Money Mondays: The Extended Edition

I've been working a lot more hours at my 'real life jobs', which makes for a lack of updates, but as it's Monday and I have the day off, I figured it was time for another edition of Money Mondays. And there's lots of stuff since last time. Let's start with the online survey world:

Opinion Outpost - this website is constantly getting good reviews, but I have to admit I almost unsubscribed from this one. It took about two months for me to qualify for any surveys, but within the last few weeks, I’ve had much better luck and actually racked up $11.50 this month! Their minimum payout is $5, so like with Lightspeed a few weeks ago, this is well over usual expectations. The site only pays by check or by Amazon Gift Code, but I received my check in about two weeks.

SurveySpot - this is a tricky one. For years, this site received spectacular reviews, but opinions have drastically fallen since changing to a point system in late 2009. I joined since the change over, and did notice it taking forever for points to be credited, and an absurd amount of surveys only rewarding sweepstakes entries. My suggestion, if you have the time, is to spend your first month and try them all to build up a good history with the company, then just spend time on the ones that actually credit points after that. I managed to cash out instantly via PayPal for $12.00 this week, so it might be worth it to some people to slog through all those bogus invites for the paying ones.

Synovate - this is another unobtrusive site that emails relevant surveys on occasion to it’s members, and I was able to cash out for $5.00 a few weeks ago. Still waiting on the check for this one, though.

Lightspeed - cashed out again for another $5. This time, however, it’s took a bit longer for the PayPal payment to show up. It looks like they just switched to a new ordering system, so they may be working the kinks out.

Viewpoints - If you follow me on Twitter, you might have seen my urge to join this review site a few weeks ago. While in general this site doesn’t reward writers directly all the time, if you subscribe via MyPoints you can earn up to 500 points in your account. In addition to that, Viewpoints was also directly offering a limited time promotion to contribute 10 new reviews and earn a $10 Amazon Gift Card. I completed the program, so again, I’ll confirm if I actually get the card. In any case, if you like to write, it’s an easy job.

Speaking of MyPoints, my first gift card arrived this week too, and I’m about two weeks away from cashing out my next.

And finally, I managed to write another winning review and score an extra $10 in the process last month.

So if you’ve been keeping track, since starting to do online surveys in my free time from the end of November 2009, I have cashed out $75.50. This does not include the other 10-15 panels I’ve subscribed to where I haven’t met the minimum payout threshold, yet, either. So far, I have to say my experience overall with just making a little extra spending money on the side in my spare time has been very positive - I’d definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a little extra cash.

In the meantime, the free stuff continues to flow in. I’ve received two free samples of Prilosec, three packets of Emergen-C (which is great timing, too, as I seem to be developing some sort of cold this week), some dried plumbs, some artificial sweeteners (gonna try that in my coffee at work this week) and some shampoo & conditioner. One thing I should note at this point, however, that while a lot of the advertisements for these products will show small or travel-sized packaging, in real life I would say about half of the things I’ve received have actually been much smaller - usually just a small package with ‘one serving’, as it were. For instance, the Gold Bond lotion was really just a small plastic/foil packet. Several of the colognes I received were just one-use pads attached to postcards. So don’t be surprised if you don’t get the exact product pictured - but hey...it’s still free.