Top Online Survey Companies - Survey Scout Scam & More!

 If you are looking for Frugal Mom's list of Recommended Online Survey Companies, scroll down.

Survey Scout & The Survey Scout Scam Claim

We've had a lot of inquiries about Survey Scout. FrugalMom can no longer recommend Survey Scout.  When we originally reviewed this program, it was just what it claimed to be.  We signed up and used the program before recommending it.  Today, Survey Scout still appears to give  exactly what they advertise, however, the quality of the companies that they promote seems to have gone downhill.  I know that one of the concerns that many people have is wondering if Survey Scout is a scam.  My opinion is that you get exactly what they advertise you will get and that Survey Scout is not a scam. While Survey Scout is not exactly a scam, they do not seem to promote companies that give good value and we cannot recommend them.

Reputable Online Paid Survey Companies

I have a small listing of survey companies here on Frugal Mom (see below) but there are many, many more out there, and unfortunately many of them are scams or at least disappointing at best.  There are probably a large number of reputable online survey companies, but there are a huge number of rip offs. There are free online survey companies and paid. Some folks are very against paid survey companies, others recognize that some of those paid companies offer added value.  We fall into the latter camp, although being cheap (I mean frugal) we tend to look harder at the ones that don't require money.  That said, out time is valuable and there are companies that have done the work and give you a great deal of benefit for the fee.  One of those companies is our top Paid Online Survey Company,  Maximum Paid Surveys.

Online Survey Tips and Info

The work from home survey concept is this: you get paid to give your opinions on various topics, products or websites. As I began applying to companies I realized that while this isn't a way to earn lots of money - it is a way to earn some extra money.  And guess what - I got a check in the mail yesterday for $12.00.  That takes my kids to McDonald's for lunch!  Okay, that's not very frugal of me.  That gives me $12.00 to buy meat in bulk!!  Many of the survey companies enter you into drawings and winning a drawing is the only way to get paid.  This is OK, as long as you understand what you are getting into.

The point is that paid online surveys are a great way to add to your monthly income and they take so little time.  I did a paid online survey this week that required me to visit a website of a large hotel chain and answer questions about how easy it was to make online reservations.  For my time (about 45 minutes) I received a gift certificate for $10.00 to Amazon.  I then used the gift certificate to buy a book for my 9 year old son.

TIP:  Create a separate email account to give to the survey companies as your inquiries will generate a LOT of email and unless you are quite discerning (or lucky) a good portion of it may be spamish.  Our advise is to get a free account on yahoo or msn that you use solely for survey offers. 

Some of the companies pay in cash, others pay with gift certificates or prizes and some will enter you into their monthly drawings for chances to win money.  You can also earn money by referring your friends.  When they sign up, you get paid!

So if this is something that you'd like to do then you're going to have to invest a little bit of time applying to the companies.  Once you are in their database they will send you emails inviting you to take a paid survey.    Have fun!

One more thing - you may want to consider downloading Passkeeper to keep track of which companies you've applied to, your username and password.  It's free and I couldn't live without it! 

Check out other Frugal Mom Work from Home Ideas

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