Your earnings also hinge on how much data you’re willing to provide. Some surveys ask for a significant amount of personal information, including address, birth date, health history, and home ownership. This is because companies want to know if you fit their target demographic before inviting you to participate in a survey.
At the end of the day, filling out an online survey can be an easy way to earn some extra money, especially if you’re someone who already spends a lot of time online. If you can answer a few questions instead of checking Facebook or scrolling through Twitter, it might be time well spent.
How to Approach Surveys to Maximize Earnings
If you want to give online surveys a try, it helps to practice a few time-saving tips. After all, your time is worth money when you’re taking surveys.
To maximize your profits, you want to do everything you can to avoid wasting those precious minutes and hours. Here are five tips to keep in mind.
Be Wary of Sharing Too Much Information
If an online survey site wants to do a deep dive into your personal information, it’s more likely to be a data-mining site than a legitimate rewards site. While it’s normal to see a few personal questions on survey sites, you should steer clear of any survey that wants to know your social security number or bank account information.
Install Virus Protection on Your Computer
Many survey sites are actually survey aggregators, which means they use your personal information to match you with surveys hosted on third-party sites. To avoid pop-ups and spam, it’s a good idea to have virus protection or an anti-malware program on your computer.
Create a Survey Email Address
Most survey sites will email you when they have a survey that fits your profile. If you sign up for several sites, this can mean getting bombarded with multiple emails a day.
It might save you some time and sanity to have a separate email account just for online surveys. This way, you can check in whenever you have some spare time to complete a survey or two.
Avoid Disqualification
Some surveys will disqualify you halfway through the survey, even if you initially matched the survey’s demographics. Assuming you’ve already invested 20 or 30 minutes in the survey, this can be a huge waste of your time.
To cut down on this happening, try to work with sites that let you choose which types of surveys you want to take. Some survey sites will also let you know up front if you’re definitely matched or just “pre-qualified.” If a survey says you’re pre-qualified, this usually means you must answer a bunch of questions before you even get to the actual survey.
Set Aside Time Just to do Surveys for Money
As with any other part-time gig, you’ll probably earn more if you carve out a set amount of time for completing online surveys. Keep in mind that most individual surveys don’t pay that much, so you’ll need to complete several to start seeing any real payoff.
Creating special time just for filling out surveys can also stop you from racking up too many hours staring at a screen and clicking little boxes online. For example, if you set a timer for one hour, you can race yourself to see how many surveys you can complete. Once the hour is up, you’re done for the day and can move on to a different task.
