Excellent well-written review of many sites! I covered surveys that pay in cash, surveys that pay in points for cash and surveys that pay in Amazon gift certificates in three previous three articles on this blog. As for prize sites, you are correct that the surveys tend to be shorter and you can redeem points for some nice items if you are patient, but after a year or longer of being a member of the sites that I mentioned I have either claimed the prizes I was interested in or simply lost patience.

Over the past 16 months I have found a master list of 35 sites that pay me between $200 and $300 per month plus many, many products and free items from contest wins, such as an Apple Macbook and iPod Touch. What I have learned is that time is money and I can earn money much faster through sites that pay me in cash, points for cash or Amazon gift certificates. I am no longer able to spend more than two to three hours per day, so I have had to use a very critical and judicious eye when selecting how that time is spent.

eRewards is actually not too bad, but I simply cannot use the frequent flyer miles and cannot subscribe to more than two or three magazines at a time. I rarely buy flowers, diamond jewelry from Zales or Omaha Steaks to take advantage of the ‘buy $50 and get $10 off promotions’. When I said that Borders charges more for DVDs/CDs, I was comparing their prices to what I normally pay for brand new ones on Amazon.com ($6-$8) using free gift certificates that I have earned from other sites such as Valued Opinions.

For me, InboxDollars/SendEarnings is problematic because they are are more akin to Get Paid To Try (GPT) sites with very few actual surveys ($0.50 each with a $3 ‘processing fee’ and $30 minimum payout) and even one small mistake in not cancelling a trial offer can cost you several months’ earnings.

I am really glad you mentioned Mypoints.com, because that is an excellent site that offers Amazon gift certificates that I neglected to mention in my earlier article.

Greenfield can be a waste of time if you are a member of other sites that are ‘Powered by Greenfield’ and that also pay more for their surveys, but I think you need to reevaluate SurveySpot as I have earned over $400 with them over the past year and many others rank them very highly. The trick with SurveySpot is to take a few of the shorter surveys for sweepstakes to establish yourself with them and the paid surveys and lucrative Invoke Interactive surveys will soon follow after a few weeks or months. Good luck to you in your surveying!

In addition I redeemed points for FTD and Proflowers. E-rewards has just added GameStop and several other new online reward sites, as well. These sites do tend to pay low points and the prize level is high, but, unlike other sites, their surveys can for the most part be shorter, of course there are a few that you will receive that can be 20-25 minutes. I just ignore those, as the points are not worth my time. I take the quick ones and just save up the points. No matter how you look at it, you are still receiving something for investing very little of your time.

There are however, several excellent sites that you earn points that you redeem for gift cards.

One such site is mypoints.com. This site has an extensive list of gift cards that you are eligible for point redemption, and the points needed are not ridiculous. In addition, they also offer multiple ways to earn points. You can earn points by doing nothing more than reading emails (5 points each, several each day), you can earn points by taking advantage of the offers or surveys that the emails offer. Another great way to earn points is if you shop online already, instead of going directly to say Avon.com, you would log into mypoints.com go to shopping, find Avon, it will then show you how many points per dollar you spend they will credit you, click on Avon and your purchase will automatically be recorded and credited by the site.They also offer points for online gaming if you like that, there are trial offers, free offers, and many other ways. I suggest you check them out.I have been a member of mypoints for 5 years, and have cashed in thousand of $ in gift cards. Regal Cinemas, Panera, Starbucks, old navy, gap just to name a few. Shopping partners, eBay, vista print, 123 inkjets, Wal-Mart, are just a couple of their partner sites.

Here are several other sites that I have been a long time member of, that offer similar ways to earn points, but these ones offer cash rewards either by check or PayPal. They do, however, have a cash out threshold (you have to have a certain amount of cash earned in your acct, before you can request payment. I have been paid many times over by these sites.

They are: paidmail at inbox.com ($30 cash out threshold- check payment) sendearnings.com (same company as inbox, but you can have an account with each, same cash out ) opinionoutpost.com ($5 cash out threshold-paid via checks) creationsrewards.com ($5 cash out-PayPal) snapdollars.com ($40 cash out-PayPal) from marie at synovate.net (5000 points is equal to $5 it is easy to reach the required points-they pay you with a check)Lauren at us.lightspeedpanel.com (again points that are redeemed for PayPal cash out. mysurvey.com (also points for cash,they also offer gift cards as does the marie at synovate. It is also listed under synovate.com

I know this may seem like a lot of sites, and I only have two more to share, they are: Ipso-I-say.com. This site is a prize or cash site as well. I also should mention that several of these sites, periodically will ask if you would like to try a product and then answer survey questions on that. I have even had them request that I send in different types of mail and keep food or tv journals. Those requests are gold mines. You get to keep the product you test, from food to beauty products and soaps etc, and they pay huge reward points, when you test the products or send in requested things. The final site I would like to mention is Dollarsurvey.net This last one is awesome you can take as many surveys a day as they have and/or you qualify for and the next week they deposit anywhere from $.50-$10 for each survey completed depending on what the terms of each survey was, into your PayPal account-instant cash. no point or cash saving. Let me know how you make out

I hope this information helps. I make upwards of a $100 a month between cash and prizes from these sites. The opportunity to make even more is easily obtained, depending on how much time you are willing to put in to these sites.

I would also be interested in any comments anyone might have to offer regarding this and if anyone has any different sites to recommend. I have wedded through so many useless sites, it is unbelievable. The biggest tip I can offer is, if the site offers to pay anything more than $5 for taking a survey (many sites will offer cash from $5-$30 for accepting an offer, that is different)then they are a waste of time, you will end up in one of those endless loops of yes/no and all the “survey” questions are would you like to try this, or a cell phone number scam. A couple of the loop ones are Panda Research, Moolah and then there are the sites that want you to pay them to hook you up with survey sites. I have also found Greenfield and survey spot to be a waste of time, most of the surveys are 20-25 minutes long and your prize is an entry into there cash drawing (yeah right) or an entry AND a chance at their instant cash game. Once in a while the email will say that they will pay you between $1 and $5, however, when I take them I will spend 15 minutes answering questions, only to be told that I don’t qualify. I stopped wasting my time on those as well.