Can You Make Money With Online Surveys? [1/20th of the Minimum Wage]

Of course not. You cannot make decent money with survey-for-cash. It's so unproductive, it rots your brain, and frankly, it wastes your precious life.

If you search for a list of ways to earn extra income from home, survey-for-cash always appears as one of the options. Yes, there are quite a few online survey sites available, no cost to join and easy to start. That is the problem. Do you see it?

Online surveys are for feedback, not income. Focus on sharing opinions, not earning. Use as a tool for insights, not profit.

When Is a Survey Not a Survey? 

You see, online surveys are run by research companies. They need information from a diverse group of people, different backgrounds, ages, sexes, races, locations...in order to get the results as accurately and unbiased as possible. They need as many people, they don't want the same people to participate all the time. 

They often advertise themselves by saying "make money by answering our surveys!" However, they don't want the monetary rewards to influence the survey results.

Do you see where I'm going? They offer some money, enough to motivate people to participate, but only a small amount to stop the participants from getting addicted to it. So-called "surveys-for-cash" are not designed for the same people to spend hours and hours every day.

For that reason, no, you can't expect to make much money with online surveys. You can get up to $5 within an hour if you're lucky, but not every hour continuously.

"Sorry, You Don't Qualify"

If you've already tried online surveys, you know this well. You spend the first 15 minutes of a survey supplying all your details - where you live, your employment status, educational background, single/married, children/no children... Then all of a sudden you're shut out. "Sorry, this survey is not suitable for you on this occasion."

It's such an irritating, soul-crushing experience but it happens all the time. And this is the reason you can't make money. You first look at the list of surveys - 5-minute survey for $1.50, 10-minute survey for $3... You do the math and think you can easily earn over $10 if you spend the next hour answering 5-6 surveys. Not. It's the qualification test each time before that takes you forever. You'll be lucky if you can get through more than a couple of them.

Again, that's because the research company is looking for answers from a wide range of diverse groups. It's most likely the case that other people who share the same living status with you have already answered the survey.

"Rewards" Programs

If you still want to make a little cash by answering surveys, there are many rewards programs available, renowned ones of which include;

• Swagbucks - Probably the biggest and most popular rewards program, when it says it's paid out over $250 million, no lying. As well as by answering surveys, you can earn points (SBs) by shopping online, watching videos, signing up for new services, searching the web on the Yahoo! search engine via Swagbucks, and playing games.
• Clixsense - Another big and trustworthy rewards program, since founded in 2007, it's paid out more than $33 million. You can earn cash by answering surveys, playing games, watching videos, signing up for websites, testing new services, and completing online tasks (for a few cents, mostly!)

There are other rewards programs such as Earnably and Grabpoints, and there are also surveys-for-cash-only sites such as Survey Junkie, MyPoints, and Vindale Research, to name a few.

I personally think rewards programs are better than surveys-only sites purely because I'd easily get bored. Then I could try something else - play a couple of games to earn a few more credits before logging off. But that's just my personal opinion.

Which Survey Programs Pay More?

The pay rates they offer are more or less the same. Frankly, they're all the same! Because they're not the ones who run surveys, research companies run them. You see what I mean if you think about how the surveys are prepared in the first place?

1. A company requires specific user statistics. Pays a fee to a research company to find that out.
2. The research company draws out survey questions.
3. The research company pays several rewards programs that can list the survey on their platform.
4. Each of the rewards programs pays the users its own "competitive rate" for completing the survey.

So if you use both Swagbucks and Clixsense, for example, you might see exactly the same survey in both programs. One might pay slightly more than others.

Stop! Scam Alert

When is a survey-for-cash, not a survey-for-cash? A fake survey has the following two characteristics, remember these, and you can identify them just by looking at them in the future.

#1 Asking Your Personal Data

Your personal data, as in your full name, email address, street address, or phone number. If they ask you for any of these details before the survey starts, then it's most definitely a fake. If you enter your details, they'll be sold to third-party advertising companies, and you'll be bombarded with spam emails, texts, phone calls, and junk mail in the post.

Think about it, if they genuinely cast a survey for a research purpose, they don't need any of your personal details. In fact, they want - they need - the responses anonymously.

If they were to offer a prize competition in exchange for answering the questions, then they would be asking for your consent (to give out your personal data) after the survey, not before. And they would only require your email address in order to enter the competition. Otherwise, it would be a data protection breach.

So if you log on to a survey and are immediately asked for your name, address, etc., then stop. Close the browser, to protect your data.

#2 Offering A Large(ish) Reward

Now you know you won't really make decent money with online surveys, right? From less than a dollar up to a few dollars per survey. But if someone's offering a lot more, say $10 or over per survey, then that's a red alert. Similarly, if someone's offering a big prize competition - the latest iPhone to win, the latest Nintendo to win, a prepaid Visa card...

...Then again, they'll be asking you for your personal details - where you want your money/competition prize to be sent to. All they want is your details so that they can sell it to third parties. You won't receive whatever's being offered.

You see, as I explained earlier, genuine research companies are looking for genuine answers. They don't want anyone whose primary intention is to make money to take part in their research. For the best interest of the clients (whoever requests them to run surveys), and for their own integrity.

Can You Make Money With Online Surveys?

You can make a little bit of pocket money with them for sure. But don't we all collect store card points, get 2-for-1 discounts, free trials, and all that when you least expect them?

I don't think it's worth spending hours and hours clicking just to receive something equivalent to a "2 for 1" grocery discount, do you?

Online surveys are not designed to let you make money. Remember that, at least.