Making cash from online survey sites - new MSE guide

reg091

Thanks for your thoughts. I am satisfied that I can make some money at it, and that is a reasonably useful amount of money. However, if you work it out as an hourly rate then it is obviously appalling! Luckily I have lots of time on my hands so it suits me. It does get very boring and repetitive though; very rarely do I get a survey that interests me.

I also get very angry at the badly worded ones, the ones where they ask the wrong questions to get the meaningful data they are after and the ones that bang on endlessly about your feelings about brands of x when you have already told them you have never bought x! Why do they think I would have an opinion if Boeing aircraft offer good value for money is staggering!

Totally agree with your frustrations over the rejections. Nothing more frustrating than finishing a survey after 25 minutes or so, being thanked and clicking Finish, and then getting declined. At first I used to complain to the platform about but of course it isn't their fault. Qmee (whose customer support is fantastic) tell me they actively feedback to the providers that they shouldn't do it (it seems that some of them wait until completion and then do the qualification checks whilst most do the checks at the beginning). Then there is the problem of completing it too quickly, having conflicting answers etc. which in fairness they can only check at the end.

Qmee assure me that if a survey provider rejects you after finishing they are "not allowed" to use your answers. We have to trust them to all be scrupulous then.....

mjm3346

Over the last 3 tax years plus the 7 months of this one I have received £4,073 (amount paid to me) in total from traditional surveys (helped by £500 from a prize draw on one survey), plus bit of swagbucks,  internet trackers, mobile apps, recording/scanning shopping etc (inc Nielsen, Consumer pulse, Media rewards, MobileXpression)  - effort from me is a max of a couple of hours a week  - I generally only do surveys with the sites that are actually after the info and not sites that carry them for others - they want their cut so there is less for whoever is answering  - Swagbucks for instance often pay less than 10% compared to going direct - you can also end up attempting the same survey more than once across several sites - I rarely get screened out from "proper" surveys, certainly not enough to be bothered by it.

AlexJ88

mjm3346 said:

Over the last 3 tax years plus the 7 months of this one I have received £4,073 (amount paid to me) in total from traditional surveys (helped by £500 from a prize draw on one survey), plus bit of swagbucks,  internet trackers, mobile apps, recording/scanning shopping etc (inc Nielsen, Consumer pulse, Media rewards, MobileXpression)  - effort from me is a max of a couple of hours a week  - I generally only do surveys with the sites that are actually after the info and not sites that carry them for others - they want their cut so there is less for whoever is answering  - Swagbucks for instance often pay less than 10% compared to going direct - you can also end up attempting the same survey more than once across several sites - I rarely get screened out from "proper" surveys, certainly not enough to be bothered by it.

id very much like to hear what survey sites you use or recommend that pay better and ''proper'' surveys as you say. Also any other reputable website/app.

After a quick google mobilexpression is an app id stay well away from due to the reviews stating they record passwords, usernames and bank details.

mjm3346

AlexJ88 said:
id very much like to hear what survey sites you use or recommend that pay better and ''proper'' surveys as you say. Also any other reputable website/app.

After a quick google mobilexpression is an app id stay well away from due to the reviews stating they record passwords, usernames and bank details.

On standard surveys I have pretty much cut back now to Onepoll (£50 this year), Pinecone and PopulusLive (nearing £150 this year) 
Mobile didn't have any "real" info on it - got it to use with swagbucks in the old days when you could get £30 to £40 a month just from running videos with almost zero effort and the mobilex app added £2 a week just for clicking on it once a week to claim the  earnings and once every 10 weeks to claim a £20 payout (got an extra £20 for the first 4 weeks when I signed up plus a payment from swagbucks). I do GFK  TV/Radio questionnaires but that's all prize draws. Media rewards is on mobile and records what adverts you are exposed to - there can be surveys based on ad campaigns you have heard, although I don't usually see/hear many ads I get a short (3 or 4 mins) monthly survey for a £5 as well as entries to prize draws for leaving the app running - consumer pulse £150 - £200 a year (recording certain types of purchases or rentals), Nielsen shopping scanning maybe £80 to £120 a year.

reg091

mjm3346 said:

Over the last 3 tax years plus the 7 months of this one I have received £4,073 (amount paid to me)  effort from me is a max of a couple of hours a week 

I am astonished that you have made so much with such little effort. I diligently do a good couple of hours a day, seven days a week and can't get close to those numbers. I guess the main difference must be the rejection rate (approx 80% for me). Maybe my profile, age etc screens me out a lot more than yours does.
You make money on Pinecone which is invite only and I haven't been invited to join and Populous. Populous is one of my worst, they send me maybe one survey every two weeks and I usually get screened out of those. My earnings there (£16 in five months) are inflated by £5 for having a tracker app on my phone.
My money comes from the hundreds of 11p, 13p, 44p etc. surveys I do on Qmee. It's a time-consuming b#ll ache but slowly adds up.

mjm3346

reg091 said:

mjm3346 said:

Over the last 3 tax years plus the 7 months of this one I have received £4,073 (amount paid to me)  effort from me is a max of a couple of hours a week 

I am astonished that you have made so much with such little effort. I diligently do a good couple of hours a day, seven days a week and can't get close to those numbers. I guess the main difference must be the rejection rate (approx 80% for me). Maybe my profile, age etc screens me out a lot more than yours does.
You make money on Pinecone which is invite only and I haven't been invited to join and Populous. Populous is one of my worst, they send me maybe one survey every two weeks and I usually get screened out of those. My earnings there (£16 in five months) are inflated by £5 for having a tracker app on my phone.
My money comes from the hundreds of 11p, 13p, 44p etc. surveys I do on Qmee. It's a time-consuming b#ll ache but slowly adds up.

A bit before Covid letting videos play on the mobile apps from Swagbucks plus the mobilex app made a good start with almost zero effort returning around £500 a year - that side of swagbucks then dried up so much I don't bother with it and a change of mobile that wasn't compatible with mobilex ended that one - I forgot about the internet tracker from ipsos another almost zero effort one worth up to £10 a month but they changed reward providers and none of them were any use to me so ditched that one after a couple of months - another one was Medux that paid £10 a month for using their internet tracking device but they sadly switched to fiber BB only.

Of ordinary survey sites I actually find Populous the best payer with £100 so far this year and I am close to another £50, I like onepoll because they are usually short and have had 2 x £25 this year - Pinecone doesn't make much difference as I hardly ever get surveys from them now maybe £10 a year used to get £36+ (I suspect younger families is what they are after for many of the products) - there are usually signup links to them around - sometimes on the pickmypostcode site so you can add to your bonus on there as well as join pinecone.

I started about 11 years ago and for several years I did the scatter-gun approach and belonged to dozens of sites including --- ipsos, valued opinions,opinion world, mindmover, toluna, ciao, myvoice, gfk, just the answer, lightspeed, mylife, mutualpoints, mysurvey, global opinion panel, harris interactive, consumer intelligence,  pure profile, rewarded opinions, mytns, crowdology, panel base, opinium, global(synovate), newvistalive, yougov, mcains, nectar adpoints, tns/royal mail, springboard, ccb, maximiles, power of you - plus some sites I gave up on without ever reaching a payout threshold  - took 8 years and a lot more effort to earn £3768.

Now I stick to a few sites and prefer passive earnings whenever possibly (I don't do anywhere near as many now but when I started surveys I also used to enter competitions and have had over £20 k worth of prizes, the majority by value were cash or vouchers).

reg091

Excellent, thank you for sharing in such detail. I have a tracker from Populous running on my phone for £5 a month, maybe I will investigate some more as you can't beat getting paid for doing nothing!

AlexJ88

reg091 said:

Excellent, thank you for sharing in such detail. I have a tracker from Populous running on my phone for £5 a month, maybe I will investigate some more as you can't beat getting paid for doing nothing!

Are trackers stackable? Like can you have multiples on a laptop and phone? And what are the best ones? Ipsos just gave me £17 for my first month, so I'm happy to use more if possible 

AlexJ88

reg091 said:

Excellent, thank you for sharing in such detail. I have a tracker from Populous running on my phone for £5 a month, maybe I will investigate some more as you can't beat getting paid for doing nothing!

Also do you have a link to the populous tracker? Can't seem to find it

mckinkle

reg091 said:

mjm3346 said:

Over the last 3 tax years plus the 7 months of this one I have received £4,073 (amount paid to me)  effort from me is a max of a couple of hours a week 

I am astonished that you have made so much with such little effort. I diligently do a good couple of hours a day, seven days a week and can't get close to those numbers. I guess the main difference must be the rejection rate (approx 80% for me). Maybe my profile, age etc screens me out a lot more than yours does.
You make money on Pinecone which is invite only and I haven't been invited to join and Populous. Populous is one of my worst, they send me maybe one survey every two weeks and I usually get screened out of those. My earnings there (£16 in five months) are inflated by £5 for having a tracker app on my phone.
My money comes from the hundreds of 11p, 13p, 44p etc. surveys I do on Qmee. It's a time-consuming b#ll ache but slowly adds up.

I'm with you in being stunned about how Populus seem to have scored so well with this forumite.  It's taken me 2 years to reach the £50 threshold to be able to cash it in.  So often you get loads of questions in just to be rejected at what seems to be a long way through the survey which is at least suspicious and definitely frustrating.  The badly wording of them drives me mad as so many times there isnt the option to actually reply that you haven't used the product or service, they seem to be very randomly prepared.

The worst thing is that having reached the threshold and waiting to be paid its taken me 2 months only to be told, after I insisted on being told what bank details they have for me, that they hold fictitious bank details and as such no payment still.  I have contacted them multiple times asking them to look into this only to be repeatedly told that the third pary company that pays out is looking into it and they can't be at fault and that the bank details they have must have been supplied by me.  Having had the samer bank account for decades (yes sorry Martin!) I know the details perfectly and know that I would never have supplied anything other than my bank details as Ionly have one bank account??!!  I'veemailed Populus AGAIN in the hope that they pull their finger out and actually pay me for my hard earned payment.

I am definitely going to be spending my spare time looking into some other sites now based on what I have read here in the forum so I thank you all for your informative feedback.