Product: Only Cash Surveys
Overall Ranking: 20 out of 100 or 1.0/5 stars
Price: Free to join
Owner: Instantly
Website: www.onlycashsurveys.com/
As you can gather from the name, Only Cash Surveys (OCS) is one of the many sites that pay you to complete surveys. They differ from other survey sites in that they allegedly just pay cash for surveys. In this review, I will see if this is true and whether this is a money earning job to consider.
Background
OCS has been around since 2010 and they are part of a bigger marketing research company. The parent company’s goal is to provide the answers for clients to their most important marketing questions by combining research expertise and technology.
According to their website, Only Cash Surveys are owned by UnitedSample, Inc. who changed their name to uSamp in 2010 and in February 2015 rebranded to Instantly, Inc. The only reference to the parent company is in the privacy policy.
Instantly seems to be a reputable company, apparently working with clients like Microsoft, Kellogg’s, 3M or MacDonalds. I am surprised that they are associated with a survey site like Only Cash Surveys which doesn’t have a very good name.
What is Only Cash Surveys?
OCS offers people the chance to earn some extra money by completing online surveys. One of the very few good points about this company is that it’s free to sign up. In fact, they even credit your account with $5.
An important point to remember when you apply to a survey site online is that you should not pay to join or to complete a survey. Market research is carried out by companies to get a better understanding of the trends in a particular market and hence, they should pay for the time it takes you to give your opinions or suggestions.
Who is this for?
This could be for you if you want to use your time, getting paid very little, if at all, for completing surveys. Should you still be interested, this is available in most countries, you must be 18 years old or 14-17 years old with the consent and supervision of a parent or guardian.
How it works
To sign up you need your email address, your physical address, birth date and a few minutes of your time to fill out a short questionnaire, so they know your demographic group.
The demographic information is used to target a certain type of person who might be interested in buying a product or to determine the aspects that might influence a person’s replies or opinions. Some typical general demographic questions are: age, gender, education level, marital status, race/ethnicity and employment status.
To be paid by cash rewards you will also need a PayPal account.
After signing up you are presented with a list of surveys you can take. You are given the approximate time it will take to complete the survey and the amount you will be paid for completing the survey.
The prices they offer to complete the surveys range from a few cents to a few dollars. In my selection of surveys, the prices were from $1.00 to $1.80, which doesn’t seem too bad, until you consider the estimated time to complete the survey. In my case, it was 15 – 25 minutes.
However, the surveys often take a while longer than the estimates, which means you will be working for very little. This is the best-case scenario because with many surveys you will spend time answering questions only to be disqualified before you reach the end of the survey.
To qualify for payment with Only Cash Surveys you need to have a balance of $50 in your account. This is an exceptionally high threshold, most survey sites allow you to cash out when you achieve a balance of $10 or $20.
Apparently there are some issues with the payments at OCS. Although you need a PayPal account to receive cash payouts these still seem to take a long time. For some reason, OCS says they need 3- 4 weeks to execute redemptions.
Another issue, the length of time it takes to verify some surveys, is exceptionally long. They say it can take up to 4 weeks before you see the credit in your account, however, some complaints speak of months.
Although the company name is Only Cash Surveys and you are led to believe you will only be paid in cash, it’s also possible to take your rewards in the form of gift cards or donations to charity.
My experience
For the purpose of this review, I signed up to try Only Cash Surveys. Unfortunately not being in a demographic group that is in demand, I wasn’t offered many surveys.
What was offered I did try, but couldn’t complete any.
- answered questions for 6 minutes but didn’t qualify to complete survey
- spent 25 minutes completing a survey then there was a technical error
- with several surveys I spent about one-minute answering general questions only to receive the dreaded “thanks for trying you do not qualify for this survey”
Result, I have spent more than 30 minutes and still not completed a survey. This is why I don’t like survey sites. How much time would I have to spend to achieve the $50 payout threshold? The mind boggles.
If you are serious about making money from online surveys, you need to sign up with as many sites as possible so you have a decent number of surveys to complete. As you can see from my experience with OCS the number of surveys is very limited.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- they credit your account with $5 when you sign up
- you can be paid by PayPal
Cons
- payout threshold too high at $50
- they take a long time to payout
- they sometimes take a long time to verify the surveys
- not many surveys available – obviously my demographic isn’t sought after
Only Cash Surveys Complaints
Making money with survey sites seems to be quite popular and there are a few sites that collect comments or short reviews of the different survey sites. Here are some of the comments I found about Only Cash Surveys.
Surveys not verified, take a long time to verify or some say even disappear from your account.
Not paying out
They pay well but take a long time to pay out and verify surveys
They pay, but it takes a month or two
Support
If you have any questions about the surveys you have taken or your account, there is only one solution, send an email to the customer service team. OCS says all queries are answered in 3 or 4 working days. Some users say that the customer service answer quite rapidly and some say they don’t answer at all.
Final opinion
I won’t call this site a scam, nevertheless with all the complaints about the time they take to pay and to verify surveys I definitely don’t recommend Only Cash Surveys.
It is very difficult to earn any decent money doing surveys, as you can see in my review I earned $0 for more than 30 minutes of work. Therefore, if you do decide to join a survey site always check it out first and if it looks at all doubtful don’t join. Your time is too valuable to risk not getting paid.
Verdict: Not recommended
A better way to make money online
Finding a legitimate way of earning money online isn’t that easy. First, you must forget all the programs that promise you riches for doing very little. This just isn’t possible. A few survey sites might be legitimate, yet you will have to work many hours for just a few dollars. The paid to click sites, like Clixsense are legit, but again loads of work for little pay. With the reward sites such, as Swagbucks, you will spend many hours, again for a relatively small remuneration.
You may ask what does that leave? My preferred way of earning money online is affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is promoting a product developed by someone else.
However, if you are just starting you will need some effective training, that teaches you step by step how to set up your business. Then with hard work and persistence, you can establish a business that will expand as the time passes.
The program I followed to learn about building a business online is Wealthy Affiliate. If you are interested in building a real business, rather than wasting your time on survey sites like Only Cash Surveys, I urge you to check it out.
Below is a comparison chart that shows what Wealthy Affiliate has to offer. You can sign up and have a look around for FREE.
If you have had personal experience with Only Cash Surveys or other survey sites, I would love to hear what you think. Please leave a comment below.
Hi Peter,
As always, another excellent and honest review from you which I just come to expect. Only Cash Surveys reminds me of so many of these scam review sites. They get people excited to make some extra cash online via surveys, only to lead to a gigantic waste of time. Either you spend all your time applying for the survey and don’t qualify for it, or the surveys pay bub-kiss.
I’m with you, people who are serious about making money online need to start with a solid education, and your recommended product, Wealthy Affiliate is one of the top, if not the best, educational program for people to learn how to start successful online businesses.
Good work Peter, blow these bogus survey companies out of the water.
Todd
Thanks Todd,
You summed up the survey sites for me, by saying they are a huge waste of time. I usually spend time and usually don’t qualify for the survey, which means I am just wasting my time. I am always surprised you read of so many people who consider this as a good way of earning money. Only Cash Surveys doesn’t strike me as one of the best survey companies taking both time to verify surveys and to pay out.
Starting your own online business is certainly a much better opportunity, it’s true this may take longer before you start to earn some money, but it is possible earn a sustainable substantial income. As you say, the first step is getting some good training.
Thanks for your insight,
Peter
Thanks Peter!
I would certainly give it a try
Thanks for a good warning Peter!
I have myself some time ago tried me to participate in surveys. I spent some hours and to be frank I earned almost no money on it, I also experienced much of what you have described here.
First having to be qualified to do the survey and then meeting a error when I was finished and had to have my payment.
You have described Affiliate marketing and it sounds exciting how do I start it? and what does it cost to get started?
Hi Steen,
I agree with you, survey sites are often a waste of time and are certainly not a good choice when it comes to earning money online. They are only useful to earn a little extra cash, if you have a few hours to spare a month.
Affiliate marketing is a much better opportunity. The best way to start is to join an online training program, the one I joined when I started and am still a member now, is Wealthy Affiliate It’s the best training program I have found and it’s free to join, so you can look around and see if it meets your requirements. After that you can either become a premium member or stay as a free member. A premium membership costs $47 per month, but you have all the tools you need to succeed online.
Thanks for your comment Steen and look forward to seeing you on the inside, Peter.
I think it’s good that you inform your readers about paid surveys companies that try to charge people for the opportunity to take surveys. Such companies are not legit and people should know about them. To be honest. the idea of making money online through paid surveys doesn’t look much appealing to me because one survey can take up to 30 minutes and financial reward is around $1, $2 in most cases. You are right that most companies allow to cash out when reach at least $100 threshold but only cash surveys is different from many others and even allows to cash out when you reach $50. So, the opportunity itself is very limited and complaints make things even worse and when compared to a program such as Wealthy Affiliate there is no chance at all for Only Cash Surveys.
Hi Rufat,
I agree with you, paid survey companies are really not legit and people should stay far away from these sites. Only Cash Surveys doesn’t actually charge people to take the surveys, but there are many complaints that they don’t payout or if they do it takes a long time. People really will never make much money with survey sites, although they might spend a lot of time. Building a real business and following an online training program to learn the steps to take, is a much better proposition.