Stop Doing Paid Surveys

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I’m a summer baby and my birthday always fell during the 6-week break from school. It meant that after I finished my GCSEs, I had an awful lot of time on my hands before I turned an age that I thought would change my life: 16. I was a money-hungry teen, but had no desire to get a job. It means that I had to leech off friends doing odd-jobs (moving like them guys that loiter in the B&Q car park on Old Kent Road) and plot my next move.

A few Google searches led me in the right direction to some decent-paid online money-making opportunities. But one thing that seemed to swallow up my time the most was paid surveys.

Paid survey sites are an attractive way to make money because:

They come so frequently
They’re so well organised
They’re well marketed
They offer you big rewards in your first day as a member
They require urgency

The problem? They do not pay enough and they take too long.

There are a handful of decent examples with very short surveys that pay you as soon as you complete them directly into your PayPal account. Most of them are very drawn out, taking a lot of time to screen you to work out your eligibility before they even ask you a question about whatever the main subject is.

As a youngster with no responsibilities, debt or direct debits, with plenty of time on my hands, I was drawn into the idea of earning money for very easy tasks. I was completely blind to the fact I wasn’t making any worthwhile money at all. Every few months I would get a gift card or be able to cash out with some actual money, but it really wasn’t worth draining all of my time in the way it did.

I had to have a week-long break from them to realise that I needed to step away from surveys more or less completely.

I understand the argument that surveys are good for downtime and that they don’t require much brainpower, but the fact that so many of them alert you whenever new ones are available means that you have no choice but to do them straight away or miss out. It robs you of valuable time in your day.

For the amount of time you would spend on pair surveys, you could put that towards something else that could bring you greater rewards in the long-run. Free ways to make money online include:

They may require a bit of research before you get started, but the rewards can be massive.

There was a time in my life where I would live for the next email from Valued Opinions, telling me I could earn an extra 50p for answering a few questions. I wanted another Amazon gift card bad. That time has long gone. The only time I’m going to bother with a paid survey is if it either takes under a minute on my phone, or if a big pay out is guaranteed. I’d advise everyone else to do the same.