What’s the best survey site? Can you make money from taking surveys? Which website should you use, or are there quicker ways to make more money online? Here are all the advantages and disadvantages of using websites like Prolific.
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Transcript: Is This The Best Survey Site?
Bear: [00:00:00] What’s up mother lovers? I’m so sorry. I don’t normally greet you that way. It won’t happen again. Seriously, though. What’s wrong? Most of us would like to make more money. Have you tried survey sites?
No, Bear. I said make more money, not spend hours scraping pennies in exchange for giving away all my data.
Hm. Why do other people think that they’re so great? I’ve hired Bearsy the third to bring to life some words about today’s topic, spoiler alert. This actor sounds a lot like me.
I don’t mean to rain on your parade, but I don’t really like survey sites. So let’s see what they say.
If the background behind me looks crooked, you’re probably right. Here’s why Prolific comes recommended as the best survey site. Prolific lets you complete more academic surveys, such as thoughts, feelings and reactions. Other survey sites and apps are usually opinions about technology, food, or other areas of consumer spending.
The surveys [00:01:00] are generally university research. So if you’d rather help a student or a researcher than a company with their marketing, then there’s that plus in the box, you can be screened out if you take too long, but they usually overestimate the time that you need to complete the survey.
The main thing that you’re interested in is what it pays.
Prolific suggests that researchers pay participants at least five pound per hour. That would be 83 P for 10 minutes of your time.
Obviously, if you manage to complete a 20 minute survey in half the time while still giving honest and thoughtful answers, then you will scrape slightly more pennies than the next person taking a survey.
When deciding whether a survey site is worth your time, I’ve seen other people say they don’t really care if it’s not very well paid, because they’re just sort of doing this stuff on automatic while watching TV or doing other activities that don’t require a lot of concentration.
Perhaps, this is why I’ve never really got into survey sites because I’m more likely to be making something for [00:02:00] you than watching television. If I am watching television, I’m usually very actively taking notes because I want to learn something about storytelling or just something about the world that’s going to change the way that I live.
But if you do have a lot of spare time where you’re just vegging, then I can see why you wouldn’t have a problem with sitting there with the Prolific site open just hitting refresh and hoping that surveys come up through the evening.
When choosing whether something is the best survey site then, I guess it depends on what your boredom threshold is, whether you actually find helping these researchers out interesting.
Some survey sites will let you complete surveys on your mobile phone if you prefer that. Ideally you don’t want to be getting constantly screened out of any surveys you take, especially if there’s no incentive to be screened out.
The anecdotes on Prolific is that the rewards actually add up quite quickly if you are using the site casually on a regular basis; you can then withdraw the money into your PayPal. They have a good line of contact with the researcher if you have any problems with your participation or payment. It’s always worth checking whether a survey site has a referral program.
The disadvantages of [00:03:00] Prolific: the minimum payout threshold is five pound.
So some users would reach that quicker than others.
You should always look out for fees too if a site takes a cut for you withdrawing any of your money.
Most of the time, you’re going to find that you need a laptop or a desktop in order to do surveys.
To get paid by Prolific specifically, the researcher has to approve your participation.
But like I said, you can always contact them if you think that’s taking too long. Would you really have time to chase that up? I hope not.
I guess the biggest disadvantage with Prolific and most survey sites is that the research can be very sporadic. So
it’s not like showing up to a nine till five or deciding to start any other line of side income where you know what your set hours are that you’ve scheduled for yourself to work on that thing. They don’t owe you anything. You’re not guaranteed any income from it.
So what’d you think, would you give that a go? Or is it not even worth the time to experiment, and if not, what would you do instead?
You could spend that time learning how to invest and opening an investment account for the first time.
You [00:04:00] could spend that time on content creation if you’re interested in earning money from YouTube, podcasting blogging. Those can also be very slow burners when no income is guaranteed at the outset.
Or would you just prefer to have a second employer and go out to another job with very set definite hours?
Here’s what I said the last time someone asked for ideas on how to make more money on the side. Previously on Save Like A Bear:
My friend asked me on behalf of a relative how they can make money quick in between jobs, especially money online. Survey sites, they’re very time consuming for quite varying rewards. So some sites make it a lot harder than others to hit the payment threshold. The best strategy I think with these is probably to go for ones like E-rewards or Lifepoints because they still give you points if you screen out.
Even if you only did a few surveys a day, you’d still be earning points potentially even if you didn’t manage to complete any surveys, if that makes sense. So something really important to be aware of with these websites: a lot of them either don’t [00:05:00] pay cash at all. They only have vouchers.
There’s usually like a wait to redeem the voucher. You might not always be able to get the voucher that you had your eye on. ~Plus you, you need to think like, what would you do? Two things.~ What will you do if the retailer goes bust before you spend your voucher? Which is just always something to think about with gift cards anyway.
The other thing is if you were trying to rack up like the maximum amount of points with the idea being that you’re not going to cash out until the very end, there is usually a danger there that if the website goes away, then obviously then so does all your effort and you don’t get to redeem any of that.
So some people just wait until they hit the minimum thresholds and withdraw what they can, however they can. That usually means that you take a hit, and especially the ones that pay cash, what you’ll find usually is that you get proportionately less if you go for the cash amount than a voucher is worth for the same exchange of points.
I think if you really have got a lot of time, I wouldn’t spend 12 hours a day on this. I’d split it with something that’s going to potentially have an ROI in future like creating content online or, or learning a skill like coding for free [00:06:00] online that you can then use on the side for money, ~when you go back to work~ or use it to negotiate better pay. This person was actually already writing a book in their free time.
That’s a good example of something that might make them some passive income in future. It’s not guaranteed, but it was costing them nothing to write and they had time to do it. Plus it’s fulfilling in other ways, which can also impact your finances. What did I suggest instead? This person is legally qualified.
They’re used to earning a lot of money. What I actually suggested was they target high ticket offerings, like freelance legal services and consulting, maybe through something like Clarity, or they could do it through Zoom.
~If they were willing to invoice, I think a service like clarity kind of handles the payments for you. And, and whoever’s on the call. They’re literally like paying per minute. They, you know, the call goes on for as long as it goes until everything’s been answered and that person just pays for that at the end.~
Also this person, they went to a prestigious university, so I suggested they get in touch maybe through alumni, with parents willing to pay for tuition for the kids who are hoping to apply to go to the same university or offering things like reviewing their application or helping them with interview answers.
And this person also turned out to have a TEFL qualification. They could sell tutoring packages online and teach English [00:07:00] if they want as a foreign language. Again, I’m not an advisor; they could think about investing if they weren’t already.
Now, apart from things like Freetrade, where you get a free share rickety tick that you can then withdraw or reinvest right away, this goes back to what you could do now that won’t earn you money in the short term, but it would be a good idea to cushion yourself in case this happens again. If you’re thinking about writing a book in case it earns you money in future, maybe do some research into investing as well. Let’s see what they decide to do, shall we?
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