Want to avoid wasting your time, and get the most out of your survey-taking experience? Keep these in mind:

1. The more sites you can sign up with, the better.  Remember that these are small amounts of money.  But when you add small amounts of money from multiple places, it adds up!  If you belong to many sites, there will literally always be money to be made.  At the time of this writing, I belong to 50 different survey sites.  I try new ones when I find them, and I have no problem dropping the ones that aren’t working for me…. whether it’s that I just don’t like them, or they don’t seem to be making me any money.

2.  Use a different email than your main one, or set up your email to go to its own dedicated folder.   Be prepared to get a LOT of emails.  I use gmail, so I just have my survey mail set up to skip the inbox and go straight into its own folder.  Then, when I have a few minutes (I usually do it a couple of times a day), I can go in and look at them all in one place.  No fuss, and no cluttering up my main inbox.

3.  Do the surveys, but skip the “offers”.  A lot of sites will send you offers where they’ll pay you a small sum (maybe a dollar) to do things like sign up to win a gift card, or get a free recipe book in your email.  These force you to click through pages and pages to get your reward, they often get your email added to spammy lists, and half the time they don’t even credit.  They’re not worth your time.

4.  DO check out the other sites that they email you about.  A lot of these sites work in partnership with each other, so one site may pay you to sign up at another site.  These sign ups take two minutes, you have a potential great new site to check out, AND you get paid for it.  Win/win.  I have found some awesome new sites that way.

5.  Keep track of your earnings.  I made myself a spreadsheet where I list my sites, how they pay, what their payment threshold is, and how much I’ve made.  (If you’re not a spreadsheet person, a notebook works just as well)  It makes it really easy to see at a glance which sites are doing well, and which sites are doing nothing.

6.  Go through your emails a few times a day.  I’m able to sort through them very quickly now.  I delete the ones I don’t want, and keep the ones I might be interested in.  I generally don’t do any surveys that take longer than 20 minutes, or pay less than a dollar, unless there is something exceptional about them.  You’ll quickly get a feel for which sites are your favorite, and will find yourself gravitating to those emails first.  If you have no extra time, the rest can just go in the trash.

7.  Pick a few sites to visit daily.  Some sites don’t really send many emails, but they always have daily money-making opportunities on their sites.   Pick a favorite or two, and make it a habit to go daily.  My current favorite is Swagbucks, and I make it a point to go there every day and at least take a survey or two.  I usually earn enough to cash in for a $5 Amazon gift card every few days.

8.  Make it fun!  The nice thing about doing surveys, and about being signed up with many sites, is that you can pick and choose what you want to do.  It really is fun when you ignore the fluff, and just enjoy letting your opinion be heard and getting paid for it.