Looking for the best User Interviews alternatives? Below you’ll find a selection of websites like User Interviews where you can make money participating in paid research studies.
Everything has a monetary value these days, and if I tell you you can earn by simply speaking your mind, you will probably think I’m bluffing.
Well, I’m not, and User Interviews is proof of that. The market research site promises to pay you to participate in online research activities sponsored by marketers, engineers, and business people seeking a view of their brand, product, or service from a third party’s eyes.
For every task you complete, User Interviews pays you through PayPal, direct bank transfer, or a gift card.
Making $10-$50 per study, which doesn’t have a right or wrong answer, isn’t bad really, is it? But there are things about the site that cast a shadow on its positives.
For one, it has limited opportunities and immense competition for tasks.
Secondly, there is no guarantee you will earn from all opportunities in the work pool.
Lastly, clients are mostly Americans and will prioritize American feedback, meaning your chances of earning are even lower if you reside outside the US.
Thankfully, there are many other sites like User Interviews that don’t necessarily bear these shortcomings. Here are 15 that you can switch to.
The best User Interviews alternatives
1. Respondent
Respondent serves dozens of repeat clients including Dropbox, Intuit, SendGrid, GoDaddy, Microsoft, and IBM. It pays just as handsomely as User Interviews and has a referral program that you can complement your earnings with.
Geographical inclusivity gives Respondent an edge over User Interviews, in my opinion. Well, it’s still the American firms that make up the bulk of the clientele, but there are never lengthy dry spells exclusive to international contributors.
The pay rates are pretty good too. Not many platforms like User Interviews pay $100-$700 per hour. And even if they did, it would be difficult to find one that matched Respondent’s consistency in providing high-paying opportunities.
On the flip side, you are not always guaranteed payment following an interview. Given the nature of the service, Respondent gives researchers the right to end an interview early (and not pay for it) if they deem your answers contradictory, wrong, or misleading.
2. Survey Junkie
To many, the name Survey Junkie is synonymous with short low-paying online surveys that many websites like User Interviews offer as an after-thought. Sure, surveys are the main focus of Survey Junkie, but there are also focus groups, which pay better.
In-person focus groups can fetch you a good $150, while product testing and phone surveys can pay $50-$100.
You won’t get so many of these well-paying opportunities on the dashboard or in your email inbox. However, they are worth grabbing hold of the few times they pop up.
I’d recommend you join Survey Junkie only if you intend to perform micro tasks. Focus groups are rare and will almost always target participants from certain areas or that fit certain personas.
3. Ipsos i-Say
While Ipsos i-Say seems to focus on short surveys that pay no more than $1.50 a survey, occasionally you will bump into longer surveys and focus groups, paying $50-$100 per hour.
As an Ipsos contributor, you will not need to visit third-party websites to complete surveys. All work is done on the i-Say platform, which explains why Ipsos is considered one of the friendliest focus group sites for beginners.
Another notable upside is the multiple payment options it offers. You can redeem your i-Say points for PayPal cash or Walmart, Starbucks, and Amazon gift cards.
When joining i-Say, make sure to fill out every bit of the profile form and use the right keywords so Ipsos can accurately match you with the right opportunities.
4. Recruit and Field
Recruit and Field is yet another platform that provides a mix of surveys and focus groups. While not exactly a world-beater at work availability, it has one of the simplest assignment systems among sites like User Interviews.
To find work, you don’t need to log in and keep refreshing some dashboard or engage in bidding wars. The dirty work is done for you and all you’re left to do is wait for opportunities in your email.
That is not to say you can’t control the amount of work you receive. You can get more work than the next person by setting up a more “visible” profile. The more accurately you describe yourself, the more likely you are to get invited for interviews you can actually complete.
Recruit and Field pays up to $100 per task, which is luscious but misleading. You won’t run into $100 opportunities every day. Most surveys and interviews will pay a fraction of that.
5. American Consumer Opinion (ACO)
American Consumer Opinion was founded in 1986. Up until the mid ‘90s, the membership-based survey panel conducted its surveys through the US mail.
That changed in 1996 when it went online and became an international employer of hundreds of thousands. As at the time of writing this article, the organization had well over 7 million users, the bulk of them freelancers.
If you decide to join the ACO crowd, you will need to register an account and then take what’s known as a New Member Survey. After that, you can start participating in focus groups.
ACO will send every survey they think matches your profile direct to your email. For each survey you complete, you will earn points, which you can then redeem for PayPal cash or a gift card.
More websites like User Interviews
6. Fieldwork
Fieldwork is a market research company with physical focus group facilities in over 10 US cities. These include Seattle, San Francisco, and LA-Orange County in the West Coast, Denver, Phoenix, and Dallas in the South, Minneapolis and Chicago in the Midwest, and Atlanta, Boston, NJ-Fort Lee, and NYC in the East.
To register for in-person focus groups, you have to be a local of one of these cities and specify it in the sign-up form. Some cities will have more opportunities than others, although the pay per focus group will be roughly the same ($35-$75).
Online research studies include taste tests, in-home interviews, phone interviews, and product trials. These understandably pay less but they also don’t require you to show up for a round table somewhere.
Still, you can only be a Fieldwork member if you live in one of the above-mentioned cities.
7. Mindswarms
On paper, Mindswarms seems like a normal everyday survey site. But there is something unique about it; instead of textually answering questionnaires, you give your answers through a video.
Everything else about Mindswarms seems typical of most sites like User Interviews. Focus group invitations are made based on your location and other profile information like gender, marital status, race, health, etc. You can also earn through a referral program.
As regards earning potential, invitations are few and far between. But when they come, you can earn up to $50 per survey.
All payments are made via PayPal approximately 24 hours after you submit your answers.
8. Survey Feeds
Survey Feeds gets slated for having an ordinary-looking website. And how does it make up for that? By offering competitive pay rates.
Unlike User Interviews, which hardly crosses the $50 mark per survey, Survey Feeds pays upwards of $175 regularly and sometimes up to 500 for 60-minute in-person surveys.
Participants have even been paid $2,000 for full-scale two- or three-day market research workshops.
What’s the catch? Surveys are hard to come by, and there is a lot of competition for the few that pop up.
Additionally, besides surveys, there are no other ways to make money on Survey Feeds.
On the brighter side, the site sends your earnings directly to your bank account as opposed to using the slow and sometimes costly online payment services.
9. iOpinion
Plaza Research has a platform called iOpinion, which assembles participants for focus groups across US cities.
You can hop on numerous market research opportunities, spanning industries like beverages, computer products, snacks, and pet food, and get paid for your opinion.
Note, however, that Plaza Research doesn’t facilitate meet-ups or offer escrow services. All they do is find focus group opportunities and display them all to you in a single interface. Everything afterward is decided by you and the market research company you work for.
Make a point of inquiring about things like payment options before committing to an iOpinion focus group.
10. Focus Group
Focus Group by Schlesinger is a research study platform that also pays redeemable reward points for online surveys, web chats, personal discussions, video diaries, telephone conversations, and product tests.
The pay range is thus pretty wide, with some tasks taking only minutes and others days to finish.
What sold me on Focus Group is the participant inclusivity it flaunts. Anyone, from moms and dads to mothers with newborns through to pet lovers, gamers, and workout enthusiasts has a category and will almost likely receive invitations if they hang on long enough.
Also, although Focus Group has offices in only 16 US cities, it has loads of work for its international participants.
Other sites similar to User Interviews
11. Survey Squad
Survey Squad is owned by Focus Forward and is one of the many platforms like User Interviews that pay well for interviews and surveys but provide very few opportunities.
Still, it’s worthwhile joining the site as it won’t cost you anything or inflict on you the hassle of searching for work.
Most surveys on Survey Squad are a few minutes long and will pay you about $1-$5. You can withdraw your earnings anytime, but you might want to let them accumulate substantially since all payments are made by check.
I feel this is the biggest undoing of Survey Squad, which otherwise has what it takes to go head-on with the very best on the market.
12. Find Focus Groups
Since its inception in 2006, Find Focus Groups has listed more than 70,000 focus groups across the US and helped millions of freelancers earn money by giving their opinion.
The site is a tad different from User Interviews in that it doesn’t actually offer services other than listing focus groups. In essence, you can view listed focus groups without first registering an account. You will only need to provide your email and personal details if you want to receive email alerts.
Find Focus Groups targets US participants, particularly residents of large cities like NYC, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Atlanta. Your best bet to earn as a non-US resident is through paid surveys.
13. Inspired Opinions
Inspired Opinions is another market research panel by Schlesinger. It works in a near-identical fashion as its sister platform, Focus Groups, only it mostly targets British companies and participants.
As a contributor on Inspired Opinions, you can earn in three main ways:
- Paid surveys
- Research activities
- Referral program
All surveys and researches are invite-only, and albeit you won’t be receiving many invites, you will make decent money anytime you are chosen.
Payments are made via Visa gift cards. There is no threshold to withdraw your earnings, and there are no specific dates to request payouts. Sadly, the Visa gift cards are sent through postal mail and can take up to 8 weeks to reach you.
14. Apex Focus Group
Apex Focus Group (AFG) has some discouraging user reviews on the internet, but I did a credibility check, and it’s indeed a legit site.
Unsurprisingly, all the grumbles are about spam email and the annoying registration process, which requires applicants to share too much personal information.
I didn’t have a problem with these shortcomings since they are common with most survey and focus group sites, but the fact that AFG is a marketplace for random focus groups on the internet didn’t sit well with me.
The site doesn’t provide escrow services or any protection whatsoever against scams. It only lists focus groups and leaves you to negotiate terms and rates on your own.
15. PingPong
PingPong may be one of the newer sites in the survey game, but with clients like Dropbox, McKinsey, Nestle, and Skyscanner, you’d see why it’s seen as an authority platform.
PingPong connects more than 175,000 testers with companies, marketing agencies, and individual researchers looking for user opinions about their products.
All research interviews are video-based, so you need a good camera and the guts to face it. You also need to be quick to seize opportunities as there is huge competition for the few surveys that show up.
PingPong interviews last for either 30 minutes or 60 minutes. The former pay €15 and the latter €30. If you are lucky to be invited for the special interviews that target individuals from specific backgrounds, you can earn up to €200.
Payments are made through PayPal and will be sent within 1-2 weeks of you completing an interview.
Final Thoughts
Many of these sites provide similar opportunities, but none offers the same user experience as the other. Let me know which one you are familiar with and how you like it.
