Here’s How Much You Can Actually Earn by Taking Online Surveys
It’s inevitable: if you ask online how to make extra money , someone (most likely several people) will suggest taking online surveys (as well as clinical trials ). On the surface, it sounds amazing: sign up for a few websites or apps, spend some downtime answering questions, and get paid. And it’s usually very easy to make some money using platforms like Survey Junkie , Swagbucks , or Kashkick . The real question is how little is that little money? Taking online surveys is an easy job, but the federal minimum wage is $7.25 and the state minimum wage is as high as $17 an hour . Can you achieve something similar with online surveys?
Answer: No, you can’t. Not even close (with one caveat noted below). That’s how little money there really is in online surveys.
The disadvantage of paid online surveys
Every online survey site you sign up for will pay you significantly less than $7.25 per hour. In some cases you’ll earn less than a dollar an hour, while people using Survey Junkie can sometimes earn up to $5 an hour , and on SurveySavvy you can get 10-minute surveys for $1 each, so in theory you you can earn a majestic $6 an hour if you work non-stop. Note that all of these ranges are well below the $7.25 you would earn (at a minimum) in any real part-time job.
And these numbers assume that you can dedicate significant time and effort to surveys and that you have remarkable effectiveness, which is difficult because of three aspects of the platforms:
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Qualification process. When you sign up for these platforms, you fill out an initial questionnaire designed to determine which surveys will find your feedback valuable (you often receive a small sign-up bonus for this). However, when you get into a survey, your first few answers will narrow the questions even further, and you may be turned away from the survey once you start the process and only be paid a small amount for your time – often as little as 2-3 cent. For example, one person tried to complete 152 surveys on Survey Junkie over the course of a month and a half, but only managed to complete 53 of them successfully . The typical success rate for completing surveys is about 25%.
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Search time. While some of these platforms will actively recruit you to participate in surveys for which you’re particularly well suited, you’ll have to spend time finding surveys to take—and they go fast. And this time is not paid. If you spend an hour trying to sign up for surveys and then earn $3 by taking them for the next hour, your salary will actually be $1.50 per hour.
This means that it’s probably better to view online survey work in terms of monthly earnings rather than hourly rates. For example, a person who completed 53 out of 152 survey attempts? After a month and a half, they earned $26.17, or about $13 a month. And the platforms themselves speak quite clearly about this. For example, Survey Junkie explicitly states in its FAQs that you can expect to earn “up to” $40 per month using the site, and Swagbucks states that typical survey takers “should be able” to earn up to $1,825 per year. , which is about $150 per month, but that’s the upper limit. And one site reviewing KashKick concluded that you can earn between $10 and $40 per month with it.
This is no small matter! But it’s also not the best way to make a living and definitely doesn’t replace a job.
Pros of paid online surveys
So, online surveys won’t make you rich or replace your 9 to 5 job. But when used correctly, online surveys certainly have their benefits:
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Easy. They usually don’t require any special skills or experience, and registration is free. While certain biographical or demographic information may entice you to participate in additional or higher-paying surveys, there is virtually no barrier to making at least some money on these platforms.
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Spare money. That $40 a month might not be covered by rent, but since you can earn it in the spare moments between other tasks—clicking around during your lunch break or tapping your phone while riding the bus to and from work—it’s an easy way to do it. to throw a little extra money into your accounts.
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Fun. Most people enjoy expressing their opinions and learning about new products or concepts, so taking surveys is often a lot of fun – fun that you get paid for.
Finally, if you are a professional in a demanding field, taking surveys can be much more rewarding. There are specialty companies that pay quite handsomely for the opinions of doctors, lawyers, and other professionals—for example, one doctor reported earning up to $1,000 a month by taking surveys offered by companies like InCrowd , Curizon , andM3 Global Research .
There’s also a site called FocusGroups.org , which pays well for online surveys (they also do in-person focus group research and phone interviews, which pay more). Many of their surveys fall in the $6 per hour (or less) range, but if you analyze carefully and do some math to convert their points system into dollars, you can find some that pay fairly high hourly rates – up to 60 dollars per hour. hour , according to one review. However, there tend to be fewer surveys and more difficult to qualify for – and this hourly rate is based on how quickly you can complete the surveys, so your score may vary greatly. At the end of the day, even though FocusGroups.org pays a little better, you probably still won’t make a huge amount of money there every month.