Are Online Surveys A Good Way to Make Money?

Can you make money with Online Surveys?

Zarina Macha (who regularly features on Mrs Mummypenny) took on this task for me. Do online surveys REALLY make you money?

I have always doubted they make decent money, thinking it was pennies earnt for much time clicking and answering questionnaires. Zarina has never completed any of these before and could do with some extra cash, she road-tested a few. Over to Zarina.

A Good Way to Make Money?

There are lots of websites out there that allow you to sign up participate in surveys for market research. What’s in it for you? Money, of course. But just how effective are these sites? Is sitting on your laptop answering questions about what brand of shoes you buy a fast-track to cash?

I tried out five of these websites, to see which were worth the effort. An important preamble: they all ask for personal details including postcode. I used my middle name rather than surname and my registered business address rather than home address because I’m super paranoid about data being shared. I would also set up a separate email address for this purpose.

Let’s go through each one!

20Cogs – £5 Welcome Bonus

I will start with my favourite. I signed up for 20Cogs and chose an offer where I was redirected to Lifepoints. These two were the only ones I actually liked and would recommend. 20Cogs instantly gave you five pounds upon completing a three-minute survey and then offer you different sites to sign up to – you can refresh the page until you find one you like, and I clicked on Lifepoints.

I really liked Lifepoints because of the practical usage; the points convert into money (once you stack up enough) which can then be put into your PayPal account, or to purchase items from Starbucks, Love2Shop, Amazon, and other online stores. And I actually made eleven pounds from 20Cogs which they transfer to your bank account within days.

InboxPounds – Earn Cash for Email, Surveys, Games, and More

This site was easy enough to sign up to with email, and they give you a £1 sign up bonus. Unfortunately, their offers included fifty pence for a half-hour survey. At least questions were simple and quick. Mainly asked about household income, work sector, and what kind of business operations you do at your place of work. Options of professions included marketing, human resources, hospitality, and education. (Not really suited to a self-employed author.)

Nonetheless; if you did lots of these quick and simple questionnaires it could be a decent way to make passive income. I found the site disorganised and throwing too many offers at me, plus most surveys pay £0.20 – £0.75; not really worth it. One was all about sports brands but I spent twenty minutes on it and didn’t even complete half before giving up.

Also, I got offered a £250 Morrison’s voucher which is great, but it required me needing to sign up for a gift card which could later charge me. (You could cancel the subscription but it’s likely I’d either need to keep it rolling to get the voucher or still get charged for the first month – either way I don’t believe in anything that sounds too good to be true).

There was also an option to pay twelve quid to sign up to EuroMillions with the chance that the more I spent, the higher the chance of winning the jackpot – do I seem that gullible?

Voice UK Panel DOI [UK]

Pretty similar to the first one; sign up was simpler again with email. I preferred their company website as it was clearer and more coherent with lighter and calmer colours and had less of ‘earn £0.40 now’ thrown in my face. At one point though, the site didn’t let me scroll down for some reason – I tried to put my university graduation year as 2018 but maybe I’m too young for their target audience.

Again, they paid little and the questions were pretty boring; one was all about whether or not I’d become a solicitor and giving me information that supposedly meant soliciting would be my dream job (it really isn’t).

Toluna Influencers – DOI [UK]

Was probably the worst; they had the longest sign up, asking for education status, employed status, marital status, Facebook status – okay not that. I guess the benefit of that is that it collected everything straight away –or not quite; I still had to put my employment and education status on surveys to see if I’d qualify to take part, and most of them declined my acceptance. One of the few I did was one which asked if I’ve ever had sickle cell disease; I answered ‘no’ and got a ‘congratulations for completing this survey’ message!

This one also required thousands of points in order to get any rewards; based on the amount of declines I kept getting I would say this one was the least worth it.

Conclusion

20Cogs and Lifepoints are the only ones I would recommend; you do need to do a lot, but they are generally quick and give you better rewards. I got eleven pounds and can barely remember what I did.

If you can find company sites that offer more than pennies, it’s not a bad idea to make quick money. I will probably keep my 20Cogs account – true, it’s passive income. At least the questions weren’t difficult (a few asked about personal health which was slightly more interesting than household income after taxes).

This post contains affiliate links. If you choose to sign up I will get a small payment, this in no way affects your sign up process or questionnaire payment.