Can You Make Money w/ Online Surveys?

In this video, I spend my weekend completing online surveys and money-making promos. Which sites are legit? Which ones are worth your time? Are any of them worth your time? Well, in this video, I dive in and find out.

Starting Out

I'm going to see how much money I can actually make by spending my weekend filling out online surveys and doing promotional offers. So let's assume you have a nine to five job during the week and are looking to earn a little extra money on your weekends, but you don't want to go out and get a second job or do something in the gig-based economy. Well, to be honest, I don't think something as simple as doing surveys online and downloading apps is going to be worth my time or your time, but I'm happy to give it a shot and be proven wrong.

Let's get started. Now, if your only introduction to online surveys are those annoying pop-up ads from 2005, I'll just tell you, there are a lot of people making dozens upon dozens of cents, filling out surveys online. Some sites are legit and some aren't. So like any good millennial, I'm going to head to Reddit and do some research before I get started.

Okay. So I found a subreddit called Beer Money and there, they're all about spending their free time, earning a little bit of cash, doing little things like filling out surveys, doing promotional offers, installing apps, et cetera. And so they have a list of sites that they recommend to get started. So I'm going to sign up for a few of those and then spend all of tomorrow seeing how much money I can make doing all these menial tasks. I'll let you know how it goes.

Here goes nothing. So a lot of these surveys ask similar questions ranging from your income and job to your political beliefs and purchasing habits. Most are related to consumer research, so they may ask whether or not you're in the market to buy a house or a cell phone or whatever. They want to know what brands you've heard mentioned recently, and how you perceive the brands and their reputations. Sometimes they'll tell you about a new television show and ask what you think of the plot and how interested you would be in watching it.

The first day

So the first place I signed up for was a site called QMEE and they mostly have surveys, so, that's what I did. I completed 18 surveys for a total of $10 and 7 cents, so, that breaks down to 56 cents per survey. And while they varied in length, I would say on average, it took me about 15 to 25 minutes to complete one survey. I did this for about four hours. And so that breaks down to roughly $2 and 52 cents per hour. So not great. So these surveys were super tedious with a lot of them asking the same questions. So I wouldn't really recommend this to anyone to make extra cash on the side, unless you just love giving your opinion for two bucks an hour.

Next, I signed up for a website called gain.gg. They too also have surveys, but you have to reach a certain level to unlock them. Instead, its mostly promotional offers that want you to sign up for a service, stay past the trial, get billed for the service, and then you get the points. So needless to say, I didn't do any of that because, A, I'm not going to spend money, and B, it takes 30 days to get the reward. Instead, they did have a link for something called Hideout TV, which pays you to watch the pre-roll ads that play in front of these YouTube style videos. And so I opened that up in a browser window, turned off my volume and let that run for a few hours to see how much I could actually earn from it. I probably had it running for about four hours and when all was said and done, I earned a whopping 36 cents.

I did find one more lucrative offer through the Beer Money subreddit involving a casino slots iOS game. And the way it works is you download it, and once you reach level 27 in the app, they'll pay you $25. The issue is you'll typically run out of chips before you can reach level 27, and then they want you to buy chips in the app to keep playing. But the Redditor that posted this pointed out there's a website where you can get these coupons for millions of chips. So I was able to load up my account with 20 million chips to start off with, and within a few hours I could reach level 27. So at one point I had videos playing on Hideout TV, while I was doing surveys on QMEE, and then I had this slots game spinning on my phone all at the same time.

So it turns out I clicked on the wrong link to sign up for the slots offer to get $25. Instead, I only got $2 for reaching a lower level. So, then I decided to sign up for a website called Swagbucks. They had the right offer for the slots game, $25. The only caveat is it's for new users only. So I signed up with my iPad, downloaded the game, got the coupons for free chips, and then three or four hours later, I finally reached level 27 and saw on my account that I was pending the credit for $25.

Day 2

So today I found another promo for an iOS game called Coin Master, and they'll pay you $20 once you hit level seven. So the way it works is you basically spin a casino style slot machine and you build your village and keep leveling up. And once again, I found a site with free spins, so I didn't have to spend any real money, and within a few hours of playing, I was able to beat level seven and earn the $20, and it was pretty fun. I also spent some time doing some more surveys on QMEE. What I basically did was look around for the highest paying survey that took the least amount of time.

But the downside is you always had to answer pre-qualification questions to make sure that you're the right fit for the survey. So sometimes you'll spend several minutes filling out all of these survey questions and you haven't even gotten to the real survey yet, and then you'll be declined. So it's kind of frustrating to go through that process and spend that time, and then not even qualify for the survey. I also did one that took like 15 minutes. And then at the end, I don't know, maybe they already had enough answers from people like me, but they just gave me 5 cents instead of the higher amount that it was supposed to be.

How Much I Made

So with this weekend coming to a close, let's add up everything and see how much I made. Well, doing surveys on QMEE earned me $12. And it is by far the easiest platform to cash out. There were no minimums and it just sent it straight to my PayPal account, so that part was great. The downside is the surveys don't pay that much, and the higher paying ones that I did want, a lot of times I was declined for them, for reasons unbeknownst to me. They must be looking for a very specific demographic, that I was not a part of. Then over on gain.gg where I initially saw that pop slots offer, and I watched some of the Hideout TV ads, that I only learned about $2 and 50 cents. And the way I cashed out was by transferring my gain coins over to Bitcoin, which was kind of annoying, but it is what it is.

Doing some promo offers over on Swagbucks, earned me $45, mainly those two iOS games. Now the downside is the most lucrative options like those iOS games, where I found coupons and didn't have to spend any real money. Those are few and far between. It can also take up to 30 days to credit your account. And then to cash out your swag bucks, you can redeem them for gift cards, like to Amazon, Home Depot, and PayPal in set amounts. So I was able to redeem one $25 PayPal gift card, and then two $10 PayPal gift cards. So altogether this weekend, I made $59 and 50 cents for roughly 16 hours of work, which comes out to $3 and 72 cents per hour before taxes.

So here's the thing, you're not going to get rich by doing online surveys and promos. But if you do have some free time and want to earn a few bucks on the side, it's not such a bad way to do so. I do recommend looking for this mobile game offers where you can hit the required level without any in-app purchases, because those are the most lucrative and also the most fun. Keep an eye on the Beer Money subreddit to look out for those offers because often they are posted there. And then with the surveys, you are divulging a lot of personal information and they get tedious really quickly. So it was not my favorite way to earn a few bucks on the side.

So for me, I'd rather spend my free time learning a new skill or working on a side hustle that has higher income potential. Now, if there's anything else you want to see me try out in this money-making niche, let me know in the comments below. That's it for this video. I'll see you guys in the next one. Bye.