How to Maximize Your Earnings on Surveys

Surveys provide a great way to earn money online. The vast majority of them take less than 10 minutes to complete, and they normally only ask simple questions about your shopping habits. 

But different users earn vastly amounts from surveys, depending on how they've answered previously, what demographic they fall into, and which platform they are using. Here are the general dos and don'ts to maximize your survey earnings: 

Choose the best survey platform 

The first step to maximizing your survey earnings is probably obvious, choose the best survey platform. You want to go with a survey provider who has the following: 

In terms of payment rates, most are very similar, so prioritize using a paid survey platform that has the above features, like Freecash. 

Take advantage of bonuses on your survey platform 

Almost every survey platform will have some kind of reward structure in place so they can incentivize users. For instance, on Freecash, we provide bonuses to drive users to certain surveys. 

As you can see in the example below, if a user chooses surveys from Torox, AdGate, RevU or Ayet Studios, they will currently earn an additional 50%. 

Use these bonuses to guide which surveys you participate in, and you can efficiently increase your earnings every month, without spending more time. 

You should also look out for site-wide reward programs on your platform of choice. For instance, on Freecash we have the Bonus Ladder, which provides users a chance to earn extra cash or gamble it, and the Daily Streak, which rewards users who log in every day (whether they complete surveys or play games).  

If you do surveys daily, simply remembering to click on these bonuses each time you log in can have a significant effect on your monthly earnings. 

Provide honest, detailed responses

Although the vast majority of questions on a paid survey will be multiple choice, you will often be asked to write a text response or two, especially during the qualification stage.

For instance, on a survey I took this morning, the third qualification question asked me to write a text response to the question "If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go and what would you do there?" 

This is exactly the kind of question designed to test how good of a survey respondent you are. I advise writing detailed, proper responses to these questions every time you see them. 

Do not try to complete surveys quickly by answering randomly 

While survey providers have no way of knowing whether you are telling the truth, they can still 'penalize' you by rejecting you from future surveys. And they will, if they are suspicious of your answers.

Survey providers might become suspicious if your responses are inconsistent, you completed the survey too quickly, or if your written responses are very short. Effectively, anything which suggests you are not taking every question seriously. 

As a rule of thumb, I advise anyone getting into paid surveys to sit down and answer properly, or to not bother at all. Trying to 'game' the system by rushing through surveys does not work, it will simply result in fewer earning opportunities in the future. 

If you don't have the patience for surveys (which is understandable), you are better off doing paid gaming tasks, which are far more entertaining to complete. 

Never abandon ongoing surveys 

One of the worst things you can do is abandon ongoing surveys, this will make it far less likely for you to qualify for future surveys. As mentioned above, I always advise users to either do paid surveys properly, or try paid gaming instead. 

Although it was once possible to start surveys, judge their difficulty, then proceed or abandon, this will now have repercussions for your account.  

Avoid using VPNs (virtual private networks) to find more surveys 

This is an absolute hard no. When you use a VPN to appear as though you are based in another location, you are not merely going against the rules of the survey, but in almost all cases you are breaking the platform's terms of service. 

For instance, on our platform, Freecash, we do not allow users to access any part of our site with a VPN. Per our Terms of Service (§17, ¶14)

Therefore, you agree not to use VPN, proxy, emulator software on our Website and you will not use fake SMS numbers, Google Voice or VOIP when verifying your phone number.

Earning sites have to take VPN use seriously. The market research companies who pay for survey respondents need guarantees that they can reach certain region-specific audiences.