Have you used paid survey websites?

I gave out my date of birth more than a dozen times last week and I have no idea where it’s gone. That’s the main takeaway from my brief stint as a professional online survey-taker. 

I spent the week filling out surveys on and off via a number of ‘paid survey’ websites, hoping to find out how much I could make from each of them and share the results in an article. But so far I’m penniless.

Can you make money from online surveys?

Despite spending several hours engaging with these sites – telling them my name, postcode, political opinions and shopping habits – I paused my investigation having earned no money, and with no real idea of where I was sending my data most of the time. 

I’m not completely empty-handed. I have earned ‘points’ that promise to lead to real cash or voucher payouts someday. But they don’t do me a lot of good on their own. And they never will unless I keep up the survey grind. 

Some sites have an extremely high minimum payout of £50, which based on my experience would take a long, long time to reach. So unless you’re available for long-term engagement, these sites might not be for you.

Where are you sending your data?

I knew I wouldn’t necessarily find out exactly where my information was going or how it would be used. It’s part and parcel of filling out a survey that somebody, somewhere will read your answers – and that you’ll inform some kind of research, even if you don’t know exactly what it is.

But you have to trust that it’ll be properly stored and safeguarded, and while I did trust some websites, others made it difficult.

The sites I found most frustrating were the ones that act as a sort of ‘hub’ aggregating surveys hosted on other websites and sending you to them if you fit the desired criteria. Or at least that’s the idea.

These websites often bounce you around the internet like a beach ball, redirecting you from webpage to webpage as you fill out the same data again and again, hoping to qualify for the actual chance to earn cash (or points). 

As the surveys change shape, size and colour, you know you’re giving data to several different places. You cycle through URLs rapidly, sharing again and again who you are, how many hours of videogames you play a week (10+ for me) or whether you smoke (I don’t), before finally getting onto the actual main survey.

You get a message saying, ‘Okay, here’s your chance to answer questions and earn points.’ Wait, so you did all that for free? 

More often than not in my case, after filling out basic information and answering control questions like ‘Is this a frog?’ (Yes), I would get sent back to the ‘hub’ page with the site telling me I didn’t qualify for the main survey. I’d earned nothing, or just a token small number of apology points, for my time.

Help our investigation

After all this I was left with questions of my own: what was all that, then? Where did all that data go? And how hard is it to actually make money from survey sites like these? 

All of this is worrying because more people than ever might be turning to survey sites at the moment, hoping to make extra money on the side to support themselves through the cost of living crisis.

So we want to hear from you. Let us know what you think of these sites in the comments, and whether you’ve made money using them yourself.

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