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Ok, well maybe not so much fun, although that depends on your personal temperament. Paid surveys CAN be profitable though. I am not going to lie to everyone here and tell you that garbage about making $1000’s and quitting your job to do surveys full time. That is all just BS. I am also not going to try and tell you that all survey sites are legitimate because there is no doubt that there are scammy and spammy sites out there. Full disclosure: I started making money online 6 years ago with paid survey sites, but haven’t done a survey in the past 4 years or so.

While I don’t do surveys any longer because the time invested is just not worth it for me, they did fill a need for me 6 years ago. I was looking for a way to make some side hustle money, but because I was already working 60 hours a week I wasn’t open to the idea of a traditional part time job. I thought that there must be some way for me to make money online, but at that point I didn’t know the difference between a hyperlink and an asterisk. I stumbled across paid surveys while doing a search for “make money online” (how could you not at that time) and even though I thought it sounded questionable I was desperate and figured I would give it a shot.

Lo and behold it actually worked. Of course I didn’t make boatloads of cash, but for several months I was making $200-300. I even got picked for a telephone interview once that paid $100 for 45 minutes of my time. That money helped to get rid of some debt and also provided the cash I needed to get started with websites of my own. My first site was through Sitesell, but that’s another story entirely.

I can tell you that using paid surveys to make extra cash can be repetitive, boring and frustrating. Some people don’t mind because they genuinely like giving their opinions on consumer products, I am not one of those people. Oh don’t get me wrong, I am as opinionated as the next person, but giving my opinion on the best Taco Bell ad isn’t my idea of fun.

Here’s what you need to get started making money with paid surveys:

• A computer and internet access.
• A good long list of paid survey sites. I happen to have one here.
• Time. 1 or 2 hours a day should be sufficient. You can even do this while watching TV if you want. I did the surveys at work, but I wouldn’t recommend that. I was just lucky in that I had very minimal supervision and plenty of downtime.

The first thing you will need to do is go to all of the paid survey sites and register an account with them. I recommend creating a new email account specifically for the surveys because you will get spam. Plus it just helps to have the surveys separate from your personal email. After that wait for the surveys to come in and complete them if you have time and they seem interesting. On average you will be paid $0.50-$2.00 for completing a survey so expect to do lots of them if you want to make more than $100 a month. Once you get good at doing the surveys they shouldn’t take you more than 5-10 minutes each. Yes, it is a miserable hourly rate, but if you weren’t doing anything productive with that time anyway and can’t commit to a regular part time job it can be worth it, at least in the short term.

If you decide to go the paid survey route I recommend you also take the time to learn about how to make money from other (more profitable) types of side hustles. This is not a permanent fix, but more like a bandage placed on a wound until you can see a real doctor.