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If you are thinking to earn money online with surveys, they are easy. You can quickly start them at home. What you need is a phone or system with an internet connection. Most survey sites are free to join, and you will need no educational skill or qualification to start.
From my personal experience, most survey sites pay peanuts per survey. I appreciate survey sites that disclose the exact value of each one but detest survey sites that rewarded me with a point system that is not straightforward but confusing.
So I concluded online surveys are not an excellent way to make money online.
Instead, you can make sustainable income online through other means, including freelancing, affiliate marketing, selling digital and physical products, selling Amazon Return Pallets and other legit online jobs. But for me, I advise you consider to make money online with an affiliate program.
But if you are considering earning money online with surveys, let us see how it works. We will see how online surveys work, how to position yourself to make money with surveys and finally, I will point you to some survey companies that I have personally used before.
Table of Contents
How do Online Surveys Work
Most companies need data to base their day to day decisions. This data can be in the form of numbers or objective choices. They are usually collected to help them understand consumer behaviour and buying trends.
The research is divided into two stages – secondary and primary stage. The secondary stage uses data sources like newspapers, magazines and white papers. The focus here is information about the product a company wants to sell and the available market.
The primary stage engages in two kinds of research – qualitative and quantitative. While the qualitative focuses on particular questions and concerns, quantitative focus on gathering sufficient data to analyse.
Surveys fall under the quantitative research methods. They are focused on generating and capturing consumers responses to a set of questions. They can be conducted in person, via emails, phone calls or through an auto-filled web form. The answer can be recorded by the interviewer or the consumer himself.
The consumer responding to a survey is referred to as the survey panel. Companies usually appreciate using a large survey panel. It is believed that the more the results, the more accurate they will be. Companies generate survey panels through several means. This can include emails, phone calls or the use of mall intercept (A situation where folks are intercepted in the mall and politely requested to help with surveys).
But for this article, our focus will be surveys taken online via survey sites; let us begin to see how you can reposition yourself and earn money online with surveys. It is worth mentioning again that you cannot make sustainable income via survey sites. I recommend looking at affiliate marketing or any other form of digital marketing.
How to Position Yourself to Earn money online with Surveys
In case you are still want to earn money online with surveys, there are some tips I will like to share with you. They will help you start on a good note, protect your income and help you earn a reasonable amount in a short time.
1. Create a Separate Email Address for survey sites
It is important you create a separate email address for your online survey business. Survey sites send in a lot of emails on a daily basis. Signing up on a separate email site will prevent them from clogging your emails with their multiple emails.
2. Install anti-malware software
Take the security of your system and work seriously. Install anti-malware software; it will keep your system safe in case any of the survey sites direct you to a client that is spammy. However, this happens on a very rare occasion.
3. Keep your personal details.
Avoid oversharing your personal details. Information like bank details, Debit or credit card Pin, drivers license number, and international passport pics and numbers should not be shared.
If you are working on a survey related to kitchen utensils, disclosing information about your health will be out of place. Be careful how you release information.
4. Take breaks
If you want to do well with surveys, you must be prepared for lengthy survey sessions. This means you will have your face glued to the screen for a good number of time.
Recommended Sites to Earn Money Online with Surveys
1. Swagbucks
It is popularly known for its SB points as earnings for its client. This Swagbucks can be converted into gift cards or cash via PayPal. It is one of the longest standing online websites where you can earn money online with surveys, playing games, watching videos, and searching.
2. Survey Junkie
Here is an online survey site that rewards you with 25 points for signing up. I found most of their survey highly engaging since I was referred to the third party client dashboard.
What I love best about their website is the neat and friend user dashboard. So even in the face of been disqualified, I was encouraged to continue, and I got others. With Survey Junkie, I had to earn as much as 1,000 points before cashing out $10.
For their customer service, you will find them highly responsive. Click here to read more about Survey Junkie
3. Opinion Panel
They are a UK based survey site that allows you to earn an income for responding to surveys. They also conduct online discussion groups and give you an opportunity to win prizes when you participate. Apart from this, they conduct online discussions, online communities, and they have a referral program. You can also win $50 when you write articles that are at least 700 words in length.
To join Opinion Panel, you have to live in the UK. You will have to register with your UK phone number.
To earn a significant income from the Opinion Panel, you have to gain plenty of survey invites. Apart from increasing your income, it will increase your chances of receiving more invites.
When it comes to payment, their minimum threshold is $10. You can withdraw your earnings via PayPal or bank transfer, and you will get your earnings within 15 days.
4. Life Points
Life Point is a legit survey site created by light speed, a research and analysis firm. They have grown their member base to over 5 million participants. You can earn a decent income from this site by participating in surveys, mini polls, product testing, and behaviour tracking.
When it comes to earning, you earn what is referred to as life points. You can make a withdrawal of these points via electronic gift card, PayPal or charitable donations. For gift cards, 550points will equate to a $5 Amazon gift card, while 205 points will equate to $1.80 when making donations on a platform like UNICEF.
Rapping it Up on How to Earn Money Online With Surveys
There are lots of websites that run surveys online. While some are specific to certain geographical regions, others are interested in specific types of surveys. But they generally have a very similar module of operation.
Before we take a look at some of my recommended websites, let us see how most of these websites works.
- Register with your email address on the website, and supply your login and contact information.
- You will receive an email with a link for confirmation. After which you can supply more detailed information.
- After you have registered and confirmed your email, the survey sites will start sending links to surveys based on your demographics.
- The surveys are structured in such a way that they have an expected time for completing them. Usually, it is less than ten minutes, but it can be more in some instances.
- Some will not reward you in cases where you do not qualify for the surveys, another will.
- Monitor your emails to take advantage of coupons and discount offers.
I have stressed it, you can earn money online with surveys, but it cannot make you rich. If your aim is to earn a sustainable income, then you must be looking at other income sources. Although this method will cost investing more effort, their payoff is greater and sustainable.
I tried to do surveys for about 6 months and got so frustrated. When they send it to and I answer almost everything I would get a notification to say that this survey was already full or not suited for me etc…
But now after reading your article I will give it another go with one of these new survey companies you mentioned. Yes its not sustainable income like affiliate marketing but if managed properly it can become a source of income and never know when those credits/vouchers will come in handy 🙂
I very much agree with you Janine. If properly managed, you can make some do few dollars on reputate survey sites. But when it comes to making sustainable income survey earnings cannot put food on your table
Hello, I’d like to make some additional money online, but it appears that I have no prior experience with surveys, as I’ve never had them work for me. Some of the surveys are quite perplexing, yielding no results for the time spent answering the questions. Apart from that, I’ve never considered freelancing because I lack the ability to write good material. However, I intend to learn more about affiliate marketing in the future.
And, in order to learn how to generate money online, I’ve joined the “wealthy affiliate”.
However, I’ve heard that surveys do not provide a stable source of money.
Hopefully, I have never utilized any of my personal information, such as bank account information while taking surveys online.In my opinion, I should proceed with wealthy affiliate, even though I am new to the platform. I believe that if I continue with it, I will do much better.
Thank you very much.
You are very right, a platform like Wealthy Affiliate will position you and your business rightly
Hello, thank you very much for these practical advices. I never thought about creating a separate account. But now that I think about it, to avoid spam, it’s a simple solution. And an anti-malware software is just a most. There are so many risks online and specially when doing surveys. With these things, I am all set!
Funny to see this pop up today. I remember looking into survey sites about 16 years ago. Back then there was a lot of hype about surveys and everyone was claiming it to be a great income stream. It isn’t.
I wonder how long it takes to earn 1000 points to earn a measly $10? To me it sounds fishy. Would you agree that this isn’t a valuable income stream for someone who wanted to earn enough online income to pay the bills (this is a rhetorical question and not applicable to me). 🙂
Your blog post was clear and concise.
I appreciate that you acknowledge this is a way to make money online, but not one that will get you rich. I also appreciate the mention of other sustainable income sources, which can help anyone in the long-term. However as you pointed out, it will cost investing more effort and time.
All round I enjoyed reading your post.
Cheers
Robin
I am glad you found reading enjoyable
Thanks for the great information about how to make money online. I was always a bit wary about on line surveys, but I love the idea of installing a malware app. to protect your computer. Are you using all of the programs shown? And which do you think is the best? One last question, how much time do you have to invest to get any substantial income? Can you make $100 per day? Thanks for providing a great service.
Stephen
Honestly, when it comes to building a sustainable business time is not the only factor. The amount of money you are ready to invest and the amount of information available to contributes to your success.
Ayodeji
I agree with you that online surveys are not a great way to make money online. I did survey junkie for a while and it was good at first, but then it was like the surveys got longer and longer for less and less money. It took a lot of time, and many times, I would spend 20 minutes doing a survey, just for it to tell me that I wasn’t who they were looking for and then got nothing for it. Not a great way to make money. Affiliate marketing is much more satisfying.
Taking surveys can be fun but also time consuming. It takes a long time to earn any significant revenue from them. The threshold for payout most times is high. There are times that you are required to buy a product in order to get the revenue that you have earned. I stay away from those sites. Some of the like Survey Junkie are fairly straightforward but those are few. I would recommend researching survey sites as I would any other site that offers money for your work.
Jerry
Very on point my brother
Hello, Ayodeji, I so love this article because it is super informative and with it, newbies can start to make gradual income on a start off and that will be a morale booster. I am now training with wealthy affiliates, learning all I can to be able to make additional income online so that I can meet my lives targets financially. of a truth, I have no prior experience with surveys sites, because I heard that Some of them can be annoying, as they yield little or no results for the time spent answering the questions.
WA really is taking me to a level that will present me as a super affiliate marketer, yet my top goal is to be able to become a freelancer, author many books, most especially Christian books.
thanks once more for this post.
Great post to those who are willing to invest must time glued to their computers and to those who had nothing to do but just killing time to end each day. This will let them earn on the net without any cash out.
I’ve doing that in the past and very frustrated because am living in a country in which english is not spoken at all. So oftentimes my applications will be denied or they will not received any applicant for the time being.
Anyhow, how much did you earn a day of these endeavor?
Nice post, very well done.
Al