Branded Surveys Review: How Much Did We Earn In A Week?

We were skeptical to review Branded Surveys. After all, most online survey sites are marred by poor earnings, frequent disqualifications, lackluster interfaces, and slow payouts.

In short, survey sites are usually a waste of time.

Branded Surveys doesn’t fall victim to many of these pitfalls. It has a few shortcomings, but they’re not fatal flaws, and some users can definitely benefit from adding it to their side hustle toolbox.

We spent a week taking surveys on Branded Surveys and would like to share our earnings report, along with information on how to use the site, its pros and cons, and some helpful tips to help maximize your payouts.

Advertiser Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, and we may receive a small compensation from our partnered brands. However, these relationships have no impact on how we approach our work and come at no expense to you.

What is Branded Surveys?

Branded Surveys is a BBB-accredited business and holds a solid “B” rating. It’s technically been around since 2012 but was rebranded from MintVine to its current name in 2017.

Along with the rebrand came substantial improvements to the user experience, and today Branded Surveys is among the better-known and respected online market research platforms.

Branded is partnered with a host of research firms like Neilsen, Harris Interactive, J.D. Power, and other Fortune 500 companies, that work with Branded to get real-world market insights and opinions.

In layman’s terms, it’s an online survey site that functions similarly to sites like Survey Junkie, Qmee, and Google Opinion Rewards. Community members sign-up, provide their demographic information, and are matched to surveys that the Branded algorithm feels are a good fit.

Completing surveys, and performing other small tasks will reward you with points, which can be redeemed for PayPal, direct bank transfers, gift cards, and donations.

How much can you earn on Branded Surveys?

Anyone who has frequented online survey sites knows there isn’t a ton of money to be made. Branded Surveys won’t make you rich, nor will it replace a full- or part-time job, but compared to other survey platforms, we found the pay rate to be above average.

We spent 5.25 hours over the course of a week taking surveys on Branded. Here are our statistics:

• Surveys completed: 25
• Surveys attempted: 49 (49% disqualification rate)
• Time per completed survey: 12.6 minutes
• Points earned: 1,943 after bonuses, equivalent to $19.43
• Hourly rate: $3.70

Here is the proof of that payment, which was redeemed via PayPal:

These stats don’t exactly paint the rosiest picture, but it’s important to look at them in context. On most survey sites, you’ll screen out more than 90% of the time, and the surveys you do qualify for will pay practically nothing. Branded Survey doesn’t suffer from these issues, at least not wholly.

With the exception of Prolific, which is a market research platform that every aspiring side hustler should join, there simply aren’t many competing sites that offer as rewarding an experience as Branded Surveys.

Just think of Branded Surveys as a way to earn a few extra bucks when you’d otherwise be earning nothing.

Is Branded Surveys legit or a scam?

From our personal experience, Branded Surveys is a legitimate site that will pay you for the work that you complete. In fact, our PayPal payout request was honored almost instantaneously.

Most other users also seem satisfied with the site. It has a 4.3 / 5.0 rating (61k+ reviews) on Trustpilot, and a 3.9 / 5.0 rating on Survey Police, which ranks it fourth among all popular survey sites.

Besides its speedy payout process, Branded Surveys is lauded for its bonus program (Branded Elite), its customer service, the frequency of new survey opportunities, and its easy-to-use interface.

However, just because a site is legitimate doesn’t mean it’s without issues. Disqualification rates may not be as high as other online survey sites, but you’ll still get rejected a fair amount. More than occasionally, you’ll complete a large portion of a survey before being disqualified, which is frustrating.

Worse yet, you’ll sometimes fall into the dreaded survey loop, where you screen out of the survey you wanted to do, but are redirected to another survey.

Branded is a transparent company in that it shows you exactly how many points you’ll earn for a survey, along with a time estimate of how long the survey we’ll take. Unfortunately, we found that it often lowballs the estimate.

Also, the most desirable surveys fill up so fast that you’ll often be left out in the cold.

To sum up, there’s little doubt that Branded Surveys is a legitimate survey site that positively distinguishes itself from the pack in many ways. It’s also moderately flawed.

How does Branded Surveys work?

One of the Branded Surveys’ biggest selling points is how easy it is to use the system. Getting up and running is a breeze, and learning the interface won’t eat up more than a couple of minutes.

What’s more, is that Branded Surveys does its best to make participating in market research fun. Crazy idea, we know.

Here’s a brief glance at everything you need to know to start your earnings journey on Branded Survey.

Signing up and sign-up bonus

To get running, you’ll first need to sign up for an account. There are two ways to do this:

• Sign up through Facebook: You’ll need to provide Branded Surveys access to your name, profile pic, and email address
• Sign up through an email/password combination

After that, you’ll fill out some basic demographic information, and instantly be rewarded 50 points.

Shortly after completing the sign-up process, you’ll receive your first profile survey. This just takes a few minutes to fill out and awards an additional 50 points, for a total sign-up bonus of 100 points, or $1.

Downloading the app

Branded Surveys is available on desktop and as a downloadable app on the App Store. At this time, it is not available on the Google Play Store.

The app adequately simulates the desktop experience, and users familiar with one will quickly adapt to the other. However, early versions of the app are poorly rated, with users experiencing a variety of bugs and crashes.

It might be more prudent to take surveys on a desktop until Branded works out the kinks.

Where is Branded Surveys available?

Currently, only users from the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom are eligible for Branded Surveys.

There’s no indication that these restrictions will change anytime soon.

Earning points on Branded Surveys

After completing the sign-up process, you’ll be shown the main interface. This is where you’ll find most of your earning opportunities.

At the top of the page, you’ll find the “Best Surveys” section. Here you’ll find a set of three surveys curated to the profile information you have provided. For each survey, you’ll see exactly how many points you’ll earn for successfully completing it, and an estimate of how long it will take.

One of the biggest user complaints is that surveys take longer than what’s estimated. We found this to be true, but only on occasion. The overwhelming majority of the time, surveys took somewhere between 80 – 120% of the time estimate.

From the detective’s desk: If you’re not seeing any appealing survey options, simply select one of the available surveys and back out of it. The queue will be repopulated with a new survey. Try to aim for surveys that pay at least 10 points per 1 minute.

A point on Branded Surveys is worth $0.01, so a survey that awards 150 points is worth $1.50. If you happen to disqualify from a survey you may still receive a few points, but the amount will be nominal (1-3 points).

Surveys on Branded tend to be on the long side, with the majority in the 8 – 25 minute range. This is great if you’re looking to commit an hour or two, but it may not work for people that are constantly on the move. Not to mention, long surveys can lead to some frustrating situations where you’ll get 5 or 10 minutes deep into a survey only to screen out. This doesn’t happen as frequently as it does on sites like InboxDollars, but it does happen.

Similarly, you might start taking one survey, disqualify, and be redirected to another survey. This new survey will have a different pay rate, which may be lower than the original survey. Never feel obligated to complete a survey — if you don’t like it, simply cancel out.

On the plus side, the surveys just keep coming. We never had a situation where our queue had less than three surveys in it. At worst, our options just weren’t that good.

Branded Elite program

Branded Surveys is one of the few online survey platforms that offers a loyalty program. Branded Elite rewards its most frequent users with weekly bonuses, worth up to 19% of their base earnings.

The program works on a tiered system, and your rank is based on how many surveys you complete during a calendar month. What’s nice about Branded Elite is that achieving a higher rank is relatively simple, and once you reach a new tier, you keep that tier for the remainder of the current month and the entire next month.

There are three tiers:

• Bronze: Complete 2+ surveys per month
• Silver: Complete 10+ surveys per month
• Gold: Complete 30+ surveys per month

Once you reach a new loyalty tier, you’ll unlock greater bonus opportunities. At the Bronze tier, you’ll need to take 12+ surveys per week to earn a 5% bonus. However, that’s sort of a moot point, since you only need to take 10+ surveys a month to reach Silver.

Silver is where things get fun. You’ll earn:

• A 10% bonus for taking 12+ surveys per week
• A 12% bonus for taking 20+ surveys per week
• A 14% bonus for taking 30+ surveys per week

We were able to earn our Silver Badge on the first day. It’s that easy.

At Silver, you’ll also earn instant payout approval. We tested this method via a PayPal payout, and sure enough, the funds hit our account within minutes.

Should you earn the illustrious Gold Badge, you’ll earn greater bonuses:

• A 15% bonus for taking 12+ surveys per week
• A 17% bonus for taking 20+ surveys per week
• A 19% bonus for taking 30+ surveys per week

From the detective’s desk: Our one quibble is that the bonuses are bottom-heavy. Users who complete 30 surveys will only receive a slightly better bonus percentage than those who finish 12. But we guess better bottom-heavy is better than top-heavy!

Bonus points are paid out each Sunday, so don’t be discouraged if you don’t see them loaded to your account right away.

Branded Surveys Leaderboards

If you’re a Branded Surveys super user, then you can pad your bankroll even further by ranking on the site’s leaderboards.

Branded supports three leaderboards: Daily, Weekly, and Monthly. Ranking in the top 50 on the Daily or Weekly leaderboard, or in the top 20 on the Monthly Leaderboard will earn you an additional bonus, as follows:

• Daily Leaderboard: 50-point payout ($0.50)
• Weekly Leaderboard: 200-point payout ($2)
• Monthly Leaderboard: 300-point payout ($3)

Each leaderboard also awards a randomly selected winner. These rewards range from 50 – 1,000 points, depending on the leaderboard. You certainly shouldn’t count on winning a random prize, since Branded Surveys has a ton of users, but it’s nice when it happens.

Daily polls

Every day, you’ll get the chance to answer one question, and receive 5 points ($0.05) for your efforts.

It takes about 5 seconds to answer, so this is definitely worth working into your routine. On the downside, you won’t receive credit toward your Branded Elite status as these do not count as surveys.

Special surveys

Frequent users will unlock Premium Surveys, but to be honest, we’re not seeing what is so special about them.

Premium Surveys don’t award bonus points, and there’s no guarantee that you’ll qualify for them. The only real upsides are that they do tend to pay a bit better than standard surveys and that they give you a fourth survey-taking option from your dashboard.

There are also featured Survey Circuits. These are supposed to work a bit differently than normal surveys, but again, we’re not seeing much of a difference. Users answer a few demographic questions and then based on those answers, they are paired with a survey. Sound familiar? That’s because it is.

The circuit ends when you either complete a survey or you’re simply not matched to one. Like Premium Surveys, the main utility of Survey Circuits (in our opinion) is to give you more survey-taking opportunities.

Refer-a-friend on Branded Surveys

You can refer friends to Branded Surveys, and if the referred friend earns a Silver Badge (by completing at least 10 surveys in a calendar month), you’ll receive 50 points on the house.

It’s admittedly not the best reward, but if your friends are already interested in joining, might as well profit from it. There is no limit to the number of friends that you can refer.

To refer friends, you can either use a direct link or link your referral code on Facebook or Twitter. Branded Surveys makes it easy to refer friends — just head on over to this page.

Email notification settings

One of the best ways to increase your earnings on survey sites is to jump on new high-paying opportunities. Unfortunately, on most survey sites it’s hard to differentiate a bad survey from a good one.

Branded makes the process a bit easier, by sending new and high-paying survey links straight to your inbox.

By default, Branded sends you a lot of email notifications. We’re talking 20+ a day. While the survey offers contained in these emails are above average, they fill up extremely quickly, usually within minutes. It can be frustrating to be left out in the cold time and time again.

One way to maximize your chances of landing good surveys is to adjust your email notification settings. This serves a couple of purposes. For one, your poor inbox won’t get bombarded with emails.

More importantly, you can set up emails to arrive when you want them. Ideally, you’ll get them when you already have Branded Surveys open and are ready to work.

From the detective’s desk: We always recommend using a separate email(s) address for all of your side hustles. This helps to cut down on clutter, and keeps your personal and work emails separate. Trust us when we say, that money-making apps tend to send A LOT of emails.

To set up custom notifications, go to Preferences -> Email Notifications from the Branded dashboard. From there, you’ll be able to choose if you want 1-2 hourly or daily notifications, or you can select a custom schedule.

This cool feature allows you to select how many emails you want to receive at different times of the day. For instance, if you only have time in the evenings, you can set it to receive notifications only between the hours of 6 pm – 12 am. You can also tell Branded how many notifications you’d like to receive during that timeframe, up to 10.

Branded Surveys withdrawal options

One area where Branded Surveys isn’t lacking is in the number of withdrawal options it allows.

There are hundreds of gift card choices, including Dunkin’, Google Play, GAP, Hulu, Amazon, and many more.

Those that prefer cash can set up PayPal payments or direct ACH transfers through Branded Pay. This proprietary payment option, which is only available in the U.S., is compatible with most banks and ensures that funds will hit your account within 24-48 hours.

Of course, if you’re a Silver or Gold Badge holder, you’ll receive payouts even faster — sometimes instantaneously.

The minimum cashout amount is 500 points, which is equivalent to $5 — lower than the minimum payout amount imposed by most of Branded’s competitors.

Branded Surveys FAQ

When is the best time to take surveys?

Typically, you’ll find more and better surveys on weekday mornings and afternoons, although we never had a problem keeping our queue filled.

That being said, don’t take surveys for hours on end, as you will eventually run out of good opportunities. To maximize success, check the Branded dashboard and your email notifications periodically, wait for good opportunities and jump on them.

Once you run low on high-paying surveys (at least 10 points per minute), do something else. Otherwise, you’ll end up banging your head against the wall taking low-quality, low-paying surveys with high DQ rates.

Does Branded Surveys actually pay?

Yes. From experience, we can safely say that Branded Surveys handles payouts in a swift and painless matter. If you’ve yet to earn your Silver Badge, then payouts might take a day or two, but once you hit Silver, PayPal payouts only take about a minute.

Can Branded Surveys be trusted?

Look, the reality is that with most survey sites, you’re not going to earn a ton of money, and you will run into annoyances like survey loops and disqualifications.

Branded Surveys has all of these problems, but thanks to its matchmaking algorithm, customization features, and 10+ years of experience in the biz, they’re not nearly as bad as they are on most sites.

You’re far better off taking surveys on Branded than say Inbox Dollars, Survey Junkie, or Swagbucks (though Swagbucks has other ways to make easy cash).