People know that earning money by filling out online surveys is legit, so there’s interest in the question whether they can be a source of regular jobs. The answer is far from either a yes or no, but we are to provide insights and tips on this every-so-often spoken-about topic.
The work at home dream
The concept of working from home with an online survey job sounds appealing: waking up, eating breakfast, undertaking a few surveys on the laptop and phone, deal with some tasks, survey some more, and finish your list by getting a reward. Sounds straightforward, doesn’t it?
The work at home reality
While you can make some extra cash with surveys, you likely won’t achieve a high or stable income. One of the most important factors affecting freelancers is the unpredictability of the remunerated survey availabilities. One day, you may be flooded by a dozen invitation emails for surveys and finish them off at once. On another day, it could be an endeavor to get invitations for research mediation that lead nowhere. Nevertheless, we should understand that an illegitimate online survey job won’t guarantee us such a high income as a classical 9-5 job does. Remember this too while choosing survey taker jobs so you can have your expectations appropriately set.
Legit survey jobs in different scopes and sizes
If you are a pensioner or a disabled, a student, or someone who is presently unemployed but on the look-out for a full-time job, online survey taking might be your main income earner. A traditional job usually consists of performing tasks that are also connected to your skills and paying you a stipulated amount. There are many ways jobs can be defined.
It could be a full-time or part-time job, casual or contractual, when it comes to work definition, it can be flexible. Also, an online survey job can easily be compatible with your preferences; you can work hours upon hours of surveying on a day or do it on a sporadic basis. Whether you see it as a gig, a casual work, an online job, or just as a hobby, the option provides the flexibility as a survey taking.
Surveying involves no skills and experience required, making it one of the most interesting jobs to take up even for the most basic level. In essence, taking surveys is the most one of the earnings options that can be done when online.
Making surveys work!
The possibility of earning a living only from participating in surveys, theoretical, one should consider the option to survey taking as a supplementary source of income together with other earnings you may have. In case the person does not have any other source of income, it may serve as a pocket money, if need be. In the case where a student surveys to buy birthday gifts, cover expenses at Walmart, or purchase a fitness tracker from Amazon, the student can afford the product(s) at almost any time since surveys help reduce such financial pressures.
Your income doesn’t have to be restricted, there are methods that can be used to increase your earnings with the surveys.
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Start with a dozen different panels
To kick-off your gates as a survey taker, the first step should be your registration to the paid survey sites, which is also known as ‘panels’. Signing up with transcription service panels like the top-rated and established panels should be your priority.
Getting into a professional survey panel is free and it only takes 2–3 minutes of your time.
» Some panels are highly reviewed on SurveyCentral by the users and they do include Survey Junkie, Tellwut, and PaidViewpoint.
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Throw some variety into the mix
Opportunities to participate in surveys are more numerous than those for other research work and this increases your earnings if you widen the options you bid on.
Look into the likelihood of doing tryouts for the companies that you have, online surveys about the taste of different products, and the testing of products. While these may be more difficult to satisfy for the requirements of surveys, they normally provide better pay and diversify your earning options.
» Panels that have multiple research types are provided bypanel Pinecone Research, Opinion Outpost and Toluna Influencers .
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Zero in on small, local panels
Also, take part in stronger survey schemes and opt for small panels that are just customer for your market. Smaller marketplaces offer the best solutions. Although these sites seldom have a shortage of surveys, participants get paid better as their participant pool is normally smaller. This is a great tool for picking up your first reward faster!
Here are some examples:
- USA: MySoapBox (California), Survey RoundTable (Maryland), Opinions4Good (New Hampshire)
- Canada: In the case of Canview Connect (Richmond Hill, Ont) and LEO Surveys (based in Montreal), and in the other hand, we have SurveyLion (Ontario)
- United Kingdom: GooPoll (Sussex), NetPanelbase.net (Northumberland)
- Australia: Rewardia Limited, based in NSW; LiveTribe (Sydney, NSW) Mint Surveys (NSW).
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Get the app
If this survey company gives a user the option to download their mobile app, then it’s surely worth it. Notifications on your phone for new surveys, meanwhile, will enable you to view them faster and, therefore, make the chance that a survey will get brimful, lower. Besides being convenient (you could take surveys while standing in a coffee queue or taking a bus, for example), it also has that additional benefit of giving you some time that would otherwise be wasted.
Here are some panels with their own mobile apps: LEO Panel, Univox Community, and YouGov.
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Log in daily
Some paid survey site companies that are reputable are constantly refreshing their sites by adding new opportunities; some of these sites even move these opportunities to your account dashboard, so you see them before getting an email about them. Checking your account on these platforms each day will be quite helpful as it will help you to filter surveys that you could have neglected otherwise. Paid Viewpoint could be regarded as such an example.
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Hate gift cards, but found a great survey panel?
If you do not wish for a gift card, such as amazon e-voucher, but want to continue taking part in surveys which are only provided by a particular panel that only gives gift cards as reward, there is still a way available for you. First, examine the panel’s rewards catalog, paying attention to the tab with gift cards, to make sure there is indeed the one that would be of any use to you. You can buy groceries and other essentials from Walmart or Amazon, so it would be a good idea to give them gift cards.
As the another option is to convert your points into Visa gift cards which are accepted in over 90% online and physical stores. This gives you the freedom to choose how you use your rewards as you can just convert those into something that you love even if that’s not gift cards.
The last resort is to exchange the GC you don’t like for one which people often buy on the GC marketplace or sell it for cash by exchange for another GC or for cash. Yes, this method can also be beneficial if you want an instant payout or change to a different panel. In addition to this, there will be a loss in your earning’s value.
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Focus on the specific areas, which is unique to you:
Not all the surveys are suitable to you, in fact, some sites will give you tedious, always disqualified, or have high cash-out thresholds which take forever to achieve. Stay with those of them that do your job well and discard the ones that don’t. Now, with hundreds of online survey panels available, you can use your time efficiently, by only filling out the ones that are compatible with your thinking and which offer the rewards that you want, like PayPal cash.
Tip! Use the SurveyCentral Survey Finder tool to copy out the panels that you currently belong to or left and access to the new panels registered in your country.
Some warnings
Those who take part in online survey jobs would be called “professional survey takers” or “professionals taking tests” by the people in the market research sector while in the eyes of the researchers they are always with suspicions. There is a worry that the system can be exploited by people who habitually take surveys as only those in the system who selectively partake in highly paid studies and who give inferior or inaccurate responses to pass surveys quickly. Certain ones can give damaged information during the assessment of their qualifications just to be a part of surveys that they wouldn’t otherwise qualify for.
Despite we don’t consider the process of completing online surveys as a job, it provides different meaning for it. It doesn’t have a negative context to participate in them and efficiently manage your time to do so.
Constant technological advancement leads the market research industry into using more sophisticated measures. Survey panels adopt various control mechanisms to hinder any attempt of manipulation. As long as the candidates respond sincerely and diligently, instead of being deliberately deceptive, or rushing through surveys there is no need for concern.
Final thoughts
While it is there, nobody can guarantee that the full-time online survey job is safe from a burnout. In addition, the same job is not without the monotonous threats. The notion itself may sound quite viable in theory, but in practice it usually ends up much less than expected.
Individual preferences vary greatly: although there are people who consider participating in research surveys as their source of income and spend hours doing it daily, some can only handle occasional involvement. It is paramount to get specific strategies that would match your desires and capabilities so as to excel in the survey taker jobs that will require you work on.