Completing online surveys is an easy way to earn extra cash while working from home, but is Survey Junkie worth your time?
Over the past five years, I’ve taken hundreds of online surveys from websites like Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) and Swagbucks to make money online in my spare time.
The pay is low — typically less than $1 per survey — but it can really add up if you stick with it.
What Is Survey Junkie and Is It Worth It?
Survey Junkie is an online survey platform that pays users for sharing their opinions. Each survey is worth a certain number of points, which can be redeemed for cash or gift cards.
I tested out Survey Junkie to see how it compares to MTurk and Swagbucks. Here’s what you need to know!
1. Setting Up an Account
Getting started with Survey Junkie takes about two minutes. SurveyJunkie.com asks for the following pieces of personal information before you can create an account:
- ZIP code
- Country of residence
- Date of birth
- Gender
- First name
- Last name
After signing up, I immediately began to fill out profiles. Survey Junkie says doing so will increase your chances of receiving more surveys with higher rewards.
That’s because market research companies are looking for specific types of people to complete surveys.
These profile questions asked things like whether I had a pet, what type of smartphone I use, where I shop for certain products and how much time I spend watching TV.
For each profile that I completed, I earned a small number of points.
2. Completing Surveys
Not long after answering those profile questions, Survey Junkie began to offer me paid survey opportunities.
From your account dashboard, you’ll see a list of the available surveys. Before you click on one, you can see how many points you’ll earn and how long it’ll take to complete the task — like a 10-minute survey for 40 points.
Only a handful of surveys were available to me at any given time, which limited my potential earnings with Survey Junkie.
Compared to MTurk, I found that Survey Junkie has fewer surveys available that take longer to complete and pay less. Between profile questions and surveys, I completed 35 tasks before reaching the $10 minimum payout.
(When I last checked Survey Junkie in June 2020, the minimum redemption amount was lowered to $5.)
The most frustrating part was answering several minutes of survey questions and then being disqualified. That happened a few times.
If you’ve completed a lot of online surveys, I know that you can relate to that experience. It has happened to me before with Swagbucks. It can be discouraging to put in most of the work and not get the full reward.
As for the survey topics, Survey Junkie’s surveys were mostly related to products and services that consumers buy.
3. Getting Paid for Your Work
When you take surveys with Survey Junkie, one point is equal to one cent. So a survey with a 100-point reward will earn you $1. But you must have $5 in your account (500 points) to cash out.
I chose to receive a cash payment via PayPal, but you can also have your rewards transferred to a bank account. Electronic gift cards are a third redemption option.
Here are some of the gift cards available:
- Amazon
- iTunes
- Sephora
- Starbucks
- Walmart
- Target
- Groupon
When I went to cash out, Survey Junkie asked to verify my identity. This included providing my home address and phone number.
However, Survey Junkie’s system wasn’t able to automatically confirm my identity, so I had to wait until the next business day for someone from the company to call me and manually do it.
When I checked the Better Business Bureau’s website, I read a number of complaints from users who also had difficulty redeeming their points for one reason or another. Read about those here.
Although I was nervous for a bit that I wouldn’t get paid, I was able to cash out immediately after the manual verification.
Final Thought
After testing out Survey Junkie, I can confirm that the online survey site is 100% legit and not a scam. But I also don’t think this is a way for you to make more than a few dollars a day.
I’ve had a lot more success with MTurk, which offers a variety of other ways to make money besides just completing surveys.
If you want to give Survey Junkie a try, I suggest that you do exactly what I did. Sign up at SurveyJunkie.com, spend a few hours completing surveys and cash out as soon as you reach the minimum.
Have you tried Survey Junkie or another online survey site? Share your review in the comments section below!
