Stephanie’s Top Five Survey Panels – September 2011

September was another slow month for me. Survey invites were a bit fewer than August, which was disappointing. The past few months have just been very slow for me.Once again, I could not find any Invokes or focus groups this month. There continues to be a drastic decline in them, at least for my demographic. I search every day, but never run into them anymore. It’s quite discouraging. Most survey panels were slow for me this month, including Opinion Outpost, Global Test Market, and Toluna. Toluna especially has been disappointing for numerous reasons. I did receive several product tests in the mail, however, mainly food, cosmetics, and personal care products. At the very least, SurveyHead (and its other websites)and MySurvey seem to be doing pretty well for me lately. Rankings are based mainly on what I earned for the month from each survey company, as well as the number of survey invites. Here are my current top five earners for September:

1. 1. SurveyHead
      • Total Earned Since Joining: $688.00
      • Total Earned in September: $25.00
      • Last Payment Requested: $25 PayPal on August 31, 2011
      • Joined: August 15, 2008

I’m beginning to take more surveys with SurveyHead and its other websites. I’m qualifying for more and getting more emails lately that offer pretty good-paying surveys. I’m hoping to cash out with a few of their websites again soon. So far, I’ve been pretty happy with them lately.

1. 1. Opinion Outpost
      • Total Earned Since Joining: $611.00
      • Total Earned in September: $18.00
      • Last Payment Requested: $53.30 check on September 30, 2011/li>
      • Joined: August 12, 2008

Opinion Outpost was rather slow for me in September, as it has been in the past few months. There were very few high-paying surveys; most of them were worth only 10-15 points at the most. I get a lot of magazine surveys from them, although I do not qualify for most of them. One survey that I took from them ended with them saying I didn’t qualify, which was really annoying considering I spent 15-20 minutes working on it. I just haven’t been very impressed with them lately and I hope this isn’t a downhill trend. Even so, I still managed to earn a decent amount from them this month.

1. 1. MySurvey (merged with Lightspeed)
      • Total Earned Since Joining: $525.00
      • Total Earned in September: $15.00
      • Last Payment Requested: $25.00 Amazon.com gift card on September 19, 2011
      • Joined: October 22, 2008

I received a lot of survey invitations from MySurvey in September, along with a few product tests including food and personal care products. I’m still doing quite well with them and cashed out with them recently.

1. 1. Valued Opinions
      • Total Earned Since Joining: $390.00
      • Total Earned in September: $10.00
      • Last Payment Requested: $20.00 Amazon.com gift card on September 21, 2011
      • Joined: September 5, 2008

I got a good amount of surveys from Valued Opinions in September, though not as many as in some previous months. They recently revamped their website (which looks much better than it did before) and I noticed there were new, updated profiles for me to take. I filled those out and started receiving a few more surveys. We will see how the next few months with them go.

1. 1. Toluna
      • Total Earned Since Joining: $852.00
      • Total Earned in September: $8.00
      • Last Payment Requested: $20.00 check on August 30, 2011
      • Joined: August 15, 2008

I honestly don’t know why I bother with Toluna anymore considering I can’t find Invokes from them anymore at all and their surveys pay less and less over time for too much time spent doing them. I am planning on devoting more time to other survey panels (such as SurveyHead and its other sites, as well as giving SurveySpot another chance) over the next month or so and see how well I do compared to Toluna. I just continue to get more and more disappointed and frustrated with them each month. It took me weeks to just get enough to cash out for $20 recently. When it gets this frustrating with a survey panel, it’s best to move onto something else for a while, which is what I intend to do. Do you have a list of favorite survey panels? Please leave a comment below and let us know some of the survey panels that work best for you.