How Jeff makes over $ 1,000 a year with online surveys

Is it really possible to make money from online surveys?

I had the opportunity to interview Jeff Cooper, who blogs at Have Your Dollars Make Sense, about his side work with online polls and micro-problems.

There is a lot of controversy about whether you can actually make money through surveys, but as you will see from today’s interview, it is indeed possible to legitimately make extra money through surveys and online challenge sites.

There are many personal finance bloggers who are promoting survey apps (because they get a commission when they sign up). But there are very few success stories.

This is why it was so interesting for me to interview Jeff. He has used online surveys to make over $ 10,000 in the last 6 years! This is impressive.

To learn more about how Jeff found a way to turn polls into a lucrative side bustle, keep reading!

Tell us a little about your side fuss.

I run online surveys and do micro-assignments to earn extra money during downtime.

What prompted you to start taking online surveys?

Basically to have a little extra money to invest, or to save up for a bigger purchase to offset costs a bit.

Do you do it full time or do you have a day job?

I have a day job. Luckily for me, there isn’t much juggling here, everything is online, so I might pop in during my lunch break, or even a little more on a slow day.

How and when did you start?

I started probably about six years ago.

I had a job with a lot of downtime and wanted to find a way to make better use of my time. I was mainly looking for easy ways to make money online, and there are many survey sites and a few viable micro challenge sites. They are easy to find by doing a simple Google search. The good ones are mentioned much more than the others.

Nickel wealth note: For those unfamiliar, micro task sites are those sites that pay you to complete small, simple tasks that usually take seconds or minutes to complete. The Mechanical Turk Amazon is one example.

How much money have you made from online survey sites and what can you count on?

I don’t have exact numbers, but over the past six years, this has easily surpassed $ 10,000.

But I would say that this is not typical. Again, I had a job with decent downtime where I could spend an hour or two a day doing this while I was working. Then maybe I would have worked another hour or two on the weekend.

It’s not just about the number of hours you’ll spend doing this, but getting to a good survey / tasks in the first place, which means that the aspect of time is involved here as well.

I would say that for most people, you can still expect a combined income of at least $ 50 per month.

What are the costs of getting started?

No costs other than your time, just sign up!

Tell me about the day-to-day activities associated with conducting surveys for money?

In the past, I could usually be on sites all day and check from time to time to see if there were any good polls or tasks available.

If not, I will continue my work and check again later. If something good was available, I could finish it normally in a few minutes and then go back to what I was doing.

In the world of a pandemic, everything is the same as before. But in my day-to-day life, I now talk more about logging in when I have some downtime on weekdays after dinner or on weekends.

What do you think made you successful where others have failed?

I think I did better by luck, to be honest. Having a 9 to 5 job that I could check out on these sites was a huge boost for me. The best polls / tasks can be done quickly. Many sites now have mobile apps, making it easier for everyone to check them out more often.

I, too, did not limit myself to one site. I signed up for several. If there was nothing on one site, I could move on to the next until I found something that was worth the time.

There are also hidden gems to look out for. As you browse through every available item, you can easily overlook several major manufacturers. I definitely found some very good assignments that didn’t look like them at first.

You also need to look at the big picture. Some of these jobs cost five cents each, which doesn’t seem to be worth it. This will continue until you realize that it only takes a few seconds. So five cents becomes fifty cents a minute.

Still not much, but if you can do it in 10 minutes, you have $ 5. Do this ten days a month and now you have $ 50. All of this can add up very quickly. While others may have been oblivious to these small paid tasks, I took the time to complete a LOT of them, resulting in a large income.

Nickel wealth note: As Jeff points out, it is important to sign up with multiple sites and be patient to wait for the right surveys that pay well. In my experience, registering with 3 or 4 sites to get you started gives you several options, but it is not tedious.

Here are some of my tips for newbies:

What’s your favorite survey or microtask find?

I have come across several real gold mines. Most of them fall into the category of micro-tasks.

Most surveys or tasks only allow you to complete a survey once, or complete a task a few times. But there are a few that will only take a few minutes and will pay more than a dollar each time for unlimited applications.

My beloved doesn’t sound fun, but it really is. This is a game where you are supposedly paired up with another person – many say that you are, but it’s easy to say that you are not – and you both see a group of dots that end up moving.

You had to select the same point, describing its size, color and movement. There were five rounds, and you could only move on to the next round if both you and your partner chose the same spot. If you completed all five rounds, you received a base salary of $ 1.20 and a bonus of another $ 0.80.

With a good partner, it only takes two minutes, and you can do it over and over again. It doesn’t sound very interesting, but I’m pretty sure I made a few hundred dollars from this in just a few days.

What obstacles did you have to overcome to be successful?

Believe it or not, surveys and micro-assignments can tire you out. Many of them are very, very similar, and after a while you really get tired of filling out what may seem like the same survey over and over again.

It’s the same with some tasks. Ultralight, thought-free, easy to do mindlessly. Some of them paid more, but took time and thought. Repeating them over and over can get tedious.

The included music certainly helps, but as always, setting a goal will help a lot more. Maybe I wanted to make a certain amount in a day or complete a certain number of tasks. Breaking it down into smaller sprints whenever possible definitely helped me focus.

What are your future goals in relation to your side job?

In a world without a pandemic, it was getting harder and harder to make real money from the sites I was used to. Sometimes you can log in to find ten good problems, and sometimes none.

So just having the time to do them is not always enough, the timing should be right too. As my two young children took up more and more of my time, it was difficult to find time even to log in.

(Nickel wealth note: I can feel you with small children! What used to be easy to do now requires careful planning and especially time.)

But that doesn’t mean that I should stop making collateral money. I’m always looking for apps that pay you for anything I can do in five, ten, or fifteen minutes and then take them down. Of course, I won’t earn the $ 100 a month I’m used to, but there will still be something.

So I guess my goal is to keep doing what I am doing for as long as possible and hopefully find new ways to keep the poll / task / application bustle as good as possible.

What are the pros and cons of online surveys?

As mentioned earlier, it can be difficult to find the time to log into sites, and even when I do, there may not be anything good there. Sometimes there are actually too many good tasks to complete all of them, and I have to choose based on how much time I have.

So, the pros are that you can make a lot of money from this, and the minus is that there is a decent amount of it that you cannot control.

What advice do you have for those looking to get started? Who is the perfect fit?

Sign up on multiple sites and download multiple apps. You will be surprised at what you might be paid for.

None of these will make you a ton of money, but it’s pretty easy to make $ 15-20 a month on most sites / apps. Take a few of these and you can make $ 100 a month relatively easily, but in most cases, you should be willing to put in a little bit of work.

Nothing is 100% passive. You may need to photograph a receipt or product review or something else, but there are many ways to make money five minutes at a time.

Ideal for those with a lot of downtime, when they might check out some sites, and if nothing is available, go ahead and come back later.

Thanks for sharing Jeff with us! What else do you want to talk about?

Do your research before subscribing to any site / app. Many sites claim to be very lightweight or passive, but few are.

My best suggestions would be Prolific, MTurk and Clickworker. I have had the most success with them.

Any side hustle and bustle you decide to get involved in will take work. If there was a 100% easy and passive way to make money, we would all do it and be damn rich. The word “vanity” is not in vain here.

Looking for more side deals or business ideas?

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Our mission is to help you learn how to make extra money from the side hustle and bustle or completely replace your income and work from home.

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