Market Research Surveys

These are a way of earning a little extra without leaving home. The downside is that the screen-out rate is very high and the pay rate is very low!  Over the years I’ve completed surveys for a huge variety of sites but I’ve now settled for a very small group.  

My favourite is Prolific Academic.  “Prolific” send surveys from academic institutions all over the world who want a quick survey.  Don’t worry, you don’t need to be a terrifically brainy type – yesterday I had to watch a video of chocolate chunks being dropped into hot chocolate then answer questions about how much I fancied the product.  I think most people can answer questions like that.  Other surveys from Prolific have been about looking at weird pictures, answering questions about ethics or giving opinions about political viewpoints.  I check into Prolific several times a day to see if there are any surveys.  You don’t get screened out although I have returned the odd survey where I have felt uncomfortable answering and they do have a lot of attention check questions.  It’s very important that you keep the “about you” section up to date as if you don’t you get less potential surveys.     The minimum payout is £5 and they pay me via Paypal.  It’s been around £150 in total this year.

Another favourite site for me is .lifepointspanel.  I complete surveys for them most days.  They have a fairly good pre-screening method so I get screened out on about 25% of the surveys I start.  However, if you are screened out they normally credit a couple of points anyway: it’s not much but I feel that they have an incentive to make sure I am invited only to appropriate surveys!  Occasionally I get some longer surveys from them – Recently I did the National Buying Survey which was long and rather tedious but paid 1500 points.  (550 points pays £5 in Amazon vouchers, rather less via Paypal.)

There is no way that I could make a living answering surveys but they d make for a small (but very welcome) addition to my pension.