Online Paid Surveys for Money: A Comprehensive Guide for Beginners

A Beginner's Guide to Taking Online Surveys for Money:

You're looking to start taking surveys online and you need a crash course on the topic. You've come to the right spot as the Prizerebel team wants to help you maximize your time spent taking paid surveys for cash. Surveys are a great tool to earn additional money and gift cards while allowing you the opportunity to earn from the comforts of your own home. This is all at a zero cost to yourself as researchers want your opinions! We wanted to create a beginner's guide as an introduction to help you learn the basics on how to take online surveys for money. Already ready? Start earning over $500 a month by starting your first paid survey here!

Over 7.2 million members are taking surveys for cash on PrizeRebel! Don't wait another minute to put PrizeRebel to work for you. Sign up here and start earning money instantly!

1. Demographic information and background

paid_surveys_for_money demographic

Online surveys are given out by market research companies looking for specific groups of people to take surveys. In particular, they are looking for a target audience and want their specific opinion. Most of the survey criteria involve demographic information. Some examples include ethnicity, age, gender, city/state/country, type of job and household income.  The survey provider uses this to set up their quotas. This data is erased of any personally identifiable data and only used for their research as a whole.

Why is this important for a user? For a user, you want to fill out as much as you can of the profile questions asked of you! The more specific you are, the more likely you are targeted with a survey that is geared to you. Online surveys all you to make money fast with all the profile information that you fill out!

2. Qualifying for online surveys for money

paid_surveys_for_money qualification

 Filling out profile information allows us to find the right surveys for you. In addition to basic demographic profiles, more specific requirement focused surveys pay out more due to fewer people qualifying. Most surveys will have specific criteria that they are looking for. For example, if you have a role in a company with business decision making abilities in a manager, you may find more survey opportunities available. 

Some common profile information that you may be asked to fill out include amount of children in your household, if you own or rent a house and if you have any types of disease. Other examples may include visits to a particular type of store within a 6 month period of time. Market researchers are looking for people who have decision-making ability within their own household and in the workplace! Three of the key industries that we are always looking for are small business owners, business decision makers, and people who work in I.T. To be successful at taking surveys for cash, don't forget any profile information that may be helpful!

3. Common issues & Survey best practices

Not getting credited for a survey gets frustrating very fast. Here is a breakdown of some of the most common reasons that occur that may cause non crediting for the user even after completing the survey. If you can avoid these common mistakes, you'll be ahead of the game in making sure that you are getting credited for surveys.

False Information:

The information you submit for a survey is checked for authenticity. If you are typing in gibberish responses for any open ended responses, you may not be credited for the survey even after fully completing the survey. Some examples of common gibberish responses include "good", "nice", and "etokgsg". You must submit a well thought out response for any questions asked. 

Speeding through the survey: 

paid_surveys_for_money speeder

In general, surveys may take from 5 minutes to 20 minutes on average to complete with the occasional variation. Survey providers do run a quality check on your replies. One of the ways they do this is by checking how fast you are completing the survey. As a survey taker, you want to make sure you are spending enough time to read through the questions and answers before moving on. 

Attention Check question: In addition to the two previous checks, survey providers may ask you a question to make sure you are paying attention. An example question would be "In order to make sure you are paying attention, please choose the second answer shown or select the answer choice, dog." Or you may see a grid of answer choices and one of the answers specifically state "Do not choose this answer". If you are paying attention when taking the survey, then you will not miss this. It is important to pay attention to every single question asked and choose the most appropriate & honest response. 

Sensible answers: Some surveys are designed to gather your opinions on packaging or a specific ad design. If you have answers that lead one way saying you like it but all your follow up responses are about how you hate it, the researcher may reject your response for not paying attention.

4. How do I get paid the most per survey?

We want to make sure that you are making the most of your time taking online surveys for money. We've mentioned some of the criteria in the guide earlier. Length of interview is commonly shown before you take the survey. Generally speaking, the longer the LOI (Length of interview) the higher the payouts will be for the survey. This means that a 25 minute LOI survey will usually pay out higher than a 5 minute LOI survey.

In addition to this, the more specific the qualifications are for the survey, the more likely, you will be paid out money per survey for your responses. A lot of these qualifications may potentially be focused on activities that you have done in the last 12 months or you're looking to complete in the next 12 months.  For example, a paid survey that is looking for someone who has purchased a car in the last 12 months will most likely pay out more than a survey looking for someone who has eaten fast food in the last 12 months because the former activity is more rare.

5. Additional Survey Tips & Disqualifications

Itching to complete more surveys? Usually, there will be more available surveys added on weekdays by our survey partners due to researchers submitting new surveys. 

When a new survey is added, you want to take it as soon as possible. All surveys have quotas which determine how many responses the survey is able to accept before the survey is closed. By starting the survey early, you ensure that all quotas. We recommend that you check for surveys twice a day for the freshest survey inventory. 

Disqualifications can occur if you are not the target audience that the researcher is looking for or if they have met their quota. This may occur later in the survey then intended due to how the survey provider set up the survey. You can also be disqualified if you are randomly choosing answers or are speeding thru the survey. If you do note a survey that disqualifies you at the very end of a survey, please let our support team know to address this with the survey provider.

Technical issues occur on rare occasions if the survey provider did not properly program the survey to redirect properly to PrizeRebel. We know how frustrating it can be for you. Please report this to our support team as soon as it occurs. We will inform the survey provider to look into and fix the issue as soon as possible.


You should be more than ready to tackle some online surveys for money and earn that extra Amazon gift card and Paypal cash that you're looking for. Sign up and get started on earning right away!

If you have any more specific questions, feel free to check out our F.A.Q located here