In our Rakuten Insight review, we will take an in-depth look at the pros and cons of this online survey platform.
I’m sure you’ve seen ads for paid survey sites all over the internet. They promise easy money and all you have to do is give your opinion. Seems like a quick way of earning a few extra bucks, doesn’t it? Well, in reality, it’s not that simple.
You see, I have A LOT of experience testing and reviewing various survey sites. What I have found is that the differences between these sites can be night and day. Some sites, despite being legitimate, are simply not worth it. You earn little to nothing in return for your valuable time.
That said, some survey sites are indeed worth the effort. If you stay consistent, you can earn some extra money on the side with very little effort. You want a site that offers relatively short surveys that are easy to complete, you also want the payments to be fast and reliable.
Today, we will be looking at Rakuten Insight, a paid survey site that is one of branches of the ecommerce giant Rakuten.
In this Rakuten Insight review, I will be writing all about my experiences with this site. We will see whether it is a legitimate option for additional income or just a time-sink that is simply not worth the effort.
Without further ado, here is our full Rakuten Insight review:
- What Is Rakuten Insight?
- How Does Rakuten Insight Work?
- How Much Money Can I Earn With Rakuten Insight?
- My Experience With Rakuten Insight – How Much Did I Make In A Month?
- 4 Tips For Maximizing Your Earnings In Rakuten Insight
- The Pros Of Rakuten Insight
- The Cons Of Rakuten Insight
- 3 Of Our Favorite Rakuten Insight Alternatives
- Final Thoughts – Is Rakuten Insight Worth It Or Not?
What Is Rakuten Insight?
You might have already heard about Rakuten, the parent company of Rakuten Insight. Founded in Japan in 1997, Rakuten is one of the most well-known and biggest e-commerce corporations in the world.
These days, Rakuten has an immense catalog of different subsidiaries. Some of the most well-known of these being Rakuten Card, Rakuten Advertising, and Rakuten TV.
Rakuten Insight is a branch of Rakuten that focuses on market research. In fact, they are considered the leading market research organization in Asia. One of the primary ways that Rakuten Insight conducts research is via online surveys – the company conducts market research for various clients using an online survey panel. Survey takers like you and me are then paid to provide critical insights on various products and services.
It’s worth noting that Rakuten Insight has a worldwide reach. If you are reading this, you are probably eligible for signing up and starting to earn money with this platform.
How Does Rakuten Insight Work?
Signing up for Rakuten Insight is a very straightforward process. All you need is a valid email address and you can join Rakuten Insight almost immediately.
Once you have completed the sign-up process, you will be asked to confirm your email address. Once that is done, you will be taken to your account dashboard.
To start earning money with Rakuten Insight, you will first need to complete what is known as a ‘member profile’. A member profile is a sort of survey that helps the company better understand who you are, your interests, and what sort of surveys would be most suited for you.
In Rakuten Insight, the member profile consists of five distinct categories – basic, household, vehicle, health, and work. Each of these categories consists of 10-15 questions about you. My suggestion is to complete all of these categories and answer the questions as honestly as possible.
Sure, it might feel weird to give a random site information about things like your health and consuming habits, but try to remember that this is what market research is all about. This information is crucial so the company can offer you as many matching surveys as possible.
Completing the entire member profile should only take around 10 minutes or so to complete. Once that is done, you will start receiving surveys that match your interests.
It is impossible to predict exactly how many surveys you will receive in a given month. It will depend largely on your geographic location and your demographic details.
For example, I received 24 surveys in a month while some other users have reported getting invites to less than 10 surveys. You also need to remember that most survey sites (Rakuten Insight included) will judge the quality and quantity of your answers. If you answer honestly and also stay consistent, you can expect more and more invites (and more earnings) as time passes.
To sum it all up, most users can expect to get invites to 15-30 surveys in one month. This is also the amount of invites you want to aim for if you want to turn Rakuten Insight into one of the side hustles worth pursuing in the long run.
How Much Money Can I Earn With Rakuten Insight?
As with most survey sites, the amount of money you can earn with Rakuten Insight varies greatly depending on a variety of factors. The biggest one of them is usually how many surveys you qualify for and complete.
Generally speaking, most Rakuten surveys pay somewhere between 50-100 points each (with 1 point being equal to $0.01 USD). So, if you were to complete a survey that pays out 100 points, you would earn $1.00 USD for your time and effort.
It’s worth noting that Rakuten Insight does have a few higher-paying surveys from time to time. In my experience, these surveys are usually worth around 300-400 points (or $3.00-$4.00 USD).
If you get surveys like these due to your demographics, then you are in luck. Surveys that pay this much are easily more valuable than questionnaires found on most online survey sites.
Again, just to remind you – just because you do not receive a lot of high-paying surveys in the first month does not necessarily mean anything. If you find the overall experience of Rakuten Insight good, then I suggest you stick with it for a few months. The quality (surveys that pay more) and the quantity (number of surveys available) will probably increase over time.
My Experience With Rakuten Insight – How Much Did I Make In A Month?
I have been using Rakuten Insight for a little under two months now, and in that time I’ve managed to complete around 50 surveys. This has resulted in me earning just over $20.00.
As I mentioned before, the amount of surveys you receive each month largely depends on your demographics and geographic location. So, your mileage may vary (quite a bit).
That being said, I think that the amount of money I’ve made is a good representation of what you can generally expect. If you’re lucky, then you could make more; if you’re unlucky, then you could make less.
All in all, I think Rakuten Insight is a great way to earn a little bit of extra cash. The amount you earn will not be mind-blowing, but most surveys are very simple and they don’t take too long to complete.
4 Tips For Maximizing Your Earnings In Rakuten Insight
Enable Notifications
When you enable notifications for Rakuten Insight, you will get a notification when a new survey is available. This way you can quickly login and check if you are eligible to take the survey.
Complete Your Profile
Completing your profile is key if you want to maximize your earnings from Rakuten Insight. This is because, as mentioned earlier, filling out your profile will ensure that you only receive surveys that are relevant to you.
Be Patient
If you are not receiving a lot of surveys at first, do not despair. Just be patient and keep an eye on your email inbox or the Rakuten Insight app. Chances are that more surveys will come your way in due time.
Be Honest In Your Survey Answers
Rakuten Insight is known for being a very reputable online survey site. This means that the companies they work with are also reputable and expect honest answers from respondents.
If you try to game the system by giving false answers, the data received from you will be judged as being low quality. This will cause you to receive less surveys in the future. So, always play it safe and give honest answers to the best of your knowledge.
The Pros Of Rakuten Insight
In the following, let’s look at some of the main advantages of taking surveys at Rakuten Insight.
The Surveys Are Easy-To-Complete
One thing I quickly noticed about the Rakuten Insight surveys is that they are much easier to complete than the surveys of some of the main competitors.
A lot of the questionnaires inquire you to answer in straightforward yes-or-no. And, even if a questionnaire will be focused on more specific products or brands, they can still be answered without much thought.
To give you an idea of what I am talking about, I will give you two examples of questions from online surveys.
An example of an easy online survey question – “Do You own any Apple devices in your household?”
And, here is an example of a more annoying online survey question – “What are 5 terms that you would use to describe Amazon Alexa?”
You can answer the first question in a snap, while the other one will take valuable time to answer correctly. The questionnaires offered by Rakuten Insight are generally easy and you can complete them very quickly. This, in return, will allow you to earn more points in less time.
Cash Payments Possible
Rakuten Insight does offer you to redeem points for money on your PayPal account or Venmo account. As much as I love digital gift cards, knowing that I can turn my earnings into cold hard cash is always welcome in my book. And, as many of you know, not all online survey sites offer this option.
A Well-Designed Website And App
Even some very legitimate online survey sites are chock-full of annoying spam. I found Rakuten Insight to be a very pleasant exception to this rule. Both the website and the app are relatively clean. Plus, both of them feel very intuitive and easy to use.
Best-In-Class Online Survey Site For The Asian Market
Several reviewers from Asia have reported Rakuten Insight as being one of the best online survey sites. These reviewers report qualifying for surveys often and they also report earning more on Rakuten Insight than on other survey sites. Seeing as Rakuten Insight has its roots in Asia, this makes perfect sense.
A Low Disqualification Rate
If you carefully fill out your profile, you will be receiving surveys that are relevant to you. This means that you will probably be eligible for about 80% of the surveys you get.
Anyone who has experience with online surveys knows how annoying it is to get an invite to a survey only to get a disqualification note before even starting. This is usually not the case for Rakuten Insight. In all likelihood, you can complete and earn from a survey you receive.
A Large Number Of Surveys
If you happen to fall into the right demographic pool, you can expect a very consistent flow of surveys from Rakuten Insight. Experienced users of Rakuten Insight report completing several surveys on some days. Combine this with the fact that most of the surveys are easy and you have a very solid side income platform on your hands.
The Cons Of Rakuten Insight
All survey sites have their different strengths and weaknesses. To give you a full overview of Rakuten Insight, let’s also look at some of the cons of this online survey site.
Survey Options Can Be Limited If You Do Not Fall Into The Right Demographic
From my experience, Rakuten Insight seems to be a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to the number of surveys offered. If your profile is a good fit, you can really score big with this platform.
However, when your interests and demographic information are not what Rakuten Insight currently needs, you may receive a very low number of surveys. To see whether this survey site is for you or not, you are ultimately just going to have to register and see what you get.
No Bonus Point System Available
Some survey sites offer additional bonus points for completing certain tasks or reaching milestones. For example, it is common for some popular survey sites to offer bonus points for completing, let’s say, 100 surveys in total. Some users are motivated by these kinds of systems. Thanks to this, they are motivated to use one single online survey site for a longer time.
As of 2022, Rakuten Insight does not have an additional reward system. The $0.01 per point is all you have.
No iOS App Available
I was very surprised to see that Rakuten Insight does not have an iOS app available. It goes without saying that there are A LOT of iOS users out there who would be interested in trying out the Rakuten Insight app. Hopefully, Rakuten will roll out an iOS app in the near future.
3 Of Our Favorite Rakuten Insight Alternatives
If you are looking for some Rakuten Insight alternatives, I would recommend checking out the following online survey sites:
Survey Junkie
This site is one of the most popular survey platforms online, and it offers a variety of ways to earn rewards, including PayPal payments and gift cards. Check out Survey Junkie here.
Swagbucks
This site allows you to earn points (known as SB) for completing surveys, watching videos, and shopping online. You can then redeem your SB for prizes or cash. Check out Swagbucks here.
InboxDollars
This site pays you to take surveys, watch videos, shop online, and more. In addition to cash payments, you can also redeem your earnings for gift cards. Check out InboxDollars here.
Each of these survey sites have their own unique strengths and weaknesses. So, take your time to check them out and see which one is the best fit for you.
Final Thoughts – Is Rakuten Insight Worth It Or Not?
All in all, I would say that Rakuten Insight is a very solid online survey site. The platform has its pros and its cons but, ultimately, the pros outweigh the cons by quite a bit.
It is a platform from a very reliable company, so you will not have to worry about the legitimacy of the service. If you do receive the surveys and complete them, you will also get paid.
My suggestion is to give Rakuten Insight a try. If you do happen to be the type of consumer the company is looking for, you will have a solid chance of making money online from completing paid surveys regularly.
If you are interested in trying this platform, you can sign up for free to Rakuten Insight here.