Recently, Google released a new app to the Play Store called Google Opinion Rewards. The concept is simple: answer a few questions every once in a while and get some free credit for the Play Store. It won't be much, but the app will send you a notification when you can fill out a new survey and they're typically only a few questions long. Within thirty seconds or so, you could get an extra dollar. That's a return on your time investment roughly equal to making $120 per hour.
Of course, if you don't have Android or simply prefer real money to Google Play credit, there are plenty of other services you can try. CashCrate is another site that pays money in exchange for filling out surveys that can be done within a matter of minutes. As with Google's version, there's a limit to how much you can make with surveys alone (and there are other, more burdensome options like completing offers that will attempt to suck you in further), but filling out one minute surveys once a day or when they pop up can still accumulate actual money if you're diligent.
If you're looking for sites that you can perform quick tasks to earn a bit of money, here are a few of the legit ones. While individual tasks can be quick, it's also up to you to not let it take up your time if you want to keep to the minimal effort goal:
Google Opinion Rewards
CashCrate
20|20 panel
Amazon Mechanical Turk
Harvard Business School Research Study Participation
There are, of course, some things you should be aware of when pursuing sites like this: for starters, not all of them are going to be legitimate. If you try to turn answering surveys into a full-time job, it would be easy to find yourself on the business end of a phishing scam. Just accept that it's a buck or two here and there and you'll be better off (and if you do want to take it further, know the right ways to do so). Secondly, these things are only viable because somewhere, some focus group or marketing machine needs data to drive its decisions. It's very obvious to see why Google would shell out a pittance for data on consumer habits. If you're okay with this then fire the app up, but if you don't like the idea of a company having even anonymized data from you on its servers, you should probably sit this out (and by "it" I mean both paid survey apps and, quite possibly, the entire internet).
Of course, if you don't have Android or simply prefer real money to Google Play credit, there are plenty of other services you can try. CashCrate is another site that pays money in exchange for filling out surveys that can be done within a matter of minutes. As with Google's version, there's a limit to how much you can make with surveys alone (and there are other, more burdensome options like completing offers that will attempt to suck you in further), but filling out one minute surveys once a day or when they pop up can still accumulate actual money if you're diligent.
If you're looking for sites that you can perform quick tasks to earn a bit of money, here are a few of the legit ones. While individual tasks can be quick, it's also up to you to not let it take up your time if you want to keep to the minimal effort goal:
Google Opinion Rewards
CashCrate
20|20 panel
Amazon Mechanical Turk
Harvard Business School Research Study Participation
There are, of course, some things you should be aware of when pursuing sites like this: for starters, not all of them are going to be legitimate. If you try to turn answering surveys into a full-time job, it would be easy to find yourself on the business end of a phishing scam. Just accept that it's a buck or two here and there and you'll be better off (and if you do want to take it further, know the right ways to do so). Secondly, these things are only viable because somewhere, some focus group or marketing machine needs data to drive its decisions. It's very obvious to see why Google would shell out a pittance for data on consumer habits. If you're okay with this then fire the app up, but if you don't like the idea of a company having even anonymized data from you on its servers, you should probably sit this out (and by "it" I mean both paid survey apps and, quite possibly, the entire internet).