Surveys

When money gets tight, sometimes we all find ourselves doing things that we had never planned on. In my own experience this can be extreme (living off my parents' food storage, moving to a new state) or relatively benign (doing your grocery shopping at Walmart instead of a regular grocery store). Shoot, my decision to start teaching piano lessons was primarily motivated by the fact that I got interested in doing triathlons and needed some way to pay for race entrance fees.

Well, lately there have been some money pressures that have prompted me to look outside the box a bit. I'm no longer carpooling for school, and while this hasn't really affected me yet, I expect that eventually the gas bills will get tougher to pay. Above all, we have a new baby arriving shortly and there will be formula and diapers to pay for. While poking around for out-of-the-box ways to bring in just a little extra cash (even a little can build up), I stumbled across taking surveys and getting paid for it. I was very wary at first. Very wary. It sounded very scam-like to me. But I found a couple of websites where people rated which sites actually paid you and got some advice on diving into it.

So taking the advice of the website on which ones to sign up for (and which to avoid) I joined the survey panels for about 12 different companies. I figured that this would be an experiment, and I could always abandon it if it didn't work.

Well, I got paid for the very first time today. Woohoo, $10 into my paypal account! Hopefully over time I will have a few other payments trickling in here or there. So if there is anyone out there who is looking for a little extra money to be made on the side, and you'd like to know about survey taking, here is my advice:

1. ABSOLUTELY stick with reputable companies. I cannot vouch for all of the ones I signed up with yet, but read reviews and be aware of what you are getting into.

2. Sign up with more than one site. That way you get multiple survey offers every day and a chance to actually earn money before you die of old age.

3. Keep in mind that almost every single company will require you to earn a minimum amount of money before you "cash out." This means that you may not get paid for quite a while until you have done enough surveys to qualify. (My first payout came about a month after I started taking the surveys.)

4. This works best if you have high speed internet. Also, you need to have longer free blocks at a computer when you can take the surveys. Most surveys last at least 30 minutes.

5. Check your survey email account frequently. (I created a yahoo account just for my surveys.) If you can't get to the survey soon after it's posted, it may fill its quota before you even try to qualify.

6. Don't bother with the surveys that only reward you with sweepstakes entries. A waste of your precious time. (Who ever wins those things?)

7. BE PATIENT. This is not a way to get rich. It is a way to earn small amounts of money when you have free time at the computer. It works perfect for someone like me who has to be off her feet for large periods of time anyway. But if you're planning to sign up for this and pay for your groceries with only a few minutes a day at the computer, it will be a huge disappointment. And to repeat, it takes time to earn enough money to cash out.

I'm sure I'll learn a lot more as I keep doing this. Do I think it's worth it? So far. That may change as my life goes back to being a regular busy one. But in the meantime, if anyone wants to sign up with the survey sites, I can send you an invite to the sites I am registered with if I have your email. (I earn $ for referrals as well with most of them.)