed out some of the speciality survey sites, often for the younger age groups which offer good returns such as Headbox and Dubit.

You can easily earn £300+, this year I have declaired closer to £500 on the tax return.

As for Toluna, I have to agree and if you actually calculate the money for each survey its just as bad as Ciao aka greenfields. However both of these do offer better paid surveys if you weed out the junk.

Opinion world may be one to keep an eye on. They are shortly introducing a points system like many of the other survey companies. They also periodically send out paid surveys to your paypal account. I earn ~£5-10 month from these and you get paid within 6 weeks via pypal.

itsyourview, as a student I get very few, however I do get on average £50/year.

As for the focus groups, many of these survey companys will also invite you to them for anything between £20 - £200. Headbox are the best if your a teenager/young 20's for this sort of thing although I have been invited (and qualified) for focus groups from Globaltestmarket, Valued Opinons and Lightspeed research. In such cases you are normally paid cash/cheque instead of the usuall redemption options.

muffin_man

Pinecone is great; I think I actually managed to sign up via Rpoints, so got a little bit of cashback as well, although that was about a year ago now...since disappeared.

I have been known to receive emails asking me to invite people to join that meet specific criteria e.g. child under 3 etc. and although its not guaranteed that you will be accepted to join, it at least allows you to apply. So, keep an eye out for people posting things like that on here if you're interested in joining.

Lightspeed are great for low payout as well; as someone mentioned above, paypal as little as £1, and the good thing is that there's no penalty for a lower payout i.e. the points needed per pound is the same at £1 as it is at £50, so no need to risk having your points stowed away. I usually hang aroung for the £5 gift vouchers as they are (slightly) better value.

Just a question regarding the HMRC self-employment point...that doesn't still apply if you take your incentives as gift vouchers does it?

blackaqua

muffin_man wrote: »

Just a question regarding the HMRC self-employment point...that doesn't still apply if you take your incentives as gift vouchers does it?

I fairly sure you do, if I remember correctly the rule states that incentives are counted, especially when they have such an easy compairable value to cash

deadleg21

ciao surveys doesn't work for me- dunno if its a mac thing?
I click Yes its me and just loads a white screen.

ThinkingOfLinking

Great guide.

From my experience:

Toluna: I make about £40 a year from them and they always pay but are very slow to pay. I'd still recommend them though, despite the overall guide not doing so.

Globaltestmarket: It's slowed down a bit but it's a good site and I enjoy the surveys. I make about £45 a year from them.

Valued Opinions: My favourite. I make about £50 a year from them. I'm currently involved in a long term project for them which will net me an extra £30. They pay out promptly and they offer really good surveys.

Lightspeed: Another good site. I make about £40 a year from them. Easy to understand and you get screened out quickly if you're not suitable for a survey so dont' waste time.

GfK surveys: Not on your list. Long and tedious, a bit repetitive but I've earnt £30 from them in the last year and won another £26. They pay out promptly.

It's Your View/New Vista: It takes a while but I managed to earn the £50 and am already £9 into my next cheque.

Onepoll: Not on your list. Takes a long time to earn the £40 but I have done it once and am not far off doing it again. I also won £100 from one of their survey prize draws so it does happen.

TNS/My Survey: Good. Takes a while to earn but I've earnt nectar points and Amazon vouchers. Admittedly, it's the one I have gained the least from but it's still worth it.

DooYoo: I have earnt well over £100 from it, but have had a lot of problems with very rude staff there because they've refused to honour my last 2 redemptions; a couple of reviews which Amazon accepted, they are saying aren't good enough. I am a Vine reviewer for Amazon, meaning I was actually chosen for my reviewing ability to be sent freebies from Amazon to use and review so I find that laughable. They've also accused me of revenge rating when I dared to give one person's review a "Useful" when he demanded I change it to "very useful" which it wasn't.

Ciao: Don't bother. Literally pennies.

PureProfile: As others have said, infrequent so takes forever to earn the £25. I haven't yet so can't comment on anything else.

Harris Interactive: Once you've accrued 2500 points, you can swap it for £25 to be paid by Paypal. Decent site. Once they failed to pay and never got back to me when I emailed them though.

Home Of Research. Same as Harris Interactive. Exactly the same!!

Songpeople: Good site, really interesting surveys but the Music player doesn't always work. You can earn points and win prizes.

ThinkingOfLinking

Mindmover: I'm yet to redeem as I haven't reached the threshold but they seem decent.

Saros research: Been to a couple of focus groups and enjoyed them. Got nibbles and beer/wine/soft drink and £50 for an hour or so of my time.

Yougov, been nearly 3 years and still not reached my £50 target yet.

blackaqua

Ahh forgot song people

It probably averages ~ £20 every 3 months

Any tns my surveys is also good, reasonably paid

stubbyd

I;'ve given up on these survey sites.

I've been around on the internet for the best part of 20yrs and started off early with the likes of some of your supposed top payers - however I always seem to fall into the "you don't qualify" trap and consequently in all my years of doing surveys I've only once hit the threshold and then had to chase the payment of £25 and my wife has once been selected to trial a product which we had to return!

Beyond that absolutely nothing.

Just my 2p worth of input that yes it may work for some but be warned it doesn't for everyone. And it is a lot of effort for a lot of nothing IMO.

S.

izzykender

I have been doing online surveys for the past 2 years and have earned over £200 in that time. I even wrote an article for my local paper on the topic.

I disagree with the Opinion World comment in the main article that it doesn't pay out much. On many surveys it does say, that it donates say 50p to charity if you complete the survey, but many I get through say, £1 for completing this survey, and within a week I get an email from PayPal saying I have received £1 for doing the survey. I don't see any harm in signing up, and then only doing the survey that pays. This year alone I must have earned at least £20 from Opinion World.

Other than that Lightspeed is good but if the browser window times out before you finish the survey, you don't get credited with the points. This happened to me once on a survey that took me an hour to complete & supposed to earn £2 for doing it. I messaged them and obviously I didn't get the full £2 but they did credit my account with something. I have noticed in recent months that they are paying out less money in surveys too. It used to be about 90p/£1 for a survey that takes about 20 minutes. Now it seems to be 50p.

The three survey sites I bother with are Lightspeed, Valued Opinions & Opinion World. Many ones I signed up to aren't mac compatible, so can't do the surveys.

aileen0509

I am a member of most of the survey companies listed I do like completing them, some can be very long, but the rewards are worth it in the end. Toluna takes the longest for you to get anything good, you need 600000 points for a £12.00 voucher.