There are five basic types of incentives that online paid survey sites reward you with: cash, points for cash, points for gift cards, points for prizes and sweepstakes entries. I will briefly describe the advantages and disadvantages of each type over the next few articles. I prefer survey sites that pay in cash or points for cash and I do not like survey sites that pay only in sweepstakes entries; but, there are valid reasons why you should have a balance of different survey sites in your survey site portfolio and I will discuss these reasons and explain which sites in each category are better and why.

The number one survey site that pays in cash, in my opinion, is Survey Spot ($370.80 earned, $351.80 received since 2008-01-30) because they not only pay in cash, but they pay me the most per month on average ($24.72) of any other site. They currently only pay by checks, but they recently announced that they would begin to implement PayPal, making them perfect in nearly every way. This brings us to point number one: survey sites that pay via PayPal as opposed to checks are preferred as your payments are generally received much quicker. There are exceptions, such as Surveyhead ($25 since 2009-02-05), another fairly good paying survey site that pays in cash via PayPal, but whose payments often do not arrive in your PayPal account for two weeks or longer after they have been requested. Greenfield Online ($104.00 since 2008-02-13) is another survey site that now pays via PayPal and though I have not earned nearly as much with them over the past eight months as I did during the first six months, they do send out plenty of surveys, including lucrative Invoke Interactives that pay between $25 and $35 usually and sometimes as much as $100 or more. Another very solid survey site that pays in cash via PayPal is Pinecone Research ($66 since 2008-04-03). Their $3 survey payments via PayPal are almost instantaneous once their surveys have closed; although, many people complain that they do not send out enough surveys. Remember: everyone wants more frequent, higher paying surveys, but if a site is a consistent, hassle-free earner that provides you with regular, shorter, well-constructed surveys and no surprises regarding payments, that is a very good site to include in your portfolio.

Next we will consider survey sites that pay in cash via checks. Hopefully, payment by checks will soon be a thing of the past, as checks can sometimes take as long as two months to arrive. Such is not the case with American Consumer Opinion panel ($77 since 2008-03-01), as their checks arrive promptly after they are requested and, as with Pinecone Research, they are a very legitimate, professionally run survey site that should be included in everyone’s survey portfolio. Although they may not earn you the most money, ACOP is a hassle-free survey site that you will never waste time haggling over payments with. The same cannot be said of BuzzBack ($27 since 2008-03-01), who have promised that improvements are on the way, but who have also made me wait over eight months for a $3 survey check. SurveySavvy is much better in the time they take to deliver checks; however, the problem with this site is waiting for completed surveys to clear, which usually takes six weeks. Fortunately, their customer service is excellent and most disputes are cleared up quickly. Netverdix ($64), Mindfield Online ($62), Socratic Forum ($60), Elite Opinion ($30 since 2009-03-11) are a few other sites that pay by check that you should add to your survey portfolio.

Finally, I just want to note that I also am a member of several sites that are hybrid survey/trial offer sites, which are also very good earners and pay in cash incentives, but are not suitable topics for this particular blog for various reasons. The most well-known of these sites are InboxDollars and SendEarnings, which are identical for all practical purposes. It’s easy to get caught up in trial offer sites and not cancel offers in a timely fashion so it’s probably best for most people to avoid these sites.