Dec 4, 2021 4 min read Finance

How You Can Make Money Without A Job

It's been all over social media where "passive income" is the path to financial freedom. If you haven't heard of it before, passive income is where you receive money on a regular basis without the need of putting in a lot of effort. It's also often referred to as "making your money work for you". An example of passive income is investing in real estate, where you purchase a property and the rental income is your passive income (assuming you have a net positive cash flow).

The reason why the concept of passive income is so attractive is because you're not trading your time for money. As we progress through our careers, we slowly understand that our time is so much more valuable than money because you can always earn money, but you can't get time back. So this got me thinking as to, what happens if you can't get that passive income OR you're in a position where you have a lot of time on your hands and need money.

To my surprise, there are actually a lot of websites where you can earn money by just providing feedback or answering questions. There are people and companies out there who will actually pay you to answer a few questions online. I know what you're thinking. Is it really worth my time and how much are they going to pay me. So I decided to sign up and see for myself.

The product which I decided to test out was Survey Junkie (and no I am not being sponsored by them). It has a very simple concept:

Take surveys and answer the questions
Earn points where 1 point = 1 cent USD (Each survey can range from 70 - 450 points)
Redeem the points accumulated for cash

Simple right? So I tested it out whenever I had some spare time during the week. I would try and complete a few of these surveys to see whether it was really worth it or not (for complete transparency you can see a screenshot of my result at the end of the blog) but for now, here's my realistic view of it:

THE PROS

One of the best things about this website is that it is SUPER easy to use. As you can see below, they provide you with about 12 options to choose from. It shows you approximately how long each survey will take and the rewards that you will obtain from completing it. That time aspect is a really great feature as it allows you to decide whether the survey will be worth your time.

For example, there will always be surveys that provide the same rewards but take longer to complete. So you can be strategic in the way you earn.

Another thing about the surveys is that they generally ask the same set of questions. There will always be a section where they ask for information about you and give you the choice of not answering it. If you don't want your data collected, then this probably isn't the thing for you as ALL of the surveys will ask for your details for demographical reasons.

Not all surveys are designed for you. So when you start out, you will answer a few questions about yourself in terms of preferences and activities. Then from answering a few initials questions of the survey, they will assess whether you're the right candidate for the survey. If you're not, they will still give you some points (2-3 points) for your time.

Redeeming your points and converting it to cash is INSTANT. You connect your Paypal account when you're redeeming your points and they pay you the cash almost instantaneously. A lot of companies out there have 2-3 days waiting period when cashing out so this was definitely an amazing feature that Survey Junkie provided.

THE CONS

One thing which I think could be better about this website is providing more information about the survey before entering. As you can see in the screenshot, there really isn't any information on the survey other than the time commitment from you and the reward that you will receive.

This may sound hypocritical but they always ask you the same set of questions about yourself. It does get repetitive and annoying that you have to type in your details time and time again, but I mean, what do you expect, you are getting paid for it.

Another thing to note is that there is a minimum redemption amount which is at 500 points or $5 USD. Not so much of a bad feature, but definitely something to consider when taking on these surveys.

OVERALL

I believe Survey Junkie is a great way to get paid to take surveys & make money online in the short term. It is definitely not something that you want to do as a long term hobby as the effort to value ratio is definitely not worth it. Also, automating it is not going to be possible as they cleverly place questions in there to make sure that you're not cheating. So if you've got some time to spare, don't have a side hustle but want to make some extra cash then I recommend joining Survey Junkie.

As I'm on a mission to demystifying expectations and providing a realistic view on things, I thought I'd share my results from doing these surveys. I spent about 3 hours altogether on this website and was able to achieve 3410 points = ~$50 AUD.

So as you can see, not really a great deal of cash especially for someone who has a full time job but you can see how beneficially this can be for someone who doesn't have a job and needs some cash to get started.