Vindale Research Review: Is it a Scam or Legit

If you read articles about how to make money online, you may know there are a few different ways to make money by filling out online surveys. There are many survey sites online. Some are scams and some are legit. Today we’ll talk about one popular survey company: Vindale Research.

In our Vindale Research review, I’ll share how sign-up works, the details about how (or if) you can make money with them, and what others are saying. This review will help you better determine whether or not Vindale Research is a good fit for you.

Let’s start with a company history and overview.

4

Overall Rating

Summary

Vindale Research is a valid, trusted survey company that will pay you to do surveys. In my research and personal experience, I found it to be a legitimate source of income.

• Ease of use

  4.5

• Pay out increments

  3

• Multiple ways to earn

  4.5

Pros

• Higher paying surveys
• Not scammy

Cons

• Cash-out in $50 increments
• Low pay per survey

In This Article

Company History and Overview

Vindale Research has been around for over a decade. The company was opened and incorporated in New York in October of 2005.

Reimagine Holdings Group purchased Vindale Research in 2018, and a company named Dynata purchased Reimagine Holdings Group in 2019.

Vindale’s paid survey community covers the United States, the U.K. Canada and Australia.

The Vindale Research website itself doesn’t have much information about the company, other than to say that Vindale works to help companies improve their products.

Topics include:

• Cars and trucks
• Politics and current events
• Sports
• Home improvement
• Popular restaurants
• New technology
• Health and beauty
• Shopping and fashion
• Travel and leisure

The site also says Vindale Research has a full service support team you can contact via phone or email. In addition, the company has a zero-tolerance spam policy.

The site says Vindale will never share your personal information with anyone without your permission. Also, it’ll only use your email address to contact you regarding Vindale Research services and promotions.

Sign-up Process

Signing up with Vindale Research is super easy. You just have to enter your email address to get started.

It is easy to join on either your desktop computer or your mobile device.

They’ll ask you some other information too, such as:

• Your address
• Date of birth
• Gender and ethnicity questions

You then create a password. You might be wondering why Vindale needs your address, birthday, gender and ethnicity information.

It needs your address to make sure you’re a legit person. And it needs your birth date, gender and ethnicity information to help match you to surveys.

You see, Vindale’s clients use the information provided by Vindale Research to help improve their products and services. Those companies usually want opinions from people of a certain age or ethnicity who are a part of their target market.

Giving Vindale this information allows it to better match you to surveys you’ll qualify for.

Note: Depending on your initial demographics answers, you may qualify for Vindale’s bonus opportunity surveys. If you do, Vindale will ask you a few additional short questions.

In addition, answering these questions could qualify you to work with Vindale’s trusted partners; i.e., other survey companies.

Bonus: You’ll earn $1 just for signing up (and completing your qualification information) with Vindale Research.

After You Complete Your Sign-Up

After you complete your initial sign-up, you’ll get directed to a new member questionnaire. This questionnaire consists of simple yes or no questions. The answers are sent to Vindale’s partners to find more surveys for you.

If you don’t want Vindale to send your information to survey partners, just check “no” for all of the boxes. After I checked “no” for all of the boxes, I was redirected to another page of similar questions. I simply checked “no” again to the offers I wasn’t interested in.

After that, I was directed to check my email inbox for a verification email. I hit the “confirm and start earning” button.

Right away, a separate internet tab popped up with more questions to see what surveys I might qualify for.

Survey Qualification Questions

Note that these questions are pretty extensive. They ask about things like:

• Income
• Occupation
• How many children live in your house
• Ethnicity
• Political leanings

Again, I know these types of questions may sound invasive. However, survey companies need to know this kind of information in order to match you with qualifying surveys. The right market research can earn you some extra cash.

This $1 qualification survey took me 22 minutes to complete. That averages out to a pretty dismal hourly wage. But it was a nice little sign-up bonus to get started.

Now it’s time to see if you can start making some real money.

How to Make Money

The Vindale Research website says it’s paid out nearly $8 million to members so far. That’s some serious cash. But how are people earning that cash? In several ways.

The primary way Vindale Research says people earn money is by taking surveys. One thing I noticed is that the number of surveys available is pretty high, at least for my demographic. After I signed up, I got several survey opportunities each day via email.

This was nice because it meant I had several chances per day to earn money. There is a wide variety of subject matters in the surveys. This was nice for combating boredom.

Note that most of the surveys don’t pay much. You’ll earn between 25 cents and $1 or $2 for most surveys. There are other surveys that pay more, but not many in my experience.

Luckily, there are other ways you can earn with Vindale. Here are some of your options for earning more cash with Vindale Research.

Earn Money by Referring Friends

Vindale Research will pay you money with their referral program for referring your friends and family. In fact, it’ll pay you $5 for every friend you get to sign up. That could be a nice way to earn some passive income.

However, there are some stipulations that come with the $5 payout bonus for referring a friend. First of all, the person you refer has to sign up with Vindale using your specific referral link. If they don’t, you won’t get credit.

Second, the person you refer has to complete at least one $1 survey in order for you to get your referral pay. And that doesn’t include the $1 tutorial/qualification survey I talked about earlier.

If the person you refer doesn’t complete at least one $1 survey, you won’t get paid. Because so many of Vindale Research’s surveys pay under $1, this could take some time.

Also, you cannot refer people who live in your house or use your computer. On the upside, there’s no limit to the number of people you can get paid for referring.

This leaves the door wide open for some serious referral earnings from Vindale. But you’ll likely need to do some networking and marketing to get those referrals.

Earn Money by Opening Rewards Emails

You can also earn by opting in to Vindale Research’s rewards email program. By doing so, you’ll receive emails that Vindale will pay you just to open.

Don’t expect to receive a lot of paid emails, but it is one more way to increase your earnings.

Earn by Watching Paid Videos and Giving Feedback

Some Vindale Research members are eligible for paid video surveys. You watch videos, give feedback, and Vindale pays you for doing so.

Not everyone is eligible to do the paid video surveys. The website says that if you are eligible, you’ll have a “videos” tab on your survey page.

I didn’t have the “videos” tab on my page. Therefore, I can’t give any more information about the specifics of the paid videos.

Reward Codes

Vindale will pay you for finding their reward codes too. They publish reward codes on their social media accounts such as Facebook and Twitter. In addition, they publish reward codes on their website blog. The reward codes can be a string of letters, numbers or both.

Sometimes Vindale has questions posted on its social media sites. If you answer a question, you might get a reward code.

Once you’ve found a rewards code, go to the Vindale Research website. Click on the Reward Codes tab at the top of the page. Then, just enter the code.

Once you redeem the code, you’ll get money credited to your account. Note that reward codes do expire, and you have to redeem them before they expire in order to get your money.

As you can see, there are lots of ways you can earn money with Vindale Research. This is one benefit of taking surveys through the company.

Next, we’ll go over some other benefits and downsides that I found while using Vindale Research to earn money.

Pros and Cons of Vindale Research

Here is a brief summary of the pros and cons I found when using Vindale Research.

Vindale Research Pros

There are several positive things about working with Vindale Research. Here are some of them.

• There are a lot of survey companies out there that are scammy in nature. This is not the case with Vindale Research. It’s a legit company that really does work with name brand clients, and it really pays people for completing surveys.
• Vindale Research pays you in cash via PayPal, or it’ll mail you a check. Some survey companies pay you in points instead of money. You have to use the points to get gift cards to various retailers. Vindale pays you in dollars.
• Vindale seems to work hard at avoiding spam. In my time with them I never once got a spam email or unsolicited email.
• Vindale also has opportunities for higher paying surveys. For instance, if a survey requires some in-depth knowledge it’ll pay more — up to $75, according to the Vindale website.
• There are multiple ways to earn money with Vindale Research. Besides surveys, you can earn money by referring friends, opening paid emails, etc.
• Most of the surveys are short, and that means you can take them in your spare time. You don’t need to set aside hours a day to earn this way.

Vindale Research Cons

There are also some cons to working with Vindale Research, as there are with all companies.

• The biggest one I found is that most surveys don’t pay very much. Most of the surveys I completed paid between 25 cents and a dollar or two. Not big money.
• The average hourly wage earnings for most survey takers will be in the $2 to $4 range. It’s not a good tradeoff for your time if you’re considering side gigs that will earn you some real income.
• Vindale only allows you to cash out in $50 increments. So, if you earn $60 it’ll only send you $50 and the rest of the balance will have to wait. However, if you earn $101 it’ll send you $100.
• In my experience, I had several surveys where I’d put a decent amount of time in only to find out I didn’t qualify. This was frustrating for me.
• Some of the surveys can be a bit boring and repetitive. If you’ve got a short attention span, beware.

The biggest cons for me were the low pay per survey and the long process to even see if you qualify for some surveys. My attention span isn’t good for those types of deals. I prefer to know what I need to do to earn the cash and get it done quickly.

However, if you’re a bit more patient than I am and don’t mind the low pay for earning whenever you’ve got a few minutes, you might like the earning flexibility Vindale offers.

Complete Surveys in Your Spare Time

The way to approach survey taking is to consider it a way to earn a few extra bucks here and there when you have a few spare minutes. Complete surveys when you’re watching TV, waiting for an appointment or have nothing else to do in between your day’s activities. If you look at it that way, it could be worth your time.

I don’t think the cons I found with Vindale Research were any worse than with other survey companies such as Swagbucks or Survey Junkie. However, the pros of Vindale Research outweighed the pros of a lot of other survey companies.

Overall, Vindale ranks up there among the top survey companies I’ve tried. There are others that don’t have as great of a reputation or as high of pay.

Is Vindale Research Legit?

I thought I would check a few other trusted sources to see if I could find any reviews or write-ups regarding Vindale Research. I found two: one at the Better Business Bureau and one through Trustpilot.

Better Business Bureau Rating

Vindale had information listed on the Better Business Bureau under its parent company name, Dynata Research. Dynata Research is not accredited with the Better Business Bureau. However, it’s been listed on the BBB since 2019.

The company has an “A+” rating with the BBB and has over 800 complaints closed in the last three years. Most of the complaints revolved around not getting paid or having accounts closed by the company.

There were 83 customer reviews on Dynata’s BBB page at the time of this writing.

Trustpilot Review

Trustpilot is a 12-year-old company that manages a consumer review website. Its “TrustScore” rating for Vindale Research is 3.9 out of 5 stars. Trustpilot showed that 5% of the reviews left by consumers were marked as “excellent” and 18% of the reviews were marked as “great.”

Most of the negative reviews I read revolved around not qualifying for surveys. Others commented on the low per-survey pay.

All in all, however, the Trustpilot and BBB scores were pretty high. This says something positive about the company. Objective reviews are a great way to research companies such as Vindale.

You can look for reviews on other blogs, too. However, know that some blogs get paid to write positive things about companies. Although Well Kept Wallet does receive affiliate revenue when readers click on the links we provide to Vindale Research, all of our reviews are objective looks at products and services.

Summary

Our Vindale Research review has established that this company is a valid, trusted survey company that will pay you to do surveys, even if its parent company isn’t fondly reviewed on the BBB.

In my research and personal experience, I found it to be a legitimate source of income and not a scam. And it’s nice that you can complete the surveys at your convenience.

Most surveys aren’t long, so you can earn money in short spurts when you have a few minutes available here and there. Obviously, this does not replace your full-time job but is a great way to make some extra money in your spare time as a side hustle.

Have you ever tried Vindale Research? Have you tried other survey companies? Let us know on our Facebook page.  

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