How to Make $500/Month With Online Surveys – a Step-by-Step Guide

Believe it or not, it is possible to make $500/month with online surveys.

Back when I first starting looking for legitimate ways to make money online, online surveys was one of the first places I started.

I’m going to be honest with you – I signed up for a gajillion online survey companies and the VAST majority of them were complete crap.

I’m talking surveys that took an hour to complete and paid 5 cents, places that sold my email address to scammy companies, non-monetary payment (instead paying with things like magazine subscriptions,) and the one that annoys me the most – promising to pay $10 “dollars” per survey, but the “dollars” actually turned out to be the survey companies own currency, which actually worked out to about 25 cents.

But after spending months wading through the annoying, pointless survey companies, I did manage to find a handful that I genuinely made (and continue to make) money on.

I don’t do online surveys as much as I used to, but I still like to take some surveys every now and then to make extra cash for things like Christmas presents and restaurant meals.

(You’re not going to see 50+ survey companies listed here. I’m not going to recommend a survey company that I know is junk just so I can make money from you signing up.)

With that being said, if you want to make $500/month from online surveys, you really only need to sign up with the survey companies I’ve listed below, and follow my step-by-step instructions.

How to Make $500/Month With Online Surveys – a Step-by-Step Guide

First, a few honest truths about making money with online surveys:

• Like anything in life, you get out of it what you put into it
• You’re not going to make $500/month (or even close) by doing a survey here and a survey there
• You need to set a survey-taking schedule, and stick to it

With that being said, let’s get started! **You may also want to check out these 10+ legit surveys for CASH!

1. Join Swagbucks Gold Surveys

Use my special Swagbucks bonus link to get a $5 bonus when you sign up. Update – Swagbucks is currently paying a $10 signup bonus!

It’s 100% free to sign up (never join a survey company that makes you pay) so go ahead and join Swagbucks Gold Surveys to get started.

Ok, once you’re logged in, the first thing you’ll want to do is active your daily goal meter, which you’ll find in the top menu bar. This will help you ensure you reach your daily goals and get your bonuses.

Now have a look at your “To-Do List” on the left hand side.

This is a good way to earn bonus Swagbucks, so I recommend working through your to-do list first.

Once you’ve worked through your to-do list, click on “Answer” on the left hand side panel.

Now you’ll want to sort the surveys in order of what pays the most. You can do that by clicking on the little arrow next to “SB amount.”

As you’ll see, the more the survey pays, the longer it usually takes.

I recommend setting aside a period of time every day to focus solely on online surveys. To reach $500/month, you’re realistically looking at a couple of hours a day.

The great thing about this though, is that you can complete online surveys while you’re relaxing on the couch watching TV, so it really is a pretty easy way to make extra money.

The next thing I recommend you do is do some online searches using the Swagbucks search engine. You’ll find this in the top left hand corner of the screen.

When you enter a search term and hit enter, you’ll randomly be awarded Swagbucks. The amount varies, but I just entered a search query right now and got 20 Swagbucks.

I recommend doing at least 5-10 of these searches per day.

2. Join Vindale Research

One of the best features of Vindale Research is their daily studies. Each daily study pays around $0.75 – $1.25, and you can take them a maximum of 10 times per day. Doing the daily studies alone could make you a pretty easy $25/day. As you can see from the screenshot below, I got a $120 payment from Vindale Research. (You can request payment monthly.)

Click here to join Vindale Research.

3. Join SurveyJunkie

The next survey site for you to join is SurveyJunkie.

Just for signing up here, you’ll get 25 points. Then fill out your profile details for an additional 50 points.

Once you’ve done that, go through and find the highest paying surveys and complete them first.

SurveyJunkie is different to Swagbucks in that the only thing they do is online surveys – there are no additional ways to earn.

But the awesome thing about Survey Junkie is that they often have really high paying surveys, so they’re definitely worth joining.

Read: Is Survey Junkie Legit?

4. Inbox Dollars

The next survey site for you to join (again, 100% free like all of the others) is Inbox Dollars.

Inbox Dollars was actually the first legitimate survey site that I found, and it remains a favorite.

Join InboxDollars here using my link and get a bonus $5 deposited into your account.

When you log into the Inbox Dollars dashboard, you’ll notice that there is lots more to see than SurveyJunkie.

Inbox Dollars is similar to Swagbucks in that there are a lot of different ways to earn.

I recommend you start with the surveys tab, because the high-paying surveys are often filled quite quickly, so the sooner you get in, the better.

Once you’ve done that, click on the search option in the upper menu bar and do some online searches.

And that’s it.

That’s how you can make $500/month taking online surveys.

The most important thing to remember is that you need to devote a good amount of time every day to this. You’re not going to make $500/month by devoting a couple hours a week.

However, if that’s all you can spare, I still recommend doing some online surveys.

While you won’t make $500/month you can still make a least $100-$200, for doing some of the easiest work imaginable.

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