Although most people know that earning money while taking online surveys is real, we regularly get asked whether it’s possible to have a full-time job taking online surveys. Admittedly, the answer is not a straightforward yes, or no, but we’d like to share our insights and tips about this popular topic.
The work at home dream
The idea of working at home at an online surveys job sounds idyllic; sleep in, eat breakfast, take a few interesting surveys on your laptop, a few on your phone, run some errands, do a few more surveys, earn a cash reward and call it a day. Sounds easy, right?
The work at home reality
Although you can earn an extra income from survey taking, earning a lot of income, or perhaps more importantly, earning a consistent amount of income can be difficult.
One of the main reasons is that paid survey opportunities are unpredictable. One day you might receive 10 survey invitations and are able to complete all of them. The next day, qualifying for even a couple of studies may be challenging. Either way, having a legit job taking online surveys will not compare to the income of a traditional 9-5 position. So if you’re considering survey taker jobs, bear this in mind so that your expectations are in line.
Legit survey jobs in different scopes and sizes
If you’re retired, on disability, a student, or between full time positions and are currently unemployed, you might consider online survey taking your ‘job’, as it might be the only source of income for you.
Although a job typically refers to completing tasks using your skills and receiving money in exchange for the work you complete at an agreed upon price, jobs really do come in all shapes and sizes.
Full time, part-time, casual, contract positions – a job is flexible in its definition. Similarly, online survey jobs can be whatever you make them; you can take surveys for hours in a single day, or do them occasionally, here and there. A gig, a casual job, an online job, a hobby – you can call your survey taking job whatever you want!
Making surveys work!
Although being a full-time survey taker is theoretically possible, taking surveys should be considered a supplement to any existing income you’re making elsewhere, or if you don’t have other employment, consider your earnings extra pocket money. Whether having cash for birthday gifts, buying supplies at Walmart, or treating yourself to that fitness tracker you’ve been eyeing on Amazon, participating in studies can help ease some financial burdens.
Although any income you make will fluctuate, there are some things you can do to legitimately earn as much as you can from your paid survey job.
1. Start with a dozen different panels
Registering with paid survey sites, or ‘panels’ as they’re formally called, is the first thing you need to do to start as a survey taker. Start by signing up with survey panels that are established, well rated, and have good reviews.
Joining a legitimate survey panel is always free and only takes a couple of minutes.
» Panels with excellent user reviews on SurveyPolice include: Survey Junkie, Tellwut and PaidViewpoint.
2. Throw some variety into the mix
Survey opportunities are plentiful when compared to other types of research assignments, but exploring other options may help you boost your income, enabling you to earn extra cash.
Consider signing up for taste testing companies, online video surveys and product testing. All of these will be harder to qualify for than surveys, but the pay is usually better and it’ll add some variety to the mix!T
» Panels that offer a variety of different research types include: Pinecone Research, and Toluna Influencers.
3. Zero in on small, local panels
In addition to joining the big survey sites, consider joining some smaller panels who don’t operate outside of your country, or whose main focus is on the local market. These small sites will offer fewer surveys, but the pay is often better, as the number of participants they have at their disposal is smaller. This will help you earn your first reward faster!
Here are a few examples:
USA: MySoapBox (California), Survey RoundTable (Maryland)
Canada: LEO Surveys (based in Montreal), SurveyLion (Ontario)
United Kingdom: Panelbase.net (Northumberland)
Australia: Rewardia (NSW), LiveTribe (based in Sydney), Mint Surveys (NSW)
4. Get the app!
If a survey company has a survey app available, consider downloading it. Getting notifications of new surveys on your phone will help you see them faster, making it less likely that a paid survey will be closed (or full) by the time you try taking it. An added bonus is convenience – take surveys while you’re queued in line for coffee, riding the bus, waiting at an appointment, etc.
» Panels who have their own mobile apps include include: LEO Surveys, and YouGov.
5. Log in daily
There are a number of legitimate paid surveys sites that post opportunities daily to their website, and/or post new survey opportunities to their user’s account dashboards first, before emailing them. Logging in daily to your account on such sites, will help you find online surveys to complete that you might otherwise miss. A good example of this is: PaidViewpoint.
6. Hate gift cards, but found a great survey panel?
If you don’t like gift cards (like an Amazon voucher), but like taking surveys with a certain survey panel and that’s all that they offer as a rewards option, there’s hope! First thing, double check the survey site’s rewards catalog to make sure there are indeed no gift card options you really would use. Gift cards to Walmart or Amazon e-codes can be very useful these days, as both offer groceries and household staples like paper towel and cleaning supplies, we all need and buy.
Visa gift cards are available as a rewards option with many gift-card only panels (like Tellwut for example). As Visa is accepted as a payment method at almost every online or offline store, you should have no trouble finding a place to spend this rewards option and should consider it if you don’t like gift cards in general, but pre-paid Visa cards are available.
If there are absolutely no useful gift card options available, consider redeeming your survey earnings for a popular gift card option that others may like, and sell it for cash or exchange it for a gift card you would actually use, using a gift card exchange website like CardCash. You will lose part of the gift card’s value this way, but if you’re desperate to cash out earnings for a reward and leave a panel, this option might be worth exploring.
7. Plug away at what works
Not every survey site will work well for you; some may offer boring surveys, too many disqualifications, or cashout minimums that take forever to attain. Stick with what works, and dump the ones that don’t. There are literally hundreds of online survey panels to choose from, so there’s no point in wasting time on ones that don’t work for you or don’t offer specific rewards you’re looking for (like PayPal cash for instance).
Some warnings
People who have online survey jobs are also known as ‘professional survey takers’, or ‘professional respondents’ in the market research industry, and researchers are not fond of them.
The worry is that people who take surveys all the time are ‘gaming’ the system by being opportunistic. They do this by recognizing well paid studies, and may provide poor, low-quality responses just to get through an online paid survey. They may also lie while answering qualification and screener questions, just so they can complete a survey they wouldn’t otherwise qualify for.
While we don’t necessarily endorse the idea of having a survey taking job, as per above, we recognize that the word ‘job’ can mean different things. There’s nothing wrong with joining a few online survey sites and being a smart survey taker, knowing how to best make use of your time.
As the market research industry continues to mature and become more sophisticated, survey panels are implementing more and more safeguards, making any true ‘gaming’ more and more difficult anyway. If you’re not being intentionally deceptive in your answers or speeding through surveys, and are instead thorough and attentive, you shouldn’t have anything to worry about.
Final thoughts
While in theory, a full-time online surveys job is possible, the probability of burnout and boredom are very high. Like many things in life, the fantasy of it may appear better than what the actual reality of it would entail.
Some people love taking surveys and can do it for a few hours a day, while others can only tolerate occasional study participation. Everyone is different. Find your flow with strategies that work for you, and you’ll surely find success with the survey taker jobs you choose to participate in.
» Find real online survey websites
I get directed to survey sites that I have already signed up directly to. Is the directing survey site skimming my points?
Hi G,
There is no way for survey sites to skim points from sites you already belong to. You might be directed to different survey websites, as the referring website may earn a small fee if you choose to sign up. However, they don’t know which sites you are already member of, and certainly don’t have access to your account or points balance.