Is Opinion Outpost a Scam or a Legitimate Company?

There are so many companies on the internet these days that let you take surveys in exchange for cash or rewards, but they’re not all created equal. Did you know some of them are total scams?

However, Opinion Outpost is one of the most widely used survey sites that has been around for quite a few years now and only continues to grow in popularity. But is Opinion Outpost a scam, or is it a legit survey company that’ll really pay you cash?

Short answer – yes they’re legit and they do pay you for taking surveys

BUT….

Even though Opinion Outpost is a legitimate survey company, the reality is you will not be getting paid anything substantial and will end up wasting a heck of a lot of time trying to take their surveys. They make it seem like it’s very easy to get paid $100’s of extra dollars taking a few surveys every month, but the reality is very different.

Let me go a bit more in depth with how it works and what kind of payment you can expect to get a better idea of how you’ll be wasting your time with this company (or any survey company for that matter).

How Opinion Outpost works

You first need to fill out a pretty extensive profile and answer tons of personal questions in order to qualify for an account. My first attempt I was rejected from even signing up (they told me my application was denied but there was no further explanation) but I tried again using a different address and it worked… (very odd).

I actually found they asked extremely personal questions, and even wanted to know the name of my company and the phone number to “confirm I was being honest”.  I’m not sure why they would need quite that exensive amount of information. (And no, no one actually called if you were wondering).

Once you complete your profile set up, they’ll send you surveys you can start taking to earn points. Surveys vary in points depending on length, but you can expect to earn a few cents to a couple of bucks per survey. They have occassional survey opportunities that pay more, but it isn’t an ordinary occurance.

It also seems to be quite hard to qualify to actually take the surveys they send you, at least in my experience. The major problem here is you don’t know you won’t qualify until you’ve taken the pre screening survey.. which basically is an entire survey in itself. You can spend anywhere from 5-15 minutes answering questions only to find out you don’t qualify and don’t get compensated for your time.

Add that up several times per day and you’re essentially working for nothing.

For example, upon joining they immediately told me I qualified for a survey which ended up being about dishsoap. They asked me several questions pertaining to what type of decisions I made purchasing dishsoap, what brands have I bought in the last few months and what brand(s) I used the most. I probably spent about 5 minutes of my time going through the questions, only to be told I didn’t qualify to actually take the real survey.

Then, they sent me a few more surveys about additional product purchases and preferences. After going through the prescreenings it turns out I didn’t qualify… again.

Geeze… it can’t just be me, either (and it’s not judging from several user reviews which I discuss below). The companies are looking for a very particular group to take each survey and if you don’t meet the criteria then it’s tough luck. I’ve had the same issue with other survey companies before, there’s always going to be a certain portion of surveys you won’t qualify for and unfortunately that means spending your time answering screening questions just to find out.

Survey points and monetary compensation

The way it works is you earn points for every survey you complete, with 10 points = $1.

You have different options for cashing out your points, but the most popular options are either a direct Paypal deposit or an Amazon gift card. The minimum cashout for Paypal is 100 points ($10) and Amazon gift cards are only 50 points (5). They seemingly pay very quickly too.

But like I said before, it will take you awhile to accumulate 100 points – probably several hours. The survey points range from around 5 – 100 points per survey, but most of them are around 15 – 30 points ($1.50 – $3). They take anywhere from 5 – 60 minutes to complete.

The more honest and in depth you are in your surveys, the longer they will take you (and the less money you make). But they can kick you out if they feel as if you’re just randomly checking boxes, so you don’t want to speed through them too quick!

But no matter how you approach it, it’s not a way to get rich online.

Something to take into consideration if you’re seeing tons of positive reviews… the company has gown downhill in the past few months

Now personally I haven’t used Opinion Outpost prior to January 2015, but after reading hundreds of user reviews there seems to be a pretty high general consensus that the company has gone downhill within the past few months.

This user pretty much summed up what 100’s of others were saying. It was a smooth site prior to 2014, but now there are tons of issues with not only customer service, but it’s become increasingly harder to qualify for the surveys and they let you take pretty much an entire survey before they kick you out for “not qualifying” and not give you any points to compensate.

I only used it for the purposes of trying it out, but as I stated previously within this review I did spend awhile “prequalifying” for surveys only to be told I wasn’t a match. That is pretty obnoxious and a waste of time considering you get no points whatsoever for it.

And frozen account issues…

While I haven’t experienced the frozen account issue personally, it seems to be a pretty common complaint.

So many of the extremely positive reviews were prior to last year, before the company apparently made it much more difficult to qualify for surveys, started giving less compensation per survey, as well as kicked people out and froze accounts.

The reality is you’re getting paid way less than minimum wage – is it really worth your time?

So even when I take the positive reviews into consideration, there’s something I find totally mind boggling about it. These people say they’ve spent weeks or months taking surveys and brag about how much they’re making… which most of the time equates to $20 – $30 per month.

So… this person spent 16 hours over the course of 4 days and made out with $30. That’s a very little amount of money to get for such a large investment of time. If you do the math, it works out to less than $2 per hour!

Okay to be fair, I get it.

These surveys can be taken from the comfort of your own home without having to deal with all the stress, crap and drama that goes along with carrying out a low paying job for some extra cash (trust me, been there, done that). You can do it in your PJs, laying in bed on your laptop… that is the ultimate dream and I think most people would prefer that to flipping burgers or cashiering.

But at the same time, the money you make from the time investing just isn’t worth it. I learned there were much better (and more profitable) alternatives for making extra cash online that were way more fun.

A better solution for making extra cash online

While Opinion Outpost may not be a scam, it isn’t the best option for people looking to make any type of real, sustainable online income.

Think about this – would you rather invest your time working on something that’ll pay you once (like filling out a survey for at most, a few dollars), or spend time working on something that’ll pay your over and over again, day in and day out, even though you only spent that one day doing the work?

I know, it sounds too good to be true. But honestly it’s what I have been doing for the past couple of years now (building affiliate niche websites online) and I cannot explain how amazing the feeling is of waking up and seeing you’ve made money while you were sleeping…literally.

It’s so much more practical and profitable then any online survey site, and if you are bored to death of taking surveys then I recommend you give it a shot.

Have any of you tried Opinion Outpost or similar survey sites? What have been your experiences? Please share them down below, I’d like to get a decent collection of reviews/stories down below. 🙂