The formula to reach FI has an income part and en expense part. I wonder how I can increase the income site of the formula. For my nob, we commissioned a paid survey. I was curious to see how you can make money with this.After some googling, I found a survey. The site looked quite nice and surveys can be completed on an app . The advertise to pay between (10 cents and 3 EUR per survey). Not something that would make me rich. Curious by nature, I was intrigued. I decided to give it a try and I enrolled.
Getting started
In order to get surveys for your profile, you need to leave some personal details. Some of these details went further than I anticipated, like income. Completing this bagged me some cents already!
A few days later, their app notified me of a survey and I started full enthusiasm. This was soon reduced enthusiasm as the user experience of the app is below par. It looks to be some hybrid app and the integrated questionnaire is not responsive at all. Not so easy to fill in answers and find next buttons.
The questions are in line with surveys that you sometimes fill in for free after visiting a website or so. This was in line with my expectations.
As I did more surveys, the frustration increased. I started to see difference between the advertised award and the reward at the end of the survey. (I did not do the effort
to log my finding at that time, I wish I did).
Some surveys were stopped after 4-5 questions because my profile was not ok. Weird, these questions can be found in my profile. Sometime they ask for your birthday and then your age…
After making a whopping 4,5 EUR, I wanted to call it a day. I forgot you need 5 EUR to do a transfer to paypal, so one more survey and then I did a transfer.
This transfer was actually very fast and easy to execute. You can only transfer multiples of 5, unless I did something wrong. So, The remaing cents on my accounts can stay there till further notice
Conclusion
All in all, I consider this an interesting experience. I learned how the survey end of these companies work. Might be useful for the job.
Will it help me get FI faster? Probably not. For me, it is not worth my time for the amount of money I was able to make via this survey tool.
Do you have any experience with survey tools?
amber tree leaves 
Interesting “review” on your experience. We both have survey accounts and we’ve found that having accounts with multiple survey companies going at once is the best, they have proven to be a good side hustle for us. The trick is to just do a few every day, the trickle overtime will lead to a nice “cash out” in a few weeks/months. Every dollar counts!
We will write an article about our survey experiences, there are just so many articles to write.. it’ll happen eventually!
Jasmin
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Interesting experience! I had looked at some of those survey sites years ago, but I recall that they felt pretty dodgy. How much time did earning that 5 EUR take?
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It took little less than an hour, counting the survey’s that were stopped and did not pay.
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Not the worst hourly rate if you desperately needed the money, but yeah, I agree with your conclusion — better to invest our time elsewhere.
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Now that’s slow money. Maybe we can hire offshore developers to create fake email addresses and take surveys in bulk for us. That would make us richer faster. 😉
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I will have the specs ready by tomorrow! 😉
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Funny – I looked at a few of these sites too thinking I would have a litte more time now at FI. I was frustrated by many of them too. It is interesting but not worth my time now. I’d rather read all of your posts and learn more from the community 🙂 I save/earn more money that way!
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I’ve considered this briefly in the past as well and come to your same conclusion… Probably not worth the time and all that material in helping me reach FI quicker. Thanks for sharing!
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Haha that’s my conclusion as well after a very brief try with online surveys. It doesn’t pay me enough money to worth my time.
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Ah well, nice try. You win some, you lose some. Still a nice €5.
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That is a way to look at it. 5€ I did not have before indeed! I can use them for a drink at the meetup!
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Great idea, maybe we should both do a couple of online surveys as well to cover drinks costs at the meet up?
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I used to be quite heavily involved with surveys. I was making $6-$7.50 an hour. Probably an annualised $3k at one point. It helped, just not a huge amount. I’m putting my time towards the blog instead as hopefullly over the long run, that’s the better choice.
Tristan
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3k in a year is quite nice…. Now that I commute with the train , i should reconsider it maybe
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Well, it all adds up. And there is no downside risk, unlike stock market investments or when selling naked put options. Think about it this way, at an interest rate of 0.375% (current Federal Funds rate in the US), you’d have to invest $1000 for over 14 months to make that kind of cash. 🙂
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Nice perspective..
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I’m surprised you earned 5EUR in less than an hour, I thought these survey things would be much poorer earners.
Last year when I started writing longer posts for my blog I discovered that with a bit of extra work, a lot of the subjects I wanted to write about were a good fit for the Seeking Alpha website. Converted to an hourly wage, the pay is pretty bad but when I get into writing mode it’s great fun.
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Good idea of you to convert your stock analysis posts to Seeking Alpha. When you write anyway, why not earn a little extra
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I dabble in the surveys. Like others above mentioned, I do it when I have time and every few months I get a pay out. It won’t pay the bills, but it does add to the checking account buffer. However, right now it is not worth the effort for me.
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