Niall Doherty's Blog, page 186

Momentos

These are my Momentos, vignettes I write daily and publish twice a month. They’re incredibly self-indulgent and I’m surprised anyone reads them. There’s one for every day since February 27, 2013.

Patrons get to read each new batch before anyone else.

Full archive here




16

Pushed through and gave birth to another chunk of content today, my second big swing as an affiliate. It’s a series about survey sites, which have to be one of the worst ways to earn money online. But hey, lots of people are into it, and the existing content out there for them is lacking. I’m aiming to serve them better.

17

Can’t beat the rooster, so I join him, up at the crack of dawn. Wait a little while and you can see the volcano from our balcony as light fills the horizon. I’ll head to a nearby cafe later, whiffing incense, over broken sidewalks, around a truck filled with banana leaves, past smiling old ladies balancing big bundles on their heads.

18

That thing when you’re a tourist in a place and you get pissed off because there are loads of other tourists there, too… been thinking about that, where it comes from. At root it’s probably a desire to feel special, to have a unique experience. We hate knowing there are busloads of other people just like us, lining up to do the same shit.

19

I get tired a lot. I don’t mean recently, because of that asshole rooster, but all the time. I always seem to be pushing up against that edge of doing too much and getting burnt out. Had a decent sleep last night, still wrecked today. That year in Amsterdam might have been the last time I felt macro rested.

20

One thing that might help my energy levels is getting the diet sorted. I eat fairly healthy most of the time, but there are certainly things I eat that upset the bowels. Going to give the low FODMAPs thing a try for a few weeks and see how that goes. 

21

Many Balinese live with extended family in housing compounds, which apparently follow ancient architectural guidelines. The northeast of a compound is supposed to be sacred. That’s where you’ll find a shrine. The southwest is supposed to be impure. That’s where they put me.

22

Doing a weekly coffee and coworking meetup here in Ubud now, aiming for every Wednesday. Today was the first one. My girlfriend and a friend showed up, just the three of us, no new people. That’s okay. Going to be here until December now so it should build over time. No rush.

23

Listening to Tim Ferriss and Ramit Sethi, reminding me to practice asking for things, sometimes even unreasonable things. Because that asking muscle gets weak if you’re not using it. Proceeded to mozy on down to the scooter place and ask for a discount on next month’s rental. Done.

24

They love their kites in Bali. Look up in any town here with a blue sky and you’ll see at least one kite flying. Stepped outside this afternoon, looked up and saw six. Did a little research and apparently there’s some religious/spiritual significance to it all, as there seems to be with everything on this island. 

25

You see some mad stuff driving around Bali. Half the people don’t bother wearing helmets. Many of them turn onto a road without looking to see if anything’s coming. One-way streets aren’t taken seriously. Park wherever you like, even if you have to block the whole street. One thing you don’t see is the police.

26

Joined a gym here today. Works out to $190 for six months, so just over a dollar per day. Haven’t had a gym membership since 2016 in Amsterdam. Enjoyed going, but I do find gym social etiquette difficult. Some people are friendly, some just want to be left alone. Not always easy to tell the difference.

27

Came down with a fever of some kind. Super weak after lunch and my body aching all over. Can’t lie comfortably in bed, my back hurting. Sometimes too hot, sometimes too cold. And a constant headache. Will see how I feel tomorrow and maybe call a doctor.

28

Called the doctor. They came here and examined me, took a blood sample, called a couple of hours later with the news: I have dengue fever. Can take up to a week to recover from that. So I’m bedridden for the next few days. My back is feeling better at least. Time to catch up on some Netflix.

29

In a tiny bathroom wearing blue latex gloves and the toilet seat is wet. I used to live with a guy who would piss all over the toilet seat and never clean it. At least this wetness is only from the bum gun. Anyway, dengue comes with diarrhea and in a few minutes I’ll walk out of this bathroom and hand the doctor a warm cup.

30

I wake up in a hospital about an hour away. They brought me here in the middle of the night. It’s a good one, might be here for a week. $500 a night but insurance should cover it. I hope. First time I’ll be making a claim on this insurance. There’s always the worry they’ll be difficult.

31

One nice thing this week: while I’ve been weak and sweating and not doing any work, affiliate commissions have been rolling into my bank account. Earned about $400 the first three days of this illness alone. That’s not typical, but these kind of results keep telling me on the right track.

Quora Sucks For Content Marketing

Recently we published an 8-part series about Tai Lopez.

To drive more traffic to that content, someone suggested we try answering a few questions about Tai Lopez on Quora.

So we spent 3.4 hours doing just that.

The results sucked so much that we’ve vowed never to use Quora for content marketing again.

The Big IdeaThe ExecutionThe Results3 reasons Quora sucks for content marketingShare your experience






Quora Marketing – The Big Idea

Our interest in Quora was piqued by a 2015 article on the Wishpond blog, which explained how they had driven 9,872 quality visits to their website from Quora in a single month.

Above: Wishpond’s referral traffic for one month in 2015

Their basic approach on Quora was to find popular questions they could provide good answers to, then provide those answers and link to some relevant content on their site.

Here’s the answer they posted on Quora that referred the most traffic to their website: 1

Very simple, as you can see.

We were excited to try similar.

Quora Marketing – The Execution

We ended up spending 3.4 hours on Quora over a 4-week period, answering 18 questions related to Tai Lopez.

4 of those answers were deleted by the Quora moderators.

Here are our 14 answers that survived:

Is Tai Lopez’ money just from selling courses or does he actually run businesses?Is there a free Tai Lopez 67 steps download link?Has anyone tried Tai Lopez’s social media marketing program? Is it worth $997?How old is Tai Lopez?How to get a refund from tai Lopez?Is Tai Lopez legit to any extent or just a scammer?What is your opinion on Tai Lopez?Can I find someone who has genuinely helped by Tai Lopez courses?Who is Tai Lopez and how did he become famous?Is Tai Lopez a liar?Why is every ad on YouTube, I get an ad of Tai Lopez?Is Tai Lopez a scam?Does Tai Lopez actually read a book a day?Do you still happen to have the Tai Lopez SMMA course?

As you can see from those, we tried to provide significant value right there on Quora, and link to any relevant / complementary material along the way.

Sometimes we included a lot of links (mostly to third-party sites, citing sources), sometimes we included only one (to this very website).Sometimes we put a link to our site within the content, sometimes at the very end.And sometimes we embedded a YouTube video we made about Tai Lopez summarizing our extensive research.

There seemed to by no rhyme or reason as to why some of our answers were deleted by the mods while others were left alone.

Here is one of our answers that was deleted within 24 hours of posting:

It was especially frustrating to see an answer like that get deleted, because we felt it was far better than any other answer that had been posted for that question. We kept it concise, cited exact sources, and linked to our complementary article on the topic.

(You can see all the approved answers to the same question here, including one that is clearly just a massive copied-and-pasted blog post – the majority of which has nothing to do with the question asked – with a link to said post right at the beginning.)

Why Quora Sucks – The Results

Despite the moderation issues, we quickly became the “most viewed writer” for the Tai Lopez topic on Quora, and our answers received almost 10,000 views over a 3 month period. 2

Unfortunately, all those views translated into very little traffic to our website.

In the same 3-month period, our Google Analytics showed only 69 “new users” visiting our website from Quora.com.

9,990 views.

69 unique visitors.

Those visitors spent 60% less time on our Tai Lopez content than average, and none of them ended up joining our mailing list or clicking on an affiliate link.

We also checked our YouTube stats to see if any Quora users had watched our Tai Lopez video. As of this writing, the video has more than 33,000 total views, but not a single one of them came via Quora.

To summarize:

We spent 3.4 hours answering 18 questions related to Tai Lopez on Quora (almost every answer had a link back to our website).4 of our answers were deleted for no apparent reason.Our answers received almost 10,000 views over a 3-month period.During those 3 months, our website received only 69 unique visits from Quora.None of those visitors subscribed to our email list or clicked on an affiliate link.No Quora user watched the video we embedded in 3 of our answers.

In other words, our content marketing efforts on Quora were a complete waste of time.

3 reasons Quora sucks for content marketing

We’re not doubting that Quora was a great place for content marketing back in 2015, but clearly it has gone downhill in that respect since.

Today, we can confidently say that Quora sucks for content marketing, for three reasons:

Fickle moderation
You can spend significant time providing the best answer to a question on Quora, only to see that answer deleted by the moderators with no explanation as to why. Meanwhile, you’ll see less valuable, more link-happy answers from other people getting posted for the same question.Lots of views do not equal lots of traffic
For every 145 people who viewed one of our answers on Quora, only one clicked through to our website, and none of them watched our video.That traffic doesn’t convert
At least it didn’t for us. (Though granted, it’s a very small sample size.)




Do you agree that Quora sucks for content marketing?

Or maybe you’ve found an approach that still works well?

Either way, let us know in the comments below.

eBiz Weekly #21

Once per week, we email 3,400+ legendary subscribers with some good stuff related to online business. We also post the content of each email here on the website.

Sign up to get the next edition of eBiz Weekly delivered to your inboxView the archive

This week:

24 weird ways people make money online
How important is it to have a .com domain name?
$3.6 million per year doing SEO for lawyers
Big library of free stock music
Get More YouTube Views
Earn money making animated GIFs
Show this to your boss who wants you in the office every day
$150 in 3 hours testing websites
Is freelance web development still a viable path in 2019?
How to figure out what’s true online

24 weird ways people make money online

Here’s the article I promised you last week.

Some fun ones in there, including:

A Jesus impersonator earning at least $22,500 per year.
Paralyzed people in Japan controlling robot waiters for $9 an hour.
The guy who did a deal with the Cameroon government and was earning $70 million per year.
A 16-year-old who acts as gaming buddy and sounding board for teenage boys for $20/hour.
A podcast that puts you to sleep… and pulls in at least $25,000 per month.

Check out the full article and let me know what you think.

I’d also love if you could share it on social. Here are quick links to share on Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Twitter.

How important is it to have a .com domain name?

Important, but not as important as you might think.

GrowthBadger surveyed 1,500 people and found that .com domains are still tops when it comes to trust and memorability, but a bunch of other TLDs still fared quite well.

(I personally believe that most people overrate the importance of their domain name when just starting out. It’s rarely going to make or break a business.)

$3.6 million per year doing SEO for lawyers

With a minimum client engagement of $10k per month, the agency profiled here is making a killing doing SEO for lawyers.

An excerpt:

One of the biggest advantages of having a hyper-specific niche is that your process creation, SEO strategy, and acquisition all target the same persona/avatar. For example: when doing keyword research, we can create one expanded editorial calendar that will appeal and apply to most of our prospects. Instead of throwing paint against the wall with our marketing budget and hoping that we attract, we throw the paint directly at personal injury lawyers.

Lots of other great concepts shared in there – e.g. warmth and competence, heads up vs. heads down, scheduled social syndications, working with competing law firms (see the comments).

I highly recommend you give the full article a read.

Big library of free stock music

I’ve seen this referred to as “Unsplash for music.”

Literally thousands of tracks you can use in your video, game or UI project in exchange for a link. So good I went ahead and canceled the paid service I was using.

Get More YouTube Views

Brian Dean delivers with this list of 17 ways to get more views on your YouTube videos.

(I plan to go through and apply those tips to further boost my Tai Lopez scam video, which is averaging ~400 views a day since posting.)

Earn money making animated GIFs

That’s a thing on Fiverr now.

Doesn’t look like there’s huge earning potential though. The top two GIF-making freelancers I found on Fiverr:

fellowbeing has almost 200 orders in ~3 years, selling for $5-50 a pop.
balutheanimator has almost 100 orders in 1 year, selling for $15-50.

Show this to your boss who wants you in the office every day

Google has employees in 150 cities and more than 50 countries. They recently surveyed 5000 of them and reported:

We were happy to find no difference in the effectiveness, performance ratings, or promotions for individuals and teams whose work requires collaboration with colleagues around the world versus Googlers who spend most of their day to day working with colleagues in the same office.

(Not that remote work is without issues. Google notes a few in the report.)

$150 in 3 hours testing websites

On Reddit, referring to UserTesting.com:

I recently got back into it and was easily getting approved for some pretty great offers. I did 2 60 minute sessions today for $60 a piece and a few more tests for $10 a piece. In total this took me under 3 hours of my time.

FYI, when testing websites on UserTesting you need to record your voice and sometimes use a webcam. Also sounds like the offers can be hit and miss and they’re mostly for people in the US who are full-time employees.

Let me know if you give it a try.

Is freelance web development still a viable path in 2019?

This question was asked on Hacker News last week.

My favorite answer:

I’ve been freelancing for 7 years, and the market has never been better for reliable web developers. A knowledgeable full-stack dev can earn above SV-level salary as a remote freelancer.

However, if you’re marketing yourself purely as a “web developer”, you’re already commoditizing your skills. Instead, become an expert in a specific type of business/client and sell your ability to solve problems in that business domain. Your clients should not care about the tech you’re using. You need to instead be seen as the expert who solves their problems with tech.

If you go this route, not only is freelancing viable – I think it’s the best way to maximize your earnings as a developer.

(Note the similarity between this advice and that of the SEO for lawyers guy earlier.)

How to figure out what’s true online

One of the most important things nobody really teaches us growing up: how to ask and answer the question, “How do I know this is true?”

The ability to discern fact from fiction is crucial to success in business, and this 12-minute video by Smarter Every Day will help you hone it.

The three steps covered in that video to figure out if something is true online:

Find out who’s behind the information. Are they an expert on the topic?
What’s the evidence supporting the information? Is it sufficient?
What do other sources say about it?

Closing it out this week with a related quote from everyone’s favorite rogue scientist, Richard Feynman:

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.”

Thanks for reading.

—

Niall Doherty – Kuta, Bali

eBiz Facts

By the way...

Freedom Business Builder
FBB is a private community of online business builders. Our 300+ members range from people just starting their first online businesses, to experienced online entrepreneurs earning thousands of dollars each month. More info here.

Travel Hacker’s Toolkit
Check out the top resources I recommend for the traveling online business builder. Cheap flights, a jet lag app, free VPN software, and more.

Great Value Courses
My go-to websites when looking to learn or enhance a skill are Skillshare and Udemy. Both have thousands of courses on many different topics, rated and reviewed so you can easily tell what’s best. Udemy is pay-per-course, whereas Skillshare is a subscription model (my preference).

Start Earning Online
Check out our free crash course to help you build an online business, consists of 11 videos and accompanying articles.

Facebook and Twitter
If you enjoyed the above, come follow eBiz Facts on the socials. We share this kind of content daily on Facebook and Twitter.

25 Weird Ways People Make Money Online

Over the years, we’ve seen people make money online in all kinds of weird and unusual ways. Below is a list of our favorites, in no particular order.

Jesus Impersonator – At least $22,500 per year.Paid To Eat – Up to $10,000 per month.Paid To Study – $253 per video.Paralyzed people controlling robot waiters – $9 per hour.Turbulence Forecaster – At least $1,000 per month.Binge watch superhero movies – $1000 in three days.The Million Dollar Homepage – $1,037,100 in 4.5 months.Virtual Bridesmaid – $300 per engagement.Wedding Speech Writer – $75 per speech.Online Research Studies – Up to $350 per study.Framing Tweets – $25,000 per month.Blogging about paleo diets for dogs – At least $6,000 per month.Mock Online Juror – $1 per minute.Teaching Ukulele – At least $3,000 per month.Gamer Girl – At least $20 per hour.Helping Chinese people fake riches – $1,500 to $3,000 per month.Domain Squatting – $70 million per year.Whispering and making other pleasurable sounds – Up to $130,000 per year.Paid To Lose Weight – Up to $10,000.Pretending to be interested in renting apartments – At least minimum wage. – $100 minimum for winning a contest.Ethical Hacking – Up to $500,000 per year.Search Engine Evaluator – Up to $15 per hour.Talking people to sleep – At least $25,000 per month.Selling blank books on Amazon – $6,000 to $11,000 per month.Honorable Mentions






Jesus ImpersonatorAt least $22,500 per year.

User SoCalChrist on Fiverr dresses up as Jesus Christ and makes short, customized videos for $10-45 a pop.

He racked up almost 9000 customer reviews in his first four years on the platform, which means he earned at least $22,500 per year.

“Jesus” also makes money online through his Patreon and by selling merchandise on his website.

Paid To Eat (Mukbang)Up to $10,000 per month / $1,500 a night.

There are numerous people in South Korea who make a living by live streaming themselves eating meals.

NPR reports:

The top-ranked stars make as much as $10,000 a month, and that’s not counting sponsorships from food and drink brands.

On Facebook, Business Insider posted a video of one 14-year-old who earns up to $1,500 a night eating dinner in front of a webcam in South Korea.

Paid To Study (Gongbang)$253 per video.

A South Korean YouTuber who goes by the name The Man Sitting Next to Me broadcasts himself studying for up to three hours per day.

Money is earned through YouTube ads, which one calculator estimates to be $253 per video.

Paralyzed people controlling robot waiters$9 per hour.

artFido reports:

This month a Dawn Ver Beta cafe was opened up Tokyo, Japan for two weeks. It used Orly Lab’s robots to serve customers and the most brilliant part about the cafe is that all of the robots were remotely controlled by severely disabled people, for the sole purpose of helping disabled people gain more independence in their lives.

There were 10 people working at the cafe. The employees suffered from diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and other spinal cord injuries. They operated 4-foot robots called OriHime-D, from their home and were paid 1,000 yen ($9) per hour.

Turbulence ForecasterAt least $1,000 per month.

Via TurbulenceForecast.com:

My name is Peter, the founder of Turbulence Forecast. I’ve been forecasting turbulence for over 13 years, and I will personally give you a one on one briefing of what you might expect on your upcoming flight via email. I write each and every forecast personally, with over 8,500 written so far. No questions asked refund policy!

Peter charges $25-56 per order.

8,500 orders in 13 years works out to ~650 per year. At his lowest price point that’s well over $1000/month.

Binge watch superhero movies$1000 in three days.

From a March 2019 report on INSIDER:

CableTV.com is offering to pay one Marvel fan $1,000 to watch 20 Marvel movies back-to-back.

It would take you over 40 hours to do. CabletTV.com told INSIDER that the candidate would have three days in which to complete the task.

The chosen fan would also need to live-tweet their experience and would receive more Marvel gifts.

The Million Dollar Homepage$1,037,100 in 4.5 months.

In August 2005 a college student in the UK set up a webpage consisting of a million pixels in a 1000 x 1000 grid, with the intention of selling each one for $1.

The idea went viral. This was the result:

Via Wikipedia:

On 1 January 2006, the final 1,000 pixels were put up for auction on eBay. The auction closed on 11 January with a winning bid of $38,100 that brought the final tally to $1,037,100 in gross.

(The same guy went on to create the meditation app Calm, which achieved a $1 billion valuation in 2019.)

Virtual Bridesmaid$300 per engagement. https://www.healthywage.com/weight-loss/success-stories/another-10000-winner/'>2

HealthyWage is a website where you can place a bet that you’ll lose a certain amount of weight by a certain date.

Achieve your goal, and you get paid.

Fail, and you lose your stake.

Today.com reports:

At HealthyWage, success rates vary, with between 25 percent and 40 percent of participants actually winning their bets, [HealthyWage co-founder David] Roddenberry said.  That doesn’t mean he’s betting on their failure. Revenue comes not only from participants but also from sponsors and other fees, he said, so his incentive is not to have people fail.

Pretending to be interested in renting apartmentsAt least minimum wage.

Yardi Matrix will hire you to pose as a person interested in apartment rentals. Your job is to call apartment complexes and ask them simple questions about their apartments, no selling involved.

Per the Yardi Matrix website:

Surveyors will be paid $6 per hour and a piece rate of $.50 for surveys marked Done, $.30 for surveys marked Wrong Number, $.20 for surveys marked Part-Done, and $.07 for surveys marked Answering Machine or No Answer. You will receive at least minimum wage in your jurisdiction for all hours worked; however, you can earn more depending on your speed and efficiency.

Paid To Name Stuff$100 minimum for winning a contest.

On Squadhelp you can suggest names for products or businesses. If your suggestion gets picked, you get paid.

$100 is the minimum prize, though several folks on their leaderboard have apparently earned more than $20,000 with their mad naming skillz.

Ethical HackingUp to $500,000 per year.

CNBC reports:

Freelance elite hackers can make more than $500,000 a year searching for security flaws and reporting those issues at big companies like Tesla and organizations like the Department of Defense, according to new data released by ethical hacking platform Bugcrowd.

IJet and Tesla pay hackers $1,000 to $15,000 for finding problems, depending on the severity of the issue. Mastercard pays up to $3,000.

Search Engine EvaluatorUp to $15 per hour.

A company called Appen will pay you to search the Internet all day.

From the Appen website:

Appen independent agents conduct in depth internet-based research and provide information evaluation for leading companies from around the globe. Ideal candidates are self-reliant, self-motivated, are very internet savvy, have a broad range of interests and enjoy online research and evaluation.

Glassdoor reports that the average salary for an Appen search engine evaluator is $15 per hour.

Talking people to sleepAt least $25,000 per month.

Twice per week, Drew Ackerman publishes the Sleep With Me Podcast, which receives more than 2 million monthly downloads.

Per Wikipedia:

Sleep With Me Podcast is meant to distract listeners, keeping their minds occupied when they experience insomnia, while gently lulling them to sleep.

The podcast is monetized in a variety of ways, but the biggest income source is likely Patreon, with more than 5,000 patrons on there pledging a minimum of $5 per month.

Selling blank books on Amazon$6,000 to $11,000 per month.

In an interview on Side Hustle Nation, Rachel Harrison-Sund revealed that she earns a substantial income selling “blank” books on Amazon.

Think journals, diaries, planners, notebooks and sketchbooks.

From the PDF highlight reel that accompanies the interview:

Rachel said her process is very similar. She starts off browsing Amazon and other marketplaces online, as well as browsing physical bookstores for what’s selling. A tip that’s worked well for her is to add some “millennial speak” style catchphrases in the title. An example being a daily planner she published last year called, “Get Shit Done.” This book bought in between $6k-$11k a month for the first few months.

We’re not certain but most likely this is Rachel’s book on Amazon. You can see a bunch of similar titles from the same author here.

Honorable Mentions

The following are some noteworthy suggestions we rejected from the above list for one reason or another, but still thought you’d find interesting.

YouTube videos for cats

There are videos on YouTube especially for cats, like this one:

That video is monetized with ads, and according to one calculator, it has earned an estimated $12,558 in ad revenue.

The real earnings from the video must be far less, however, because ain’t no cat going to click on no YouTube ads.

Remote Matchmaker

Not online work but it’s too quirky not to share.

A company called Tawkify will pay you to play cupid.

Via a job posting on We Work Remotely:

You’ll scour your city to find and screen quality, eligible matches for our clients. Our intuitive matchmakers handpick each candidate based on our “VIP” approach to compatibility: Values, Individual lifestyle and Personal preferences.

Save Toby

Back in 2005 someone created a website called SaveToby.com.

Wikipedia tells the story:

The website claimed that the owner found Toby wounded outside his home, and nursed the rabbit back to health, not believing it would survive. However, it did, and he was unable to afford to care for him. The website then claimed that, unless he received $50,000 in US dollars to pay for its care, he would eat the rabbit. The money could be either donated directly, or through purchasing “Save Toby” merchandise.

It’s unclear if any money was ever collected via the website, and it’s widely believed that the entire thing was a hoax.

Trading a paperclip for a house

Via Wikipedia:

One red paperclip is a website created by Canadian blogger Kyle MacDonald, who bartered his way from a single red paperclip to a house in a series of fourteen online trades over the course of a year.

However, Kyle did not accomplish his feat online.

He traveled to several states in the US and Canada in order to complete his trades.

Do you know some weird ways to make money online?

Let us know in the comments below.

(Special thanks to Hazel Lau for her help putting this article together. Give her a shout if you want to generate leads for your local business.)

24 Weird Ways People Make Money Online

Over the years, we’ve seen people make money online in all kinds of weird and unusual ways. Below is a list of our favorites, in no particular order.

Jesus Impersonator – At least $22,500 per year.Paid To Eat – Up to $10,000 per month.Paid To Study – $253 per video.Paralyzed people controlling robot waiters – $9 per hour.Turbulence Forecaster – At least $1,000 per month.Binge watch superhero movies – $1000 in three days.The Million Dollar Homepage – $1,037,100 in 4.5 months.Virtual Bridesmaid – $300 per engagement.Wedding Speech Writer – $75 per speech.Online Research Studies – Up to $350 per study.Framing Tweets – $25,000 per month.Blogging about paleo diets for dogs – At least $6,000 per month.Mock Online Juror – $1 per minute.Teaching Ukulele – At least $3,000 per month.Gamer Girl – At least $20 per hour.Helping Chinese people fake riches – $1,500 to $3,000 per month.Domain Squatting – $70 million per year.Whispering and making other pleasurable sounds – Up to $130,000 per year.Paid To Lose Weight – Up to $10,000.Pretending to be interested in renting apartments – At least minimum wage. – $100 minimum for winning a contest.Ethical Hacking – Up to $500,000 per year.Search Engine Evaluator – Up to $15 per hour.Talking people to sleep – At least $25,000 per month.Honorable Mentions






Jesus ImpersonatorAt least $22,500 per year.

User SoCalChrist on Fiverr dresses up as Jesus Christ and makes short, customized videos for $10-45 a pop.

He racked up almost 9000 customer reviews in his first four years on the platform, which means he earned at least $22,500 per year.

“Jesus” also makes money online through his Patreon and by selling merchandise on his website.

Paid To Eat (Mukbang)Up to $10,000 per month / $1,500 a night.

There are numerous people in South Korea who make a living by live streaming themselves eating meals.

NPR reports:

The top-ranked stars make as much as $10,000 a month, and that’s not counting sponsorships from food and drink brands.

On Facebook, Business Insider posted a video of one 14-year-old who earns up to $1,500 a night eating dinner in front of a webcam in South Korea.

Paid To Study (Gongbang)$253 per video.

A South Korean YouTuber who goes by the name The Man Sitting Next to Me broadcasts himself studying for up to three hours per day.

Money is earned through YouTube ads, which one calculator estimates to be $253 per video.

Paralyzed people controlling robot waiters$9 per hour.

artFido reports:

This month a Dawn Ver Beta cafe was opened up Tokyo, Japan for two weeks. It used Orly Lab’s robots to serve customers and the most brilliant part about the cafe is that all of the robots were remotely controlled by severely disabled people, for the sole purpose of helping disabled people gain more independence in their lives.

There were 10 people working at the cafe. The employees suffered from diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and other spinal cord injuries. They operated 4-foot robots called OriHime-D, from their home and were paid 1,000 yen ($9) per hour.

Turbulence ForecasterAt least $1,000 per month.

Via TurbulenceForecast.com:

My name is Peter, the founder of Turbulence Forecast. I’ve been forecasting turbulence for over 13 years, and I will personally give you a one on one briefing of what you might expect on your upcoming flight via email. I write each and every forecast personally, with over 8,500 written so far. No questions asked refund policy!

Peter charges $25-56 per order.

8,500 orders in 13 years works out to ~650 per year. At his lowest price point that’s well over $1000/month.

Binge watch superhero movies$1000 in three days.

From a March 2019 report on INSIDER:

CableTV.com is offering to pay one Marvel fan $1,000 to watch 20 Marvel movies back-to-back.

It would take you over 40 hours to do. CabletTV.com told INSIDER that the candidate would have three days in which to complete the task.

The chosen fan would also need to live-tweet their experience and would receive more Marvel gifts.

The Million Dollar Homepage$1,037,100 in 4.5 months.

In August 2005 a college student in the UK set up a webpage consisting of a million pixels in a 1000 x 1000 grid, with the intention of selling each one for $1.

The idea went viral. This was the result:

Via Wikipedia:

On 1 January 2006, the final 1,000 pixels were put up for auction on eBay. The auction closed on 11 January with a winning bid of $38,100 that brought the final tally to $1,037,100 in gross.

(The same guy went on to create the meditation app Calm, which achieved a $1 billion valuation in 2019.)

Virtual Bridesmaid$300 per engagement. https://www.healthywage.com/weight-loss/success-stories/another-10000-winner/'>2

HealthyWage is a website where you can place a bet that you’ll lose a certain amount of weight by a certain date.

Achieve your goal, and you get paid.

Fail, and you lose your stake.

Today.com reports:

At HealthyWage, success rates vary, with between 25 percent and 40 percent of participants actually winning their bets, [HealthyWage co-founder David] Roddenberry said.  That doesn’t mean he’s betting on their failure. Revenue comes not only from participants but also from sponsors and other fees, he said, so his incentive is not to have people fail.

Pretending to be interested in renting apartmentsAt least minimum wage.

Yardi Matrix will hire you to pose as a person interested in apartment rentals. Your job is to call apartment complexes and ask them simple questions about their apartments, no selling involved.

Per the Yardi Matrix website:

Surveyors will be paid $6 per hour and a piece rate of $.50 for surveys marked Done, $.30 for surveys marked Wrong Number, $.20 for surveys marked Part-Done, and $.07 for surveys marked Answering Machine or No Answer. You will receive at least minimum wage in your jurisdiction for all hours worked; however, you can earn more depending on your speed and efficiency.

Paid To Name Stuff$100 minimum for winning a contest.

On Squadhelp you can suggest names for products or businesses. If your suggestion gets picked, you get paid.

$100 is the minimum prize, though several folks on their leaderboard have apparently earned more than $20,000 with their mad naming skillz.

Ethical HackingUp to $500,000 per year.

CNBC reports:

Freelance elite hackers can make more than $500,000 a year searching for security flaws and reporting those issues at big companies like Tesla and organizations like the Department of Defense, according to new data released by ethical hacking platform Bugcrowd.

IJet and Tesla pay hackers $1,000 to $15,000 for finding problems, depending on the severity of the issue. Mastercard pays up to $3,000.

Search Engine EvaluatorUp to $15 per hour.

A company called Appen will pay you to search the Internet all day.

From the Appen website:

Appen independent agents conduct in depth internet-based research and provide information evaluation for leading companies from around the globe. Ideal candidates are self-reliant, self-motivated, are very internet savvy, have a broad range of interests and enjoy online research and evaluation.

Glassdoor reports that the average salary for an Appen search engine evaluator is $15 per hour.

Talking people to sleepAt least $25,000 per month.

Twice per week, Drew Ackerman publishes the Sleep With Me Podcast, which receives more than 2 million monthly downloads.

Per Wikipedia:

Sleep With Me Podcast is meant to distract listeners, keeping their minds occupied when they experience insomnia, while gently lulling them to sleep.

The podcast is monetized in a variety of ways, but the biggest income source is likely Patreon, with more than 5,000 patrons on there pledging a minimum of $5 per month.

Honorable Mentions

The following are some noteworthy suggestions we rejected from the above list for one reason or another, but still thought you’d find interesting.

YouTube videos for cats

There are videos on YouTube especially for cats, like this one:

That video is monetized with ads, and according to one calculator, it has earned an estimated $12,558 in ad revenue.

The real earnings from the video must be far less, however, because ain’t no cat going to click on no YouTube ads.

Remote Matchmaker

Not online work but it’s too quirky not to share.

A company called Tawkify will pay you to play cupid.

Via a job posting on We Work Remotely:

You’ll scour your city to find and screen quality, eligible matches for our clients. Our intuitive matchmakers handpick each candidate based on our “VIP” approach to compatibility: Values, Individual lifestyle and Personal preferences.

Save Toby

Back in 2005 someone created a website called SaveToby.com.

Wikipedia tells the story:

The website claimed that the owner found Toby wounded outside his home, and nursed the rabbit back to health, not believing it would survive. However, it did, and he was unable to afford to care for him. The website then claimed that, unless he received $50,000 in US dollars to pay for its care, he would eat the rabbit. The money could be either donated directly, or through purchasing “Save Toby” merchandise.

It’s unclear if any money was ever collected via the website, and it’s widely believed that the entire thing was a hoax.

Trading a paperclip for a house

Via Wikipedia:

One red paperclip is a website created by Canadian blogger Kyle MacDonald, who bartered his way from a single red paperclip to a house in a series of fourteen online trades over the course of a year.

However, Kyle did not accomplish his feat online.

He traveled to several states in the US and Canada in order to complete his trades.

Do you know some weird ways to make money online?

Let us know in the comments below.

(Special thanks to Hazel Lau for her help putting this article together. Give her a shout if you want to generate leads for your local business.)

eBiz Weekly #20

Once per week, we email 3,400+ legendary subscribers with some good stuff related to online business. We also post the content of each email here on the website.

Sign up to get the next edition of eBiz Weekly delivered to your inboxView the archive

This week:

Big milestone for eBiz Facts
Survey Sites
Remote job opportunities
The critical question
Shameless hosting promotion
Weird ways to make money online

Big milestone for eBiz Facts

As noted in my latest Momentos, for May 13th:

Marking this day. Received a payment of $827.50, bumping me over $1,000 affiliate income for the first time in a single month. Feels good, all the work starting to pay off. Still lots more to do though. $1,000 next month isn’t guaranteed. But this boosts my confidence, validates the plan I’ve been busy executing.

In case you’re unfamiliar, that plan looks like this:

Find keywords related to online business that have lots of organic traffic, low competition, and which can be easily monetized. (Monetization is a must to make eBiz Facts a sustainable endeavor.)
Prioritize those keywords, so I know which opportunities to tackle first.
Get busy creating the absolute best and most helpful content possible for those keywords.
Publish and do some basic promotion.
Wait a few weeks to see how Google responds. (Ideally my content will rank high for the target keywords without any extra work.)
If the results are promising, double down to secure even better rankings. Otherwise, chalk it up as a learning experience and move to the next keyword on the list.

There’s a lot more to it, but those are the broad strokes.

Hopefully, that helps you understand why I published 20,000+ words of content and a 15-minute video about Tai Lopez at the end of February.

And why I just spent 50+ hours testing and researching one of the worst ways to make money online…

Survey Sites

Yup, survey sites.

They’re just as bad as you thought they were.

But tons of people search for info on these every day, and the top search results are so unrealistic and misleading that I knew I could do better.

Here’s what I came up with: Best Survey Sites 2019

That’s an article summarizing what myself and a VA learned from 50+ hours testing and researching a bunch of survey sites.

I’ve also posted individual reviews for 6 sites:

InboxDollars
PaidViewpoint
Qmee
Survey Junkie
Swagbucks
Respondent

To save you from having to read through all that content, I’ll quote one of the FAQs from the main article here, which sums up my thoughts on survey sites after all that testing and research.

Are survey sites just a big gigantic waste of time?

They can be.

When doing any kind of work online, you want to be doing one of two things, ideally both:

You want to be EARNING
And you want to be LEARNING

We’ve yet to find any survey site through which you can earn more than a little extra pocket money each month.

Which would be fine if the work was actually a valuable learning experience.

But it’s not.

Given that:

Survey sites ARE a big gigantic waste of time you let them take you away from the many other types of online work where you can earn good money and/or develop some solid skills that will serve you well in future.


Survey sites are NOT a waste of time if you use them while chilling out watching Netflix or listening to a podcast, and you reserve your full attention for more demanding/rewarding kinds of online work.

Another way of putting it: You can indeed earn money from survey sites, but you can’t earn a living.

Remote job opportunities

In contrast, you can earn a living online from a remote job.

Here are a few juicy opportunities I found this morning:

Accounting Lesson Writer for CPA Review (international)
Admin Support Superstar (worldwide)
Content Marketing Manager (worldwide)
Content Writer at First Beat Media (multiple countries)
Facebook Ad Manager (worldwide)
Front-End Web Designer / WordPress Developer (worldwide)
Graphic Designer (worldwide)
News Writers (worldwide)
UI/UX Designer (worldwide)

The critical question

One of my favorite podcasts – How I Built This – asks each guest how much of their success is due to luck and how much is due to skill.

Almost all of them say luck was at least half the battle.

Of course, everyone gets lucky to some degree. But some people get a better return on their luck.

Jim Collins writes:

The critical question is not “Are you lucky?” but “Do you get a high return on luck?”

Yes, [Bill] Gates was lucky, but luck is not why Gates became a 10Xer. Consider the following questions: Was Gates the only person of his era who grew up in an upper-middle-class American family? Was Gates the only person born in the mid-1950s who attended a secondary school with access to computing? Was Gates the only person who went to a college with computer resources in the mid-1970s? Was Gates the only person who read the Popular Electronics article? Was Gates the only person who knew how to program in BASIC? No, no, no, no, and no.

“Return on luck” is a concept I always try to keep in mind.

On a long enough timeline, you and I are going to get very lucky a handful of times.

We’ll either be ready to make the most of those opportunities, or we won’t.

Shameless hosting promotion

I don’t use Bluehost myself. I use Dreamhost and I’ve been happy with them for years.

Everyone promotes Bluehost though because they’ve got a really good affiliate program. They asked me to be an affiliate and made me this fancy custom landing page.

In fairness to Bluehost, they are a solid, low-cost option if you’re looking to build a basic website.

HostingFacts takes a data-driven approach to testing a bunch of different web hosts and ranks Bluehost top of the heap.

Weird ways to make money online

I’m working on an article with that title, have collected more than 20 examples so far, including a 14-year-old South Korean boy who gets paid $1,500 a night to eat dinner in front of a webcam.

(Seriously.)

I should have the full article finished and published next week, will share it with you then.

In the meantime, hit reply and let me know of any “weird” ways of making money online you’ve come across.

Thanks for reading.

—

Niall Doherty

eBiz Facts

P.S. I’ll link my latest Momentos here again because this is where I usually mention them and for some reason they tend get more clicks than anything else I put in these emails

Momentos

These are my Momentos, vignettes I write daily and publish twice a month. They’re incredibly self-indulgent and I’m surprised anyone reads them. There’s one for every day since February 27, 2013.

Patrons get to read each new batch before anyone else.

Full archive here




1

Came home from a nice dinner at a nice restaurant to find a lizard the size of my hand in the kitchen, light blue with red spots, took a bite at a clothes hanger when we tried shooing him out the window. Now there’s a young Balinese man here with a plastic bag tied to a big stick, chasing the thing across the ceiling.

2

Helmet laws aren’t enforced in Bali, see loads of people scooting without them. Tourists, too. Many of them no doubt the same folks who shun non-organic food and are super concerned with their chakras. Meanwhile they’re five times more likely to be killed in a traffic accident in this country than in the UK.

3

We really are living in the middle of a jungle here in Ubud. Squirrels scurry up trees outside our window, geckos live behind our fridge, fireflies hang out in the bathroom, there was a snake on the path earlier this evening, and every night there’s a concert of chirps, croaks and clicks coming from all directions.

4

There are almost a thousand monkeys in here, scattered around 700-year-old temples and gigantic trees that look older still. The monkeys eat sweet potato and sport little mohawks. The males have big balls and tiny penises. There’s a blind monkey named Nelson in a cage all by himself. It’s better that way.

5

A quarter hour north of Ubud there’s a particularly nice stretch of rice fields. So nice that everyone with an Instagram account flocks there to take a billion photos. Couple that with the ridiculous heat today and the donation requests every hundred meters and I’m wishing I’d never been.

6

Every time I do it, I’m less stressed while getting more important work done. What is it? Not checking email or any other messages until the afternoon. Simple, but powerful. And I’ve known this for years. Yet I often go months without doing it. It’s as if I want to be distracted most of the time.

7

Add bats and a mongoose to the list of animals I’ve seen in Ubud. The bats were flapping about the field next door before the sun came up this morning. And the mongoose was snoozing on a table in a cafe in the middle of town. First time seeing one. Mad yokes. Like a cross between a fox and an otter.

8

I spend a lot of time thinking about how to earn money from this site, but in a way that adds significant value to the world, and doesn’t require me to sacrifice my integrity. Been working on reviews of survey sites lately. That’s been a bit of a tightrope. Think I have it figured out now.

9

Today there was a man ploughing the rice field next door. Barefoot in the mud, in 30°C / 86°F heat and direct sunlight, pushing some big contraption of a plow with a cranky engine. Hard, physical labor. He was out there for hours. Probably earning pennies. I’m living such a charmed life.

10

Putting together a post about weird ways people make money online. The Million Dollar Homepage was a famous one back in the day. Looked that up, learned that the guy who made it is the same guy behind the Calm app, which is now a billion dollar company. Wow.

11

Here we go again, moving to a new place, pack and unpack, get used to the new surroundings, go buy a bunch of household things we’re lacking, stuff we’ll have to leave behind in a few months, wrestle with the wifi, think ever more seriously about stopping all this madness and settling down good and proper.

12

Starting to fantasize about having my own place, setting everything up just right. Simple things like an extra shelf here, a few coat hooks by the door, nice kitchen equipment that’ll last a while. When you constantly move around, you’re constantly compensating for lots of little inconveniences.

13

Marking this day. Received a payment of $827.50, bumping me over $1,000 affiliate income for the first time in a single month. Feels good, all the work starting to pay off. Still lots more to do though. $1,000 next month isn’t guaranteed. But this boosts my confidence, validates the plan I’ve been busy executing.

14

In a cafe, trying to get some work done, but there’s a lady doing yoga to my right. Seriously. She cleared space between tables, put on headphones, and has spent the last twenty minutes doing full-on yoga without a care in the world, as if she’s in a park or something. She probably thinks she’s edgy and enlightened. I want to flip a table and scream in her face.

15

We’ve got an overachieving rooster next door. Not content when crowing when the sun comes up, he gets crowing at 4:30am. I used to have the same problem with a rubbish truck years ago. Woke me up the first few mornings after moving into a new place. Then I never heard it again. 

Best Survey Sites 2019

Today you’re going to learn which are the best survey sites online, so you don’t waste massive amounts of time on the crappy ones.

Because, yes, it’s true: you can make money online simply by filling out surveys while binge-watching Game of Thrones.

All the gritty details are below, but if you’re in a hurry, here’s our shortlist of the best survey sites…

Best Survey Sites






















Best Overall

Respondent, Survey Junkie

Earnings Per Hour

Respondent

Survey Quantity

Swagbucks

Payment Options

Swagbucks

Quick Payout

Qmee

Mobile App

Swagbucks

Outside USA

Respondent, Swagbucks

Affiliate Program

Survey Junkie

Table Of Contents










Best survey site – overallHighest earnings per hourBest survey quantityBest payment optionsQuick payoutBest mobile appBest for outside USA










Best affiliate program5 things you should know about survey sites12 survey site hacksHow to spot fake / scam survey sitesFrequently Asked QuestionsHave you used any survey sites?

Our survey site reviews are a combined effort between Niall Doherty (founder of eBiz Facts), members of the Freedom Business Builder community, and a hired freelancer named Hannah based in the USA.

Our process for reviewing a survey site looks like this:

We ask Hannah to sign up and test out certain parts of the site.Hannah documents her work and tracks her progress.We scour the internet for additional information about the site and carefully note our findings.We write a draft of our review.We send the draft to our Freedom Business Builder community and ask for feedback.We make our final edits and publish the review.

Note: We may earn a commission if you decide to join a survey site via a referral link. Read our full disclosure here.

Best Survey Sites – Overall Respondent and Survey Junkie

Your earning potential on any survey site comes down to two primary factors:

How much you can earn per hour, on average.How many surveys are available for you to answer each day.

If you can earn a high amount per hour and there are endless surveys available, you can earn a lot of money.

Unfortunately, we’ve yet to find a site that offers lots of surveys AND a high hourly rate. It’s always a trade-off between the two.

Respondent scores poorly on survey quantity, but its unbeatable hourly rate means earning $100 or more on there each month is quite doable, even without a big time investment.

Respondent – Key Points






















Earnings Per Hour 1

$20





Payment Options

PayPal

Minimum Payout 5

$20 for every referral who completes a paid survey.

Overall Rating4/5 6



Join Respondent For Free

Read our full Respondent review »

Meanwhile, Survey Junkie offers the most balanced mix of earnings and quantity that we’ve seen from any survey site to date.

Survey Junkie – Key Points






















Earnings Per Hour 7

$2.50





Payment Options

PayPal, gift cards (US only), bank transfer (US only)

Minimum Payout 11

$1.50 per new account.

Overall Rating4/5 12



Join Survey Junkie For Free

Read our full Survey Junkie review »

Best Survey Site – Earnings Per Hour Respondent

Respondent scores poorly on survey quantity, but its unbeatable hourly rate means earning $100 or more on there each month is quite doable, even without a big time investment.

Respondent – Key Points






















Earnings Per Hour 13

$20





Payment Options

PayPal

Minimum Payout 17

$20 for every referral who completes a paid survey.

Overall Rating4/5 18



Join Respondent For Free

Read our full Respondent review »

Best Survey Site – Survey Quantity Swagbucks

You won’t earn a lot per hour answering surveys on Swagbucks, but if your goal is to spend 10 hours per day answering surveys on a single platform, this is the best place to do it.

Swagbucks – Key Points






















Earnings Per Hour 19

$1





Payment Options

PayPal, gift cards.

Minimum Payout 23

$2.20 per new verified account.

Overall Rating2.5/5 24



Get Your $5 Sign-Up Bonus

Read our full Swagbucks review »

(Of course, given that you’re likely to earn 2.5x more per hour on Survey Junkie, we’d recommend you choose that instead of Swagbucks and earn just as much in far less time.)

Best Survey Site – Payment Options Swagbucks

Swagbucks excels with their payment options, too.

While you must earn at least 2,500 SB ($25) before you can cash out with PayPal, you can redeem as little as 200 SB ($2) for cell phone data and as little as 300 SB ($3) for popular gift cards.

Above: The lowest priced rewards available on Swagbucks.

If you want to be able to spend your hard-earned SB on anything you please, your best option is to choose a Visa reward card.

Above: Visa reward cards on Swagbucks.










Get a $5 sign-up bonus for Swagbucks







Best Survey Site – Quick Payout Qmee

We’re not big fans of Qmee, but if you’re looking to earn $0.25 in a hurry – I dunno, maybe you need a quarter for the parking meter? – this is the best survey site for you.

Qmee – Key Points






















Earnings Per Hour 25

$1





Payment Options

PayPal, gift cards.

Minimum Payout 29

Up to $1 for every referral who cashes out.

Overall Rating2/5 30



Join Qmee For Free

Read our full Qmee review »

Honorable mentions here include Respondent – also a $0.01 minimum payout, but it usually takes a while to qualify for a survey on there – and Swagbucks – you can cash out for cell phone credit at $2, and select gift cards at $3.

Best Survey Site – Mobile App Swagbucks

Swagbucks wins here simply because they offer no less than 10 separate mobile apps: ten for iOS, and ten for Android.

The best rated Swagbucks app is Swagbucks LIVE, a trivia app which awards prizes in the form of SB (which can then be exchanged for cash or gift cards).

Swagbucks LIVE on Google Play – 4.2 star ratingSwagbucks LIVE on the Apple App Store – 4.7 star rating




Best Survey Site – Outside USA Respondent

While most survey sites are notoriously USA-only, Respondent is a rare and welcome exception.

We tested Respondent in several different countries ourselves, and had one reader in Australia earn $110 in 45 minutes using the site.

Respondent – Key Points






















Earnings Per Hour 31

$20





Payment Options

PayPal

Minimum Payout 35

$20 for every referral who completes a paid survey.

Overall Rating4/5 36



Join Respondent For Free

Read our full Respondent review »

Best Survey Site – Affiliate Program Swagbucks

Referring other users is how some folks earn BIG money from survey sites. We’ve read of some affiliates earning $10,000 or more per month from survey sites.

Swagbucks has one of the best affiliate programs in the business.

Most affiliate programs only pay you once a sale is made, but Swagbucks pays you $2.20 a pop just for sending them new users who sign up for a free account.

Swagbucks – Key Points






















Earnings Per Hour 37

$1





Payment Options

PayPal, gift cards.

Minimum Payout 41

$2.20 per new verified account.

Overall Rating2.5/5 42



Get Your $5 Sign-Up Bonus

Read our full Swagbucks review »

That’s not to say it’s easy to earn money as a Swagbucks affiliate. Becoming a successful affiliate marketer usually requires quite a bit of work up front.

Learn more about affiliate marketing »

5 things you really should know about survey sites










Best case scenario, you’ll earn $100 per monthYou will not be entertainedThe rich get richerRejection is part of the gameOther ways of making money on survey sites are usually a waste of time
















Best case scenario, you’ll earn $100 per month

Online surveys are one of many ways to make money online, and perhaps the easiest way to earn a few bucks when you’re just starting out.

However, due to it being unskilled work – which means every Tom, Dick and Harry can take a crack at it – expect your earnings from survey sites to be low and/or inconsistent.

For example, Respondent offers the highest earnings per hour of any survey site we’ve tested – average rate of $20 per hour – but you’re only likely to qualify for a handful of surveys on there each month.

You can answer far more surveys on a site like Survey Junkie, but your average earnings there will only be about $2.50 per hour.

We’ve yet to find a site that offers lots of surveys AND a high hourly rate. It’s always a trade-off between the two.

All that to say, survey sites are never going to pay your rent. But they can put a few extra dollars in your pocket each month, if used intelligently.

Follow the recommendations on this page and you can expect to earn an extra $30 to $100 per month from survey sites, putting in 3-5 hours per week.




You will not be entertained

Let’s be real: this kind of online work is fairly boring and tedious, especially if you’re putting in several hours a week.

The best way to handle this is to combine your survey sessions with binge-watching a show on Netflix, or listening to your favorite podcast.

Earning a few dollars per hour while re-watching Stranger Things ain’t a bad way to spend a lazy afternoon, right?

The rich get richer

Companies use survey sites to gather information about certain markets. These companies want to know if people will buy their product or service.

If you’re considered to be part of a “rich” demographic – for example, you earn more than $50k a year, own property, and drive a nice car – you’re also considered more likely to buy high-end products and services.

Therefore, more companies want to hear from you, and so you’re likely to be offered more (and higher paying) surveys on survey sites.

Meanwhile, a 20-year-old unemployed college dropout has to make-do with infrequent, low-paying surveys. Few companies want to hear from him, because he’s nobody’s ideal customer.

This leaves us with a paradox:

Generally speaking, the people most desperate to earn a few bucks from survey sites are given the least opportunities, while folks who are already fairly wealthy receive the most.

(You might think you could just lie on your profile and get at the best surveys that way, but survey sites are adept at spotting this kind of thing – their business depends on it – and are quick to blacklist dishonest users.)

With this in mind, if you are desperate to earn a few bucks online right now, survey sites are probably not your best bet. Consider freelancing or finding a remote job instead.

Rejection is part of the game

One of the most frequent complaints you’ll hear about survey sites – apart from the low pay – is that you can spend up to 20 minutes filling out a survey, only to then be disqualified and left with nothing to show for your efforts.

The more time you spend on survey sites, the more likely you are to experience this.

This is because, in the beginning, you’re usually offered the surveys that best match your profile. Once you’ve gone through those, many sites will offer you a steady stream of random surveys on the off-chance that you’ll qualify for them.

So the smart play is to limit the amount of time you spend on each survey site. A maximum of one hour per day per site is a good rule of thumb.




Other ways of making money on survey sites are usually a waste of time

Apart from answering surveys, many survey sites also offer additional ways to earn money online.

For example, you might be invited to make money by:

Performing searchesPlaying online gamesWatching videosFinding and entering special codesShopping online

As a general rule, you should avoid all of these.

At best, you might earn a little money – though rarely as much as you’d earn if you spent the same time answering surveys.

At worst, you’ll be duped into spending $100 to “save” $30, or something equally ridiculous.

12 Survey Site Hacks

Use the tips below to maximize your earnings on survey sites.

Distract YourselfDo NOT sign up to every survey siteMaximize sign-up bonuses and to-do listsFill out your profile and keep it updatedKeep your answers honest and consistentHack your email notifications










Answer surveys as soon as possibleBe wary of the estimatesSpeed up repetitive data entryCash out as soon as you canAvoid the other ways of earningSet a target rate and test
















Distract Yourself

Answering surveys is fairly boring and tedious work, especially if you’re putting in several hours a week.

The best way to handle this is to combine your survey sessions with binge-watching a show on Netflix, or listening to your favorite podcast.

Reserve your full attention for more demanding/rewarding kinds of online work.

Do NOT sign up to every survey site

We’ve seen many other review sites recommend that you sign up for as many survey sites as possible “to maximize your earnings,” 43 but we strongly believe less is more in this line of work.

Only a select few survey sites are worth your time.

Assuming your goal is to earn as much money as possible in as little time as possible, we recommend signing up for ONLY these three sites:

RespondentSurvey JunkieSwagbucks

To earn most efficiently, spend a maximum of 90 combined minutes per day on those sites, starting at the top of the list and working your way down as you notice the best opportunities drying up.

(If you have more time available to earn money online, check out the other ideas listed here rather than settling for ever-diminishing returns on survey sites.)

Maximize sign-up bonuses and to-do lists

Many survey sites offer a sign-up bonus and easy cash for completing simple “get started” checklists.

For example, Swagbucks offers a $5 sign-up bonus, while Survey Junkie will pay you $1 just for completing basic profile info.

Above: Sign up to Swagbucks and you’re rewarded with an immediate $5 bonus.




Fill out your profile and keep it updated

Companies pay survey sites for access to specific types of people who will answer their market research questions.

For example, The Home Depot might want to hear from people who own their own homes or work in the construction industry. Anyone beyond that isn’t going to be in their target market, so they won’t want to hear from them.

Therefore, it’s very important that survey sites know your demographics and interests. Only through that knowledge can they match you with the right companies.

If a survey site does a good job of this, it’s a win-win-win:

The company wins because they get feedback on their product/service from someone in their target audience.You win because you get paid for your opinion.The survey site wins because the company pays them for the service and will probably keep doing so.

Do you see now why it’s important to fill out your profile on a survey site and keep it up to date?

It’s simple: with an accurate and up-to-date profile, you’re far more likely to receive relevant, high-paying surveys.

Keep your answers honest and consistent

You might think you could just lie on your profile in an attempt to get at some of the better, high-paying surveys.

Don’t do it.

Survey sites are adept at spotting this kind of thing – their business depends on it, after all – and they’re quick to disqualify and sometimes even blacklist offenders.

Qmee, for example, shares why their users can sometimes be disqualified from surveys:

Many survey providers have techniques to detect whether you’re really engaged and taking the survey seriously – if they don’t feel you are, they may abruptly decline you at any time. Here are a few examples of survey quality control scenarios…

Question number 4 said “Answer C for this question”. But you chose answer D. You aren’t reading the questions properly.The survey should have taken 7 minutes to get to question 12, but you got there in 2 minutes. You were speeding through the survey.The survey asked “Did you go to the theatre last week?”. Your answer was yes. Then they ask “How many times did you go to the theatre last week” and your answer was none. Your answers are inconsistent/illogical.

Hack your email notifications

It’s best to use a temporary email address when signing up for survey sites, so your regular inbox doesn’t get cluttered with notifications.

If you use Gmail, here’s an easy way to do it:

Say your regular email address is corneliusfudge@gmail.com.

Any emails sent to the following addresses will also arrive in your inbox:

corneliusfudge+surveys@gmail.comcorneliusfudge+bestsurveysites@gmail.comcorneliusfudge+blahblahblah@gmail.com

Use a version of your email address like that when signing up for any survey site.

Then create a simple filter in Gmail so any emails sent to that particular version of your address skip the inbox and go to a special “surveys” tag or folder.

Once you have that set up, check your account settings on the survey site and make sure you’re opted in to receive email notifications of new surveys. (Many sites will alert you to particularly good opportunities via email.)

Then you can kick back and let the emails pile up away from your inbox. Batch process them once a day or whenever is convenient for you.

Answer surveys as soon as possible

The highest paying surveys are always the most popular and so tend to fill up fast.

If you do see a high-paying survey available – either via an email alert or when logged into the survey site – make sure to respond ASAP.

Be wary of the estimates

Most survey sites will provide an estimate for how long each survey will take you to complete.

As a general rule, you can expect each survey to take 3-5 minutes longer than what you see listed.

Above: The Survey Junkie dashboard, showing time estimates for each survey.




Speed up repetitive data entry

Many surveys start out asking you the same basic questions, such as age, sex, address, race, income, etc.

Instead of typing out the same answers to these questions each time, use software like aText (Mac only) or RoboForm to speed up the process.

That said, be careful not to go too fast through each survey, as this appears spammy and may result in your account being blocked. Slow down and carefully consider your response to each novel question, and make sure to answer everything as honestly as possible.




Cash out as soon as you can

Some of the survey sites we’ve used and researched seem to offer users LESS surveys once they’re close to or over the minimum payment threshold.

As such, you should know what the minimum payment is for each survey site you use, and request payment as soon as you reach it.

Avoid the other ways of earning money offered by survey sites

Apart from answering surveys, many survey sites also offer additional ways to earn money online.

For example, you might be invited to make money by:

Performing searchesPlaying online gamesWatching videosFinding and entering special codesShopping online

As a general rule, you should avoid all of these.

At best you might earn a little money – though rarely as much as you’d earn if you spent the same time answering surveys.At worst you’ll be duped into spending $100 to “save” $30, or something equally ridiculous.




Set a target hourly rate and test each site for yourself

We’ve gone to great lengths to give you realistic estimates of how much you can earn for each hour you spend answering surveys on a particular site, but we still recommend that you run your own tests to see if they’re worth your time.

For example, maybe you feel Survey Junkie is only worth your time if you can earn $3 or more per hour on there while watching Netflix.

If so, line up your favorite show, set a timer for two hours, and see if you can hit your target.

This simple test will give you a strong sense of how much you can earn long-term using Survey Junkie. If you can’t hit your target rate in those first two hours, it’s unlikely you ever will.

But hey, at least you won’t have spent much time figuring it out!

How to spot fake / scam survey sites

Three ways:

They ask you to pay to join
You should never have to do this. There are plenty of legit survey sites out there that pay you to join (Swagbucks is a prime example). You shouldn’t have to pay anything.They ask you to enter your bank information or social security number
Never share your bank account details or other sensitive private information with any survey site. If a particular survey requests this info, close out of it.The surveys dry up as you get close to payout
This may not be a scam but we’ve seen it a lot and it’s something to be wary of. If in doubt about a particular site, check our review (full list here) to see if it has a reputation for this kind of thing.




Frequently Asked Questions










Can you really make money doing online surveys?How do survey sites work?What kind of survey questions can you expect to answer?How much do online surveys pay?Which survey site pays the most?How do survey sites pay you?Which survey sites are legit?Which survey sites are scams?Are survey sites just a big gigantic waste of time?Can you automate the work?I got scammed by a survey site. What should I do?Which survey sites have you reviewed at eBiz Facts?Why haven’t you reviewed [insert name of survey site here]?
















Can you really make money doing online surveys?

You can make money, but you can’t make a living.

Follow the recommendations on this page and you can expect to earn an extra $30 to $100 per month from survey sites, putting in 3-5 hours per week.

One notable exception: top survey site affiliates can earn BIG money.

We’re talking $10,000 or more per month.

That’s not to say it’s easy to earn money as an affiliate for survey sites. Becoming a successful affiliate marketer usually requires quite a bit of work up front.

Learn more about affiliate marketing »

How do survey sites work?

Companies pay survey sites for access to specific types of people who will answer their market research questions.

For example, The Home Depot might go to a survey site and have a conversation like this:

– Hey, we’re looking to survey Americans aged 25-60 who own their homes. Can you help?
– Sure thing. Approximately 20,000 users of our site fit that demographic.
– Great. We’d like to ask them 10 questions each. How much would that cost?
– Let’s say $1 per completed survey, and we’ll split that 50-50 with the respondents. 44
– Awesome. Please send us a contract and we’ll get this rolling.

That’s pretty much it.

The company pays the survey site, the survey site pays you, and everybody goes home happy.

What kind of survey questions can you expect to answer?

When you first sign up for a survey site you’ll be asked a bunch of basic questions to figure out your demographics and establish your profile.

Stuff like:

Date of birthGenderLevel of educationZip code

Once you have your profile filled out, you’ll mostly be answering surveys related to various products and services, your daily routine, your habits and preferences, etc.

Above: Part of a paid survey we answered on Respondent, asking our opinion on scheduling software.




How much do online surveys pay?

It varies a lot.

Expect most to pay pennies, though some higher-end survey sites like Respondent can pay up to $300 for a single survey.

Of course, you also need to take into account how long it takes to complete a survey.

Earning $1 for a 2-minute survey is better than earning $5 for a 2-hour survey.

We’ve gone to great lengths to give you realistic estimates of how much you can earn for each hour you spend answering surveys on a particular site.

You can see our top recommendation here »

Which survey site pays the most?

Based on our experience and research, Respondent pays the most of any survey site we’ve reviewed.

You’re likely to earn an average of $20 for every hour you spend answering surveys on that site.

Join Respondent For Free







How do survey sites pay you?

It depends on the site, but most pay by PayPal and/or gift cards from the likes of Amazon, Target, Apple, etc.

Note that most survey sites require you to earn a minimum amount before you can cash out, and it might take 7-10 days for your payment to be processed.

Which survey sites are legit?

Here are the best survey sites we’ve found:

Best Survey Sites






















Best Overall

Respondent, Survey Junkie

Earnings Per Hour

Respondent

Survey Quantity

Swagbucks

Payment Options

Swagbucks

Quick Payout

Qmee

Mobile App

Swagbucks

Outside USA

Respondent, Swagbucks

Affiliate Program

Survey Junkie

Which survey sites are scams?

Survey sites that are outright scams don’t last very long.

Companies and users alike figure it out pretty fast and cease using the site.

Here are three ways you can usually tell if a survey site is a scam…

They ask you to pay to join
You should never have to do this. There are plenty of legit survey sites out there that pay you to join (Swagbucks is a prime example). You shouldn’t have to pay anything.They ask you to enter your bank information or social security number
Never share your bank account details or other sensitive private information with any survey site. If a particular survey requests this info, close out of it.The surveys dry up as you get close to payout
This may not be a scam but we’ve seen it a lot and it’s something to be wary of. If in doubt about a particular site, check our review (full list here) to see if it has a reputation for this kind of thing.




Are survey sites just a big gigantic waste of time?

They can be.

When doing any kind of work online, you want to be doing one of two things, ideally both:

You want to be EARNINGAnd you want to be LEARNING

We’ve yet to find any survey site through which you can earn more than a little extra pocket money each month.

Which would be fine if the work was actually a valuable learning experience.

But it’s not.

Given that:

Survey sites ARE a big gigantic waste of time you let them take you away from the many other types of online work where you can earn good money and/or develop some solid skills that will serve you well in future.Survey sites are NOT a waste of time if you use them while chilling out watching Netflix or listening to a podcast, and you reserve your full attention for more demanding/rewarding kinds of online work.




Can you automate the work?

Somewhat.

If you use survey sites a lot you might find yourself answering the same basic questions over and over, such as age, sex, address, race, income, etc.

Instead of typing out the same answers to these questions each time, use software like aText (Mac only) or RoboForm to speed up the process.

That said, be careful not to go too fast through each survey, as this appears spammy and may result in your account being blocked. Slow down and carefully consider your response to each novel question, and make sure to answer everything as honestly as possible.




I got scammed by a survey site. What should I do?

That sucks

InboxDollars Review

InboxDollars Review – Key Points










Earnings Per Hour 1

$0.50





Payment Options

Gift cards, check.

Minimum Payout 5

30% of referred person’s earnings.

Overall Rating1.5/5 6



View Best Survey Sites






Or join InboxDollars and get a $5 sign-up bonus »











What is InboxDollars?

InboxDollars is a long-established website / app which pays you for completing a variety of activities, such as answering surveys, watching videos, reading promotional emails, and playing games.

We’ve spent 5+ hours using and researching the site ourselves. This InboxDollars review will help you decide if it’s a good way for you to make money online.

Table Of Contents










What is InboxDollars?Is InboxDollars a scam?How does InboxDollars work?6 ways to earn on InboxDollarsHow much does InboxDollars pay?How does InboxDollars pay?InboxDollars Gold MembershipInboxDollars WinIt code










InboxDollars sign upInboxDollars login3 InboxDollars hacksInboxDollars appInboxDollars affiliate programIs InboxDollars worth it?Sites like InboxDollarsHave you tried InboxDollars?

This review is a joint effort between Niall Doherty (founder of eBiz Facts) and a hired freelancer named Hannah based in the USA.

Our process:

We hired Hannah to sign up to InboxDollars and test out certain parts of the site.Hannah documented her work and tracked her progress.We searched online for additional information about InboxDollars and carefully noted our findings.We wrote a first draft of this review.We sent the draft to our Freedom Business Builder community and asked for feedback.We made our final edits and published the review.

Note: We may earn a commission if you decide to join InboxDollars via a referral link in this review. Read our full disclosure here.

InboxDollars scam?

A few of the most popular things people search for in relation to InboxDollars:

InboxDollars scamIs InboxDollars legit?Is InboxDollars a scam?InboxDollars complaintsIs InboxDollars safe?

InboxDollars has been around since the year 2000 and has partnered with the likes of Netflix, Target, H&R Block and Walmart.

They are also accredited by the Better Business Bureau and hold an impressive A+ rating.

However, users of InboxDollars give mixed reviews.

Many see the site as an easy and reliable way of earning a little money online, but we’ve also seen frequent complaints from users, more so than with other survey sites we’ve reviewed.

Common complaints about InboxDollars include:

It’s difficult to qualify for surveys
One user mentioned applying for 38 surveys and qualifying for only 7.Surveys tend to “dry up” the closer you get to cashing out
In other words, you might earn your first $15-20 quickly, but it can be a struggle to reach the $30 minimum required for a payout.Accounts closed for no obvious reason
InboxDollars seems to occasionally kick users off the site without providing any explanation.

Given all that, we’re hesitant to recommend InboxDollars.

You’re much better off choosing an alternative from our list of top-rated survey sites…

Best Survey Sites






















Best Overall

Respondent, Survey Junkie

Earnings Per Hour

Respondent

Survey Quantity

Swagbucks

Payment Options

Swagbucks

Quick Payout

Qmee

Mobile App

Swagbucks

Outside USA

Respondent, Swagbucks

Affiliate Program

Survey Junkie

See all our top-rated survey sites »

How does InboxDollars work?

First of all, please note that InboxDollars is only available to people living in the USA. 7

Countries Available

USA only.

Once you sign up, InboxDollars pays you for completing simple online tasks.

Above: The InboxDollars interface.










Ways to earn on InboxDollars




Confirm your email and complete your profile

When you sign up to InboxDollars via this link, you’ll receive a $5 bonus for confirming your email address.

You can also earn an additional $0.50 by completing a to-do list on your dashboard.

That will get you to $5.50 in earnings in only a few minutes.

Answer surveys

As soon as you sign up for InboxDollars, you can begin answering surveys for money.

Above: A selection of surveys available to complete after signing up for InboxDollars.

The official word:

Most online surveys for money pay from $0.50 to $5.00 and take 3 minutes to 25 minutes to complete. There are some online surveys that pay $10, $20, or even more if you match the demographic profile they are looking for.

(Don’t get your hopes up here. As you’ll see below, you’re likely to earn only $0.50/hour answering surveys on InboxDollars.)

Watch videos

InboxDollars partners with advertisers to bring you video content. When you videos on the site, partners pay InboxDollars and you receive a portion of those earnings.

Unfortunately, InboxDollars will only pay you $0.01 per video (or series of videos) watched, regardless of length.

Above: Examples of videos InboxDollars will pay you $0.01 to watch.Play games

As with watching videos, InboxDollars will pay you a tiny amount for time spent playing some of their free games.

They also offer up to 18% cash back on every dollar spent on premium games, which isn’t so much a way to earn money as it is to play some premium games at a discount.

Accept special offers

You’ll be pitched free and premium offers once signed up to InboxDollars, like a cash reward for signing up for a free trial of a product or service, or cash back for spending a certain amount at an online store.

This seems to be the best way to earn money with InboxDollars, but only if you’re smart about it. (See our InboxDollars hacks for best practices.)

Above: Examples of offers on InboxDollars.Read emails

InboxDollars can send you regular emails, usually promoting some third-party product or service. For each one of these you open, you get paid $0.02.

See our top-rated survey sites

Or join InboxDollars and get a $5 sign-up bonus »

How much does InboxDollars pay?

Your earning potential on any survey site comes down to two primary factors:

How much you can earn per hour, on average.How many surveys are available for you to answer each day.

If you can earn a high amount per hour and there are endless surveys available, you can earn a lot of money.

Compared to most other survey sites, InboxDollars scores poorly on both counts:

Earnings Per Hour 8

$0.50



































Survey Quantity 9

poor

The scores there would be much higher, but you’re likely to be disqualified from most of the surveys you apply for. Disqualifications can even happen after you’ve spent 20 minutes answering a survey, which is frustrating.

Best case scenario, expect to qualify for a maximum of 5 surveys each day, and probably less as you get closer to the $30 payment threshold.

Above: A selection of surveys available to complete after signing up for InboxDollars.

However, answering surveys isn’t the only way to earn money on InboxDollars. You can also get paid to:

Watch videosPlay gamesRead emailsAccept special offers

As noted above, your earnings for the first three will be miniscule, to the point where it’s hardly worth your time.

You can occasionally earn some decent money from the special offers, but only if you’re smart about it. (See our InboxDollars hacks for best practices.)

See our top-rated survey sites

Or join InboxDollars and get a $5 sign-up bonus »

How does InboxDollars pay?

















Payment Options

Gift cards, check.

Minimum Payout 12

30% of referred person’s earnings.

The InboxDollars affiliate and referral programs are how some folks earn BIG money on the site.

You can apply for the affiliate program here, but note that it “requires a minimum of 300 user registrations (US & UK only) per month.”

No details are provided about commissions.

The referral program, on the other hand, is far more transparent and accessible.

Essential info for InboxDollars affiliatesYou will be paid $1 for each of the first five “officially activated” people you refer to InboxDollars.For every person you refer beyond those first five, you will receive 30% of whatever they earn (their earnings from signup and profile surveys excluded).For more details, see here.

Keep in mind that it’s not necessarily easy to earn money as a InboxDollars affiliate. Becoming a successful affiliate marketer usually requires quite a bit of work up front.

Learn more about affiliate marketing »

Is InboxDollars worth it?NO if your main interest is earning money from answering surveys. (There are far better sites for that.)MAYBE if you’re smart and selective about signing up for the offers available on the site. (See our tips here.)
























Overall Rating1.5/5 13



View Best Survey Sites






Or join InboxDollars and get a $5 sign-up bonus »











Sites Like InboxDollars (but better)










Best Survey Sites






















Best Overall

Respondent, Survey Junkie

Earnings Per Hour

Respondent

Survey Quantity

Swagbucks

Payment Options

Swagbucks

Quick Payout

Qmee

Mobile App

Swagbucks

Outside USA

Respondent, Swagbucks

Affiliate Program

Survey Junkie

See all our top-rated survey sites »

Your InboxDollars Review

Have you tried InboxDollars?

Please consider leaving a review below  – good or bad – doesn’t matter so long as it’s helpful to our visitors. Thanks for your support!

Qmee Review

Qmee Review – Key Points










Earnings Per Hour 1

$1





Payment Options

PayPal, gift cards.

Minimum Payout 5

Up to $1 for every referral who cashes out.

Overall Rating2/5 6



View Best Survey Sites






Or join Qmee for free »











What is Qmee?

Qmee is a popular website / app which pays you for answering surveys and searching online. Qmee also helps you save money when shopping online.

We’ve spent 5+ hours using and researching the site ourselves. This Qmee review will help you decide if it’s a good way for you to make money online.

Table Of Contents










What is Qmee?How does Qmee work?3 ways to earn money on QmeeIs Qmee safe?How much does Qmee pay?How does Qmee pay?Qmee sign upQmee login










3 Qmee hacksQmee extensionQmee appQmee affiliate programIs Qmee worth it?Sites like QmeeHave you tried Qmee?

This Qmee review is a joint effort between Niall Doherty (founder of eBiz Facts) and a hired freelancer named Hannah based in the USA.

Our process:

We hired Hannah to sign up to Qmee and test out certain parts of the site.Hannah documented her work and tracked her progress.We searched online for additional information about Qmee and carefully noted our findings.We wrote a first draft of this review.We sent the draft to our Freedom Business Builder community and asked for feedback.We made our final edits and published the review.

Note: We may earn a commission if you decide to join Qmee via a referral link in this review. Read our full disclosure here.

How does Qmee work?

First of all, please note that Qmee is only available to people living in the countries listed below.

Countries Available

Australia, Canada, UK, USA.

Once you sign up, Qmee pays you for answering surveys and searching online, and also offers you discounts on certain purchases.

Here’s an official video from the site explaining how it works:

How to use Qmee to earn money




Qmee searches

Lots of people are curious about Qmee searches, and yes, Qmee does pay you for searching online and clicking on certain results.

Above: Two 8-cent search results showing the Qmee sidebar after searching for “digital camera” on Amazon.

Note however that Qmee does not reward you for any and all searches. The rewards can be quite random and inconsistent, and you’re never going to earn much money doing this.

We’ve seen users reporting that they earn as little as $5 per year clicking on Qmee search results.

To get Qmee searches showing in your browser, you will need to download the free Qmee browser extension after you sign up.

Qmee surveys

This seems to be the best way to earn money on Qmee, though the earnings are still quite low.

Above: Surveys available on Qmee.

You basically answer the questions in each survey, and so long as you don’t get disqualified you will be paid the amount promised.

Users report earning an average of $1 per hour answering Qmee surveys.

Shopping discounts

This is more “saving” than “earning” but also worth mentioning.

Once you install the Qmee browser extension, as well as rewarding you for certain searches, you will also occasionally see some discount offers in the Qmee sidebar.

Above: A $30 discount offer on a camera via the Qmee sidebar.

From Qmee.com:

When searching with Qmee, it works in the background to show you relevant results on the left hand side of your screen when you’re using your favorite sites. We give you cash rewards for shopping on your favorite sites and engaging with your favorite brands, we display price savings when we find you a better deal so you don’t have to go to different sites to compare, and we offer you money saving coupons and deals on the items you’re shopping for.

Be careful here that you don’t end up buying stuff you don’t need just because there’s a discount available!

See our top-rated survey sites

Or join Qmee for free »

Is Qmee safe?

A few of the most popular things people search for in relation to Qmee:

Is Qmee safe?Is Qmee legit?Is Qmee a scam?

According to the vast majority of users, Qmee is safe and is not a scam.

Considering the low earning potential compared to other survey sites, we found Qmee to have surprisingly good user reviews.

For example, both the Qmee mobile apps (Android and iOS) have an average rating of 4+ stars, based on thousands of reviews.

Here is the official word from Qmee on safety:

We take your security and privacy very seriously. We encrypt all communications so that no-one can listen in. We encrypt your password on our servers so that it cannot be read by anyone it shouldn’t be. We don’t share your data with anyone else without your permission. By using Paypal to cash out your rewards we don’t hold any of your financial information. This is covered in more detail in our Privacy Promise. If you have specific questions let us know at support@qmee.com

Qmee also seems to offer better support than any other survey site we’ve seen, promptly replying to user comments on various platforms.

Above: A same-day response by Qmee support to a negative review of their Android app.

That said, here are some common complaints we’ve heard about Qmee:

It’s difficult to qualify for surveys
Many users report spending 15-20 minutes answering a survey only to be disqualified near the end, thus earning nothing for their efforts.Can’t cash out unless you have a verified PayPal account
This is true even if you want to get paid by gift card.Low earnings
Regardless of whether you’re getting rewarded for searching online or answering surveys, your earnings are going to be pretty low on Qmee.

Given all that, we’re hesitant to recommend Qmee.

You’d be better off choosing an alternative from our list of top-rated survey sites…

Best Survey Sites






















Best Overall

Respondent, Survey Junkie

Earnings Per Hour

Respondent

Survey Quantity

Swagbucks

Payment Options

Swagbucks

Quick Payout

Qmee

Mobile App

Swagbucks

Outside USA

Respondent, Swagbucks

Affiliate Program

Survey Junkie

See all our top-rated survey sites »

How much does Qmee pay?

Your earning potential on any survey site comes down to two primary factors:

How much you can earn per hour, on average.How many surveys are available for you to answer each day.

If you can earn a high amount per hour and there are endless surveys available, you can earn a lot of money.

Compared to most other survey sites, Qmee scores poorly on both counts:

Earnings Per Hour 7

$1



































Survey Quantity 8

poor

The scores there would be much higher, but you’re likely to be disqualified from most of the surveys you apply for. Disqualifications can even happen after you’ve spent 20 minutes answering a survey, which is frustrating.

You can also earn money from Qmee searches, but your earnings here are likely to be even lower than from surveys. Most users report earning less than $1 per month from Qmee search rewards.

See our top-rated survey sites

Or join Qmee for free »

How does Qmee pay?

















Payment Options

PayPal, gift cards.

Minimum Payout 11

Up to $1 for every referral who cashes out.

The Qmee referral program is how some folks earn BIG money on the site.

However, you must use Qmee yourself for a while before the “Referrals” section of the site becomes available. (We’ve been unable to determine at what point referrals are unlocked, but Qmee notes that it’s “an automatic process.”)

Qmee gives you a choice of how you much you are rewarded for referring others to the site:

We’ve given you the choice of 3 different links to share which puts you in control of what happens to your reward. Take a look at each of the different links and reward options…

Link 1 – You keep all of the reward, so you now receive £1/$1

Link 2 – Your reward gets shared equally, so you and your friend both get 50p/50c

Link 3 – If you’re feeling extra generous, you can give all of the reward to your friend!

No matter which of those rewards you chose, they only apply when someone you referred to Qmee cashes out via PayPal for the first time.

Keep in mind that it’s not necessarily easy to earn money as a Qmee affiliate. Becoming a successful affiliate marketer usually requires quite a bit of work up front.

Learn more about affiliate marketing »

Is Qmee worth it?NO if your main interest is earning money from answering surveys. (There are far better sites for that.)MAYBE if you don’t care about earning much and really value good/responsive customer service.
























Overall Rating2/5 12



View Best Survey Sites






Or join Qmee for free »











Sites Like Qmee (but better)










Best Survey Sites






















Best Overall

Respondent, Survey Junkie

Earnings Per Hour

Respondent

Survey Quantity

Swagbucks

Payment Options

Swagbucks

Quick Payout

Qmee

Mobile App

Swagbucks

Outside USA

Respondent, Swagbucks

Affiliate Program

Survey Junkie

See all our top-rated survey sites »

Your Qmee Review

Have you tried Qmee?

Please consider leaving a review below  – good or bad – doesn’t matter so long as it’s helpful to our visitors. Thanks for your support!