I Made Money Online Taking Surveys. My Thoughts?

Is it possible to make money by doing nothing more than take online surveys? Yes. Yes it is. It is probably one of the easiest ways to make money online and more and more survey companies are popping up online these days, everything from Swagbucks, to Survey Junkie, to American Consumer Opinion and more.

Are these survey sites legit? Are they scams? I took some time the past week to explore. One of my contacts informed me that one of the best survey sites she was aware of is called InboxDollars. So that is the site I used for this process.

Once you make it to the website's homepage, you have the option to sign up. If you want to start using this site to make money, you have no choice but to sign up. They require an email address and a password. Once you have those, you've officially signed up for an account.

So far so good. You are now on the website's homepage. The black bar gives you options of what you can do, and the green bar in the top right is how much money you've earned. You get a $5 bonus just for signing up, so for newcomers, the green bar on the top right of the screen will say $5.00.

All that's left is to get started on the surveys. Clicking on the surveys tab, you'll either get matched with a popular survey or choose from a list of them. Fortunately, they tell you how many minutes each survey will take, which is good because some of them can be as quick as 5 minutes. Others can take up to an hour.

So, how are the surveys themselves?

Well, you start with what is called pre-screening to qualify for the survey. Sometimes surveys are targeted towards a narrow segment of people. You first have to answer some questions and your answers to those questions determine if the survey is meant for you or not.

The surveys themselves are usually quite simple. But how much money can you make off of it? Surveys here can pay from as little as 25 cents to around 5 dollars.

How do you get the money that you earned? You click on the green box displaying your earnings. You'll see a purple button that says 'Request Cash.'

You'll then be presented with multiple ways to redeem your money. You could redeem it in the form of a check sent to you, there's PayPal, or you could receive the money in the form of a prepaid Visa car. Or you could forego those altogether and redeem your money in the form of gift cards: anywhere from Amazon, Best Buy, Target, Google Play, and more; lots of gift cards are available for redemption.

You can't redeem any money until you've earned at least 10 dollars, and some options are restricted unless you've earned a certain amount; for instance, you cannot redeem a Best Buy gift card unless you've earned $30.

So, is it worth it? Well, that depends. On the one hand, it gives you an interesting thing to do in your spare time when you'e bored, and it's cool to have a hobby that makes you money. But would I recommend doing it specifically for the money?

Ehhh, no.

In order to make a lot of money here, you'll have to work hard and long. It's pretty much a guarantee that you won't qualify for every survey, and if you worked at this as hard and as long as you would an actual job, you'd be earning less than minimum wage.

Is the site bad? No. But is the pay good?