You can make a little extra cash in your spare time by taking online surveys. Companies who want to know what’s on the minds of their customers are willing to pay for your opinion. Online surveys won’t make you rich, and won’t allow you to quit your day job, but you can make a little extra cash while engaging in a fun hobby.
Steps
- 1Search the internet for companies that will pay you to take surveys. Do not fall for scams where companies ask you to pay money to find fragile lists.
- 2Fill out the screener surveys. Many survey companies offer screener surveys when you register, which usually don't pay. But it's worth the little extra time it takes to fill these surveys out, because the more demographic information the market research companies have about you, the more targeted surveys they can send you.
- 3Check your email for survey opportunities. The companies you signed up with in step 1 will send you survey requests – some more often than others.
- 4Choose and complete the best surveys. Now that you have lots of surveys, you can pick the ones that seem the most interesting and most lucrative to you. If you have time, do them all. If not, decide which ones you’d like to take. You're under no obligation to complete any surveys if you don't want to.
- 5Earn a little extra money. When you take the surveys, the company will specify what you’ll receive as payment. Many companies pay in cash. Some offer prizes or products. Many companies let you accrue points which you can trade in for cash or prizes.
- 6Be wise. Some websites say you won a xbox360 or a new laptop for example. There is usually an asterisk near the "you won" part. This means you have to do something like buying stuff before you even get to talk about your prize. Don't fall into these sorts of traps, they're ridiculously difficult and not worth it.
Tips
- The more companies you sign up with, the more survey requests you’ll receive in your email and more opportunity you’ll have to make money.
- Make a dedicated email account set aside just for surveys to keep junk mail out of your normal inbox. Also, add the companies' e-mail addresses to your address book; if the address matches one in your address book, your e-mail account won't spam it automatically.
- Any individual survey site may only send a couple of surveys to you in a given month. The more companies you sign up with, the more surveys you'll receive.
- If you use Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome, try using the WOT extension to stop yourself from going to scam sites.