Do this instead of taking surveys or playing games for cash or doing micro tasks to start a quick side hustle
So you have decided to make some extra cash on the side and like almost everyone, you have searched income making ideas on google. Maybe that’s how you came across this fantastic website called medium in the first go. I have been in the same place as you, looking for ideas to supplement my meagre income from a 9 to 5 job by putting some time aside, using only the power of my mind, and the internet.
After spending months trying to do paid surveys and then realizing that they are designed to pay less than minimum wage, and then trying out different alternatives for a better payout, I wanted to share some practical learnings with everyone trying to start their side income hustle. If you read this, you will quickly learn what I have learnt in a long time, in the hard way, so that you can save a lot of your time and efforts and focus your energies on things that pay much better.
How much do paid survey sites actually pay you?
Most of the content that you come across on the web have a headline which is a version of “earn easy money without much skills” and the article body / youtube video that rattles out 5 to 10 websites with the same names that “pay” you to share your opinion and thoughts. What these content creators don’t tell you is what you will earn per hour of your time after doing loads of mentally exhausting work. So here is a quick summary of what I have tried and how much money I made using survey sites. My idea is not to dissuade anyone from starting the much rewarding side hustle journey, but only to put a giant marker on the crossroad so that I can get the maximum number of travelers to avoid going to the longer, twisty and loopy path just because there are 1000s of shiny articles that promise “easy money”.
Branded Surveys: Listed on many reputed sources in the interwebs as one of the highest paying survey sites in Canada, they have surveys for practically everyone. What have I earned after reaching the highest possible “tier” (Gold) with the maximum bonus points? At best 4 $ (USD) an hour. I did not qualify for all the surveys I attempted, and the ones which I did, had plenty of questions (I thought I was pretty fast when I used to answer 30–40 questions thoroughly, with sincere comments in about 15 minutes). Now when I go to a fast food drive through and think of “low skill” retail jobs that pay 4 to 5 times that pay in one hour, I can’t help but feel that I got cheated somehow, and that it was not worth it at all.
Survimo: Another one mentioned as a well paying survey site in a few places. I will post a screenshot of my login page and you can take a look for yourself:
As you can see above, the best pay rate is about 4$ (3 USD) per hour. For a trial, I did a survey that claimed to take 5 mins (I actually took a couple of minutes extra) and got paid a whopping 50 cents.
I will spare you some time and won’t post other survey sites as by now you have probably understood my key message. The reason I have not signed up for surveyjunkie is that the literal average pay is about 2–3 $ an hour, even though I recall the name so well, because it is mentioned everywhere, from mainstream media news websites to reputed blogs.
So Abhi, why are survey sites mentioned literally everywhere as a source of side income?
Good question dear reader. I think the reasons why these survey sites are pushed so much universally are:
- They want a large audience with a wide variety in demographics (age, gender, location, income etc.) to participate in surveys that businesses pay them well for, and in order to achieve this goal, they advertise everywhere to try to reach to everyone possible.
- The content creators and influencers get paid affiliate income for every click they can generate for these sites. There is nothing wrong with affiliate income, although I lose interest when the incentive given to someone for getting someone else to sign up to something is much greater than actually doing those surveys. As a result of these incentives, these sites end up occupying a large portion of cyberspace.
- They are advertised as something that doesn’t take a lot of skills and time, and in this age of attention (deficit) economics, people don’t mind trying things that are easy and don’t “demand” a lot of their time.
What about Games for cash rewards? Micro tasks?
I am sure everyone has come across some form of ad for swagbucks, mistplay and actual games like bingo/solitaire something or the other on the internet, social media and even video streaming platforms. What is not so obvious is that these are nothing but glorified advertisement platforms. I have read reviews that you actually need to spend something like 4–5 hours playing games (and watching all their ads) to earn a 10$ cash/visa reward. There is another (unfortunately popular) category from hell called micro tasks (ever heard of remotasks? Mechanical turk by Amazon?) which pay unsuspecting “workers” a few cents to 2 $ an hour for a range of mind numbing tasks from labeling or categorizing pictures or typing/data entry or doing mundane repetitive low attention work. Again, if you look closely, these tasks are nothing but a way to get thousands of different, low paid humans to train AI/machine learning software. I should mention here that these sites are different from taskrabbit or genuine data entry jobs where it is not so difficult to earn 15 to 40$ an hour (since these reward “higher” skills like furniture assembly/plumbing/carpentry/trades and data accuracy).
Phew! Sounds like almost everything on the internet is at best a way to get me to do cheap labor and at worst a scam. Is there actually anything I can start doing on the internet without putting money to make some money?
Well the correct answer is that there are plenty of things, though you need to look a little higher on the skill ladder. You can probably start thinking in the direction of paid surveys, focus groups and medical studies. There are plenty of websites that pay you for your opinion, genuine and sincere inputs to improve their product/design or even their offers. Few of the websites that I have tried and visit regularly are (affiliate links included): Respondent, UserTesting, UserCrowd, User Interviews, Userfeel and Trymata (previously TryMyUI). I regularly apply for studies and interviews on these websites, and I earn an average of about 300 $ every month just from these websites. My best paid work (150 $ per hour and once 350$ for a 2 hour study) have come from physical visits from few of these studies. Not all of these sites have work all the time, but I feel great knowing that I am earning minimum of 60$ per hour doing these, which is 30 (!) times what I got from doing paid surveys. The only caveat is that you need to keep applying to studies frequently to qualify for these studies and interviews.
There are other high paying websites such as Focusgroup.com and American Consumer Opinion. But I can’t vouch for them personally as I usually don’t qualify for those as I am on the other side of the USA.
The last idea I would like to introduce to you in this article, is medical research. There are plenty of clinics/pharma businesses that will pay you handsomely if you participate in their trials while having a particular genetic makeup, or a rare condition/allergy or disease. Few businesses even pay regular stem cell donors, in loyalty incentivizing tiers!
So, if your objective is to earn side income using just an internet enabled device, before you sign up for a survey site or micro tasking site, or install a cash for game app on your phone, or spend mad weekend hours doing 50 question surveys that pay a few cents, please pause, take a step back, and start at least making a profile on a paid survey site that pays you higher than, or at the very least, similar to your regular job pay rate per hour. Otherwise you will get better return per unit of your time doing overtime at your regular job, or doing a second/part time job in your own current field of work, because I can bet it is already paying you better than most of these “best paying” survey sites. If you are aware of other such interview websites, please feel free to mention in comments. I would love to learn from you. Happy Hustling!
This was my very first medium article, so apologies if it is a little rough on the edges (I promise that no AI was used) or a little verbose. Please feel free to comment on what I could have done to improve this article, and I will ensure to include your inputs for the next article, which is going to be about tips and tricks to improve side income using paid interview sites and design improvement sites, with a few details on what these sites are about and how to get the best “hit rate” with least possible time spent.