The truth about earning money from surveys

I’ve lost count of the amount of times someone has suggested to me that filling in surveys online are a great source of easy work at home income. Everyone seems to have a story about their great aunt’s on their dad’s side or cousin twice removed who makes hundreds of pounds a day filling in a few simple surveys.

I call nonsense!

Back when I first started working from home, I signed up to a few survey sites to fill up the odd spare 5 or 10 minutes. I figured if I could earn a tenner or so a month while supping a coffee it was money I could put towards my jaffa cake habit. Unfortunately, despite having signed up to 4 different survey sites nearly 2 years ago, the closest I’ve come to my tenner is with PanelOpinion, & even then you have to have a pretty lenient definition of close because I’ve only accrued £1.90

Unfortunately, surveys pay really REALLY low amounts, usually around 20 pence for a 10 minute survey (and that’s even if you qualify, for most of which I don’t!) By my calculations I’d need to qualify for and complete 50 x 20 pence surveys to get my £10, and that’s going to take me around 8 hours and 20 minutes. Now, I know that minimum wage is fairly crap in this country but it’s definitely more than the £1.20 per hour I’d be “working” at for that jaffa cake money.

Is my time worth just £1.20 per hour? No. Is your time worth just £1.20 per hour? I’m going to suggest that no, it probably isn’t. Nobody should be working for £1.20 an hour. There has to be better ways to make money from home.