Can you make a living taking surveys? Unless you have an extremely low cost of living, no. But, if you’re comfortable trading your expertise and personal information and for pay, you can turn taking surveys into a pretty decent side hustle.
What’s “pretty decent” mean? Surveys can generate income of $250 to $500 per month pretty consistently. But only if you’re strategic about the type of survey sites you sign up with and the specific surveys you take.
Survey strategy
The first step of your strategy? Avoid generic survey sites, such as Survey Junkie and Qmee. While these sites offer quick and easy quizes, they pay just a few cents per survey. Even if you answer this type of survey efficiently, you’ll be earning less than $3 an hour. In other words, they’re a waste of precious time.
But you should sign up for as many research and focus group sites as you can. These sites ask questions of fewer consumers, but they want more information from the few people that they do tap. As a result, the sites expect you to have deep knowledge and/or strong opinions about a topic. This sometimes requires professional experience. Some examples: People who use legal software, AI-enabled sales tools, or are engaged in energy licensing.
However, the topic doesn’t necessarily need to require professional or technical expertise. The surveys could also be about the soda consumption habits of teenagers. (You would need to buy sodas for teenagers to apply.) Or it could be about how you choose a laundry detergent or an Internet service provider. A recent survey request from Respondent, for instance, seeks people who buy scents for their home. While none of these topics require technical expertise, the sites will only choose you if you have personal experience with the topic and are the family decision-maker.
Getting started
To get started with these sites, you typically must answer a number of questions about you, your family and your work experience. The site will contact you when they have a survey that they believe you’d qualify to take.
However, there may be a secondary screening test for each survey. Often these more detailed screeners eliminate you from contention. So, it’s not uncommon to take four or five unpaid screening surveys before you get one paid survey.
The bright side? These secondary screening surveys normally take just a minute or two. And if you are accepted for a paid survey, it’s likely to pay well. For instance, the Respondent survey on home scents is conducted online, takes 45 minutes, and pays $75.
And that’s pretty typical. Depending on the type of survey and expertise required, where the survey is held (in person or online) and the time involved, the typical focus group or consulting survey is likely to pay $15 to $250 for between 5 minutes and a few hours of your time. Thus, just a handful of well-paid surveys can deliver a whole month’s worth of side hustle income in a matter of hours.
Scheduling
Another distinction between the ordinary survey sites — the type that pay pennies per survey — and those that pay well is scheduling. With an ordinary survey site you can take surveys at any time of the day or night. But with sites that are doing deep research, you’re often working with other participants or being personally interviewed by paid researchers. Thus, these sites require you to be available on specific days and times to answer their questions.
But signing up for many sites is a key to making this work. That’s because no one site is likely to send you appropriate surveys in any given week. Indeed, UserInterviews, one of several research sites recommended by SideHusl.com, estimates that the average participant will only be invited to take one or two surveys every six months.
That said, some sites specialize, so you’re more likely to get a set type of survey if you fit the site’s specialty.
Business sites
For instance, if you have a managerial background in almost any industry, a site called Maven may tap you for your business expertise. This site’s surveys may ask how you would handle a particular workplace challenge or how you would choose a business-to-business product, for instance. A 15-minute telephone or online survey with Maven typically pays $25 to $50.
Meanwhile, Wynter seeks feedback from business leaders on sales copy, websites and product pricing. Wynter’s surveys typically take between 2 and 15 minutes and pay between $10 and $50, depending on the survey and your title.
Respondent also has numerous surveys for business owners and mangers that pay anywhere from a few dollars to $500. They typically require between 5 minutes to three hours of your time.
Health
While almost all of the sites occasionally have surveys that relate to health, Rare Patient Voice makes health care surveys and focus groups its stock in trade. The site encourages both patients and their caregivers to sign up and weigh in on everything from ADHD treatments to Alzheimers. It is particularly attractive for people chronic ailments, allowing patients to weigh in on the effectiveness of both care and treatment. The average RPV survey pays $120 per hour.
General surveys
Where can you find focus groups and consulting surveys on more general topics — like parenting, products and preferences?
A good place to start is FindFocusGroups. This site allows you to search for focus groups that suit your interests or are in your neighborhood.
Other good sites to sign up for: Respondent, UserInterviews, WinnWinn Research, Field Work, and Curion Insights.
Examples
What kind of questions are you answering when you agree to these in-depth surveys? This is best answered with a few examples:
SideHusl.com‘s editor was recently asked to participate in a survey conducted by WinnWinn Research about health plans. The survey was conducted via online focus group with about a dozen participants and took approximately 45 minutes. However, the group gathered approximately 15 minutes early, so the entire process took one hour. Participants were asked to view and answer questions about several health care company advertisements. There were no technical questions — just queries about whether you retained the name of the advertiser and whether you were swayed by what you saw. Within two days of completing the research, WinnWinn sent a $125 gift card as payment.
Respondent is looking for people who can talk about what lawn care products they use. The survey is online, takes 30 minutes and pays $100. Respondent is also looking for parents to talk about their children’s education for an hour online. Pay: $100. And it’s seeking 35-55-year-old Los Angeles boat-owners to spend three hours at an in-person interview for $500.
UserInterviews is looking for parents to talk about school breakfasts (45 minutes, $60); parenting (60 minutes, $80); and driving habits (60 minutes, $85).
FindFocusGroups is looking for parents in Los Angeles and New York for a 2-hour in-person research session to talk about products for toddlers. Pay $250.
FieldWork is looking for adults and caregivers with chronic diseases to talk for 75 minutes about injection devices ($200-$250)
