(Not So) Easy Ways to Earn (A Very Little) Cash From Home

Recently I shared with you all this idea that you can actually take surveys or polls on your opinions on everything from consumer brands and marketing to politics and whether you let your kids play video games…and earn a little cash from it. Yes, that’s right, there are, it turns out, tons of websites that will pay you — yes, pay you — anywhere from 10 cents to a dollar for about 15 to 20 minutes of your life to answer these questions. Supposedly it helps major companies make big decisions on their advertising and promotional campaigns.

Before I sound too much like an ad myself, here’s the catch: this sounds quite entertaining and simple…but it isn’t necessarily so.

The types of surveys you qualify for is based on your demographics — your age, physical location, if you’re married, have kids, what ages the kids are, your occupation, and your interests. If you’re a stay-at-home parent/self-employed writer (moi)  who prefers to read over watching TV, and can’t afford to go to the cinema/traveling/most stores/shop online every week, you will not seem very exciting to the people who design the surveys. This means I got slotted into the category of: Don’t bother offering this, that, or the other thing to her, because she won’t have seen the movie/TV show, doesn’t use the service, hasn’t bought the product. And it results in…great repetition.

I have taken similar surveys on toys, television, video games, health insurance, banking, cars, pet food, and clothing purchases several times over. Each time, I spent literally up to 25 minutes pointing and clicking, again and again and again (since the answers are all multiple choice to be selected by mouse), and would eventually feel a rush of giddiness when the new window popped up: “Congratulations! You have earned 80 points!” Why did that thrill my world-weary soul? Because collecting 80, then 50, then another 75 points in an hour and a half of this venture meant that, within a week, I’d have enough points to receive about 10 bucks in actual cash.

And when you’re a stay-at-home parent, low on funds, this is HUGE. 10 bucks for sitting in front of the computer telling some random corporation you did or didn’t like their product?! Holy Easy Payday, Batman!

Except.

Except you do get bored. Taking the same kinds of surveys over and over becomes monotonous, and you do start to chuck pillows every time the only offer that afternoon is a poll on whether the car insurance ads are still annoying. (Hint: They totally are.) And you find yourself beginning to avoid even the higher points surveys that take 19 to 23 minutes, and doing that consecutively starts to feel like a drain on your spare time.

Plus, if there aren’t many surveys available offer that week (and that does happen), then you won’t hit what you see as your earning potential.

And here we reach the crux of the biscuit — if your “earning potential” is decided by massive, faceless corporations who really just want your opinion (and obviously don’t deeply care what it is, since they pay the survey site probably millions of dollars, but the actual survey takers only receive a pittance), then is it truly worth it?

Yes, I’m getting cynical. I admit it. I was already headed that way, since I’m an intellectually “disabled” adult, and therefore finding decent paying work is hard, anyway. If I had the option of taking a grueling 9-hour-a-day job (including driving there and back home), with potentially 80% of my salary going to commuting and childcare costs, and risking sensory burnout after a year of doing that, or receiving $20 an hour for part-time writing/consulting work,  guess what I choose.

But, since the current survey system does not provide such wages, I have another type of choice to make.

What started out a few months ago as a honest search for some cash quickly shifted towards an obsession. I did begin to relish beating my daily, then my weekly, average. But I couldn’t control so many factors, like not qualifying for multiple surveys a day, or the wi-fi conking out just before I hit submit for all my answers (and therefore getting jipped of the points). My carpal tunnel actually returned from that consistent pointing and clicking.

Final assessment: It’s Not Worth The Hassle.

So, in short, I can walk away from this survey taking experiment with a little more money than I had before, and a lot more information on the matter.