It’s as simple as expressing your opinion about beer, breakfast cereals, and the president of the United States, and you could get paid to do it while sitting in front of a computer. Online surveys won’t make you rich, and they won’t even earn you enough to live off, but they can give you a way to help pay the bills without leaving home.
You may feel like you’re wasting a lot of time at first, and it can seem labor-heavy when you’re new to the game. But after a while, once you’ve learned how to maximize your time at multiple sites simultaneously, earning decent money shouldn’t be too hard.
First things first: You need to weed out the scam sites from the reputable ones. Avoid survey sites that ask for money; these are often con jobs, and there are enough good free sites that you don’t need to pay for play.
Next, decide which kind of payout you want. If you’re looking to supplement your income, you presumably want cash. Many sites pay in sweepstakes entries and rewards points that are redeemable for products, which is fine if that’s your thing. If not, avoid these places and stick with the sites that pay cash.
Some of the more reputable cash sites include SurveySpot, Opinion Outpost and Toluna. At SurveySpot you can make as much as $20 a survey, though that’s rare; most of them pay much less. At Opinion Outpost, you’re paid $1 for each 10 points you earn, with 10-point surveys offered frequently (though you’ll probably be disqualified from taking many of them). Toluna also uses a point system, paying $20 for every 60,000 points.
Once you’ve done some research and have a long list of good, reputable cash-paying sites, sign up for all of them. Every one. The trick here is to spread yourself out as much as possible: Most survey sites require that you pre-qualify for each survey, and you’ll be disqualified from an awful lot of them, so you want as many survey opportunities as you can get.
Now, get ready to take some surveys. You’ll get most of your opportunities by email, but some sites you’ll want to check yourself. Your surveys could take anywhere from a few minutes to an hour or more, with the longer questionnaires typically paying more. Be honest and thorough, but don’t linger, as there’s always another survey.