Swagbucks allows users to earn money by searching the web, watching videos, taking paid surveys, playing games, or shopping online. You can redeem your rewards for cash deposited directly in your PayPal account or by claiming gift cards to a partner retailer such as Walmart or Amazon. There’s no limit to how much you can earn. While you can indeed get paid to write for blogs and magazines, most compilations of websites and blogs that pay writers mainly feature publications that use a revenue-share model: in other words, how much you make depends on the success of your article — and you often need to get tens of thousands of views to your articles to earn about $50. Still, your options for earning money online aren’t limited to just part-time work and internet resale – and not even close. Thanks to innovative new technologies, the creativity of certain start-ups, and marketers’ eternal desire to better understand consumers, some websites will actually pay you just to use the internet – whether that’s for searching the web, taking surveys,. If you are from USA, Canada and the United Kingdom you can make great earnings if you put time into doing the things that pay you. Listed as one of the best survey sites, users can also make money on the site by answering surveys, playing games getting cash back from popular online shopping sites.

There are times when many of us find ourselves in a bind and we need money today, even if it's just a couple of bucks. Fortunately, there are some websites you can use to earn fast cash online.

I'm not going to lie to you, many of them are just extra cash online and will never replace your income. Regardless, they can save you in a pinch when you need it most if you use them regularly and allow the money to build up.

Below is a list of sites that just about anyone can use that will pay daily or at least once per week:

Swagbucks Pays In Ten Days Or Less

I almost didn't list Swagbucks here because, while it's a great rewards site, they list in their terms that you can't expect for up to 10 days after you cash out. However, it's still an option to earn fast cash because some people report getting paid much faster than this.

You can redeem you SB (Swagbucks) for Amazon codes, Paypal cash, and gift cards to popular merchandisers among other things.

These points build up quickly thanks the the large number of things you can do on the site to earn. I've used this site and been paid many times.

You can read my review of Swagbucks here or sign up here.

Swagbucks Redemptions

Check out this list of some of my redemptions below. I usually opt for Amazon over Paypal.

Online Surveys For $3 a Pop With Pinecone Research

Pinecone is one of the best survey panels out there for earning fast cash, and they pay quickly — usually by the next day — for the surveys you complete. The surveys don't come every week, but it's a nice little bonus when they do because of how fast they pay.

Right now Pinecone is open, but there is no guarantee you'll get in just depending on what demographic they need right now.

Go here to sign up or learn more about how to join Pinecone Research.

Pinecone Payment Proof:

Earn Fast Cash Online With Ibotta

Ibotta is an app that pays you back for things you buy at the grocery store. The reason I'm listing it here is because when you cash out, the money goes instantly (or almost instantly) to Paypal.

I've never had to wait longer than five minutes to get my money from Ibotta! You can also earn from referrals there, too. However, you must have at least $20 in your account to cash out. Still, cashing out every week isn't unrealistic with consistent use.

You can sign up for Ibotta here or read my Ibotta review here.

Ibotta Payment Proof:

Slice the Pie Pays Twice a Week

Slice the Pie is a site I've used frequently. All you do is listen to music and rate/review it. You'll get paid anywhere from six to seven cents up to sometimes seventeen cents per song you review just depending on if they have any promos going on.

It only takes a few minutes to review a song. They pay out on Tuesdays and Fridays and you must have a minimum of $10 to withdraw your earnings, but this is very possible to do twice per week.

You can sign up for Slice the Pie here or read my Slice the Pie review.

Slice the Pie Payment Proof

InstaGC Offers Fast Cash Instantly

InstaGC is a rewards site you can use to redeem instantly for Amazon gift codes (and all kinds of other gift codes). With this site, it's possible to earn money for doing all sorts of things which include short tasks, surveys, watching videos, listening to music, and more.

What I love most about this one is that when you do redeem, there is NO waiting. You just ask for your code and it's there waiting for you on the next screen.

It's also possible to request a check for a cash payment, but you will have to wait several days for that to show up in the mail.

I have not yet reviewed InstaGC, but Work at Home No Scams has a very detailed review of how it works here.

InstaGC Payment Proof

Qmee Pays Instantly

This is a browser extension you can install that will occasionally show you sponsored advertisements on your sidebar when you search. Each advertisement is worth a few cents or more.

If you visit the ad shown, you receive the dollar amount shown in your Qmee virtual “piggy bank”. You can cash this out at anytime, there is no minimum.

Also, the money shows up in your Paypal account pretty much instantly after you ask for it. I put this site on this list because even though it's not a big earner, you can get paid quickly.

Go here to sign up for Qmee or read my Qmee review.

Update 9/27/19 – Qmee now offers paid surveys as another way to earn!

Qmee Payment Proof

Amazon MTurk Has $1 Minimum Cash Out

This is another task-based site that makes it possible to earn fast cash online. They have a variety of work to choose from in several different categories.

They pay with bank transfer and it can take about two days for money from there to hit your account, but you only need $1 to request a payout. The way to get money in your hands often from here is to request a payout every three days.

Then, within a few days, you'll start seeing a few weekly deposits from MTurk to your bank account. Is it easy to make $10 a day on Amazon MTurk? It actually is.

I don't use this site anymore, but you can see below that I was able to generate almost $500 in extra income using it off and on for a few years. And many people earn much more than that using it multiple times per week.

You can get signed up here.

Amazon mTurk Payment Proof

Transcribe Me Pays Weekly

This is a site where you can sign up to transcribe audio files. They pay new transcribers $20 an audio hour (remember this is quite a bit longer than a regular hour).

You can get in with no prior transcription experience, you just have to take a short test which I believe you can retake if you fail it the first time.

You only need $1 to cash out, hitting the withdrawal button for payment weekly as long as you have $1 earned. It might be one of the best ways to make money fast today if you can pass the skills test.

I don't have any payment proof for this site because I've never done enough work here to get paid, but they are legit and do pay according to many of Real Ways to Earn's readers.

Read my review of Transcribe Me or sign up here.

Need More Than Extra Money?

I send out twice-weekly work at home job updates via my emailed newsletter. This is free to receive, and I'm told by subscribers it's pretty helpful. You can start getting it here.

Good luck to you if you decide to sign up and try any of these!

Post originally published April 30, 2012. Updated and republished on February 3, 2020.

There is no shortage of legitimate ways to make money online.

With so many legitimate online money making opportunities, almost anyone can earn extra cash on the internet these days.

But, many of these sites have one shortcoming…

they aren’t that quick when it comes to paying you!

It takes weeks to get paid and in some rare cases, even months. Of course, that doesn’t mean they are scams. They are perfectly genuine sites, it’s just the way their payment system works.

But what if you don’t want to wait weeks or months to get paid?

What if you want to be paid instantly, or at least fast within a day or so?

Well, you are in luck!

I’ve found you a few trusted websites that do actually pay quickly, some instantly and some within 24 hours or so.

Some pay via PayPal, others will write you a check.

Here they are…

1. LifePoints (formerly known as MySurvey)

• Official Site: LifePoints.com
• Payout Minimum: $10
• Payout Speed: Instant (if you choose gift certificates)

If you like talking about products and services that you use in your everyday life, you’ll like LifePoints. It’s one of the best legitimate online survey sites that pay you to take online surveys.

Each survey can take anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes. Longer surveys usually pay more.

The best part is that you don’t need any experience or special knowledge and since it’s free, it’s a great way to make money without investing a dime.

2. Transcribe Me

• Official Site: TranscribeMe.com
• Payout Minimum: $1
• Payout Speed: Instant

Transcribe Me is a website where you can transcribe audio files for money.

If you don’t know what transcription is, it’s the practice of taking audio and writing it down.

It’s simple stuff, and all it requires is that you be able to type quickly!

Transcribe Me has just a short little test to see if you qualify, and then you can get right into it.

This website offers $20 per audio hour.

Each audio file takes an average of 3 hours to be transcribed.

3. Qmee

• Official Site: Qmee.com
• Payout Minimum: None
• Payout Speed: Instant

Qmee started as a “Get paid to search” kind of site but has rapidly evolved into something more.

It is now a much more full-fledged online rewards program where you earn money for searching as well as shopping online and taking surveys.

Yes, a sort of cashback site.

They pay via PayPal.

4. Slice the Pie

• Official Site: SlicethePie.com
• Payout Minimum: $10
• Payout Speed: Every Tuesday and Friday (fixed payouts)

Slice the Pie is unique among the many mini-task sites that have been very popular under the mTurk model because it’s a music review site that pays you to listen to music.

An artist’s song will play in a 90-second clip. You listen and afterward answer a few questions about what you liked and disliked.

The payment will be anywhere from 6¢ to 15¢, depending on whether or not they’re running any specials.

Payment also increases with your rank, which you’ll gain as you review more songs.

It’s not amazingly lucrative, but definitely, a more fun way to earn, than many other options.

5. Ibotta

• Official Site: Ibotta.com
• Payout Minimum: $5
• Payout Speed: Instant

Ibotta is an awesome money saving app that everyone should be using.

Ibotta pays you back for items that you buy from the store. They’ll tell you what products are sponsored, and then you’ll be compensated for buying them and checking in with the app (verified via a snapshot of your receipt.)

You can cash out when you reach the minimum requirement.

It’s worth noting that it has a referral system too, just in case the others in your life might be interested in a service like this.

6. Toluna

• Official Site: Toluna.com
• Payout Minimum: 500 points for prizes, 80,000 for vouchers.
• Payout Speed: Depends on the reward

Like getting paid to test products?

Then you’ll love Toluna.

It’s parent company, Toluna Group, is one of the most trusted market research companies.

Toluna Influencers is their online panel where not only they pay you to test products, but also to take surveys, polls and more.

Now, you won’t be getting products to test every day or every week, but you get enough free stuff to test that it is worth joining. Plus, you can make money almost every day by taking surveys, poll and more.

7. Amazon mTurk

• Official Site: Mturk.com
• Payout Minimum: $1
• Payout Speed: 1-2 days

If you’ve heard of anything on this list, it is probably Amazon mTurk.

mTurk is the king of task websites, hosting hundreds of thousands of tasks every day and seeing very large amounts of money flow through from task providers to task-takers.

You’ll need an Amazon Payments account because this is a very official way of making money (probably the most official behind finding work on a freelancing website.)

The Amazon Payments account will want to be linked to your bank account, that way you can transfer the funds between the two (you can also spend the money on Amazon.)

The tasks are called HITs (Human Intelligence Tasks) and they can vary greatly in difficulty, from assigning labels to pictures to writing full-on articles, or transcription work like we discussed before.

You can easily make $10 in a day, or even more if you sink a lot of time in.

mTurk is a pretty serious part of some people’s income (those who do complicated tasks with big payouts, not easy tasks that pay few cents), so it’s definitely something to look into if you find yourself in need of this type of service.

8. Newslines

• Official Site: Newslines.org
• Payout Minimum: $20
• Payout Speed: Varies, but less than a day

Newslines is a crowdsourced news website. It’s organized by topics, which are updated as a timeline through 50-100 word posts about the topic and its details or goings-on.

You can get paid to add these little blurbs, $1 per accepted post.

It’s a great way to write and get paid. If you can find a way to get a groove going with posting things, you can easily make the money by the day. Even if not, you could probably manage to get a payment in a week or a few days.

The website is always accepting contributors, though the posts will have to pass through a minor editorial check (just to see if it fits the site’s standards.)

You can find more about what they require on their website.

9. YouGov

• Official Site: YouGov.com
• Payout Minimum: 5000 YouGov point.
• Payout Speed: Varies, but less than a day

YouGov is another survey panel but their surveys are very different than other survey sites. They tend to focus on big picture issues rather than consumer related stuff like products and services.

Their surveys are about social issues, politics, public affairs and topics of that nature.

Here’s something interesting…

your feedback may actually get featured on major news sites!

You see, YouGov’s data and findings are constantly used in news articles on major media and news and sometimes that could be your feedback that gets shared. If that happens, YouGov will email you to let you know you’ve been featured.

Update

Unfortunately, a few of the sites mentioned in the original post are no longer in business. They either merged with another company or have changed direction.

For the sake of archives, I kept them here.

Postloop

• Official Site: Postloop.com
• Payout Minimum: $5
• Payout Speed: A few hours

Postloop is a website that pays you to post to forums.

It’s mostly used by new websites who are trying to drive traffic to the site, so all you have to do is follow the links on the site and make some quality posts.

This is one of the more favorable options on the list, if for no other reason than the fact that it is so open-ended.

Reaching their minimum payout is no trouble at all, so it’s a good site to keep around if you ever need a few bucks in a pinch.

Jingit

• Official Site: Jingit.com
• Payout Minimum: N/A
• Payout Speed: Instant

We couldn’t provide the payout minimum because Jingit is pretty unique in the way that it operates the money side of things.

Jingit won’t pay out to a PayPal or a bank account – they instead payout to a Jingit Visa debit card, which you sign up for when you sign up for the site itself.

Supposedly, any money you earn goes straight to the card, which cuts out the need for a payout system.

Earnings for this site are low, $5 to $10 in a week for those who are only putting in minimal effort. This one is probably best done as a rainy day fund.

Websites That Pay You Real Money Cash

Use your Jingit account to earn funds a little bit throughout the week and just let the money save up on your card, that way you know you’ll have a little bit built up by the time you need it.

But how does Jingit work?

Well, it has sponsorship from lots of major retailers- Kraft and Walmart to name a few- and you earn money by watching ads, giving feedback on products, doing a check in at a store, or shopping for certain items.

Whatever you earn goes directly to your Jingit debit card. You can then use that card like any other gift/debit card to shop.

Final Thoughts

I am sure there are many other legitimate money making websites out there that do pay fast, but these are some of the most trusted sites to earn money with.

Have you made money with any of these or any other legitimate money earning site?

What Apps Really Pay You Real Money

If you have used any personally and have gotten paid quick, I’d love to hear from you.

Websites That Pay You Paypal Money

Let us know in the comments below.