Technobabble

Online Survey Report – One Month Later

Posted by on Dec 29, 2004 | 5 Comments

After a month in the paid online survey game, I can tell you unquestionably: you can get paid to take surveys online. But lets get realistic. While the ads scream about making $100 an hour, I haven’t seen anything remotely close to that.

While the money hasn’t been big, it sure has been easy.

I didn’t sign up with any of the pay-to-play services that promise to hook you up with the survey companies. (I checked a bunch of them out, tho.) After hearing back from a slew of helpful Gnomies, I decided to sign up with two free services they recommended–Survey Savvy and ESearch, instead. And I hooked up with PollCast for SMS surveys.

So far, the PollCast SMS surveys are my favorites–they’re fast and fun to complete. PollCast has sent me a total of eight one question surveys, so far. All have been multiple choice questions. I just need to answer with an A, B, C, or D and respond to the SMS. Bingo, I’m 25 cents richer. One month later, thanks to PollCast, I have the proverbial change for the parking meter or a couple of cheap cups of coffee. Total time invested: eight minutes.

The web-based Survey Savvy and ESearch surveys are more intensive and can take a reasonable amount of time to complete. It’s taken as much as ten minutes or so to complete one of these online surveys. On a positive note, this has been simple work, so far. (Picking one brand over another isn’t that tough a job.) But it can be frustrating to get deep into an online survey only to find out that you’ve been disqualified for one reason or another. Disqualification = no pay.

Some online surveys will tell you right up front that you’ll be paid a set amount, say three bucks or so. Other surveys will enter you into a drawing, where you might be eligible to receive ten bucks or more. “Might be” is the key phrase. Might be, might be not is more like it.

I’ve filled out a bunch of surveys where I was eligible … alas, I’ve invested my time, but I haven’t won any drawings. Yet.

I’ll keep at the online paid survey game, for as long as it holds my interest … All in the name of research, coffee, and food for the parking meters … :)

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  • Anonymous

    I can’t believe you’re using Excel for such a simple problem!

    You have to rebuild a walkway which is 12 feet wide and 2½ miles long. You can build it out of concrete at $95 per sq foot or wood at $127 per sq foot. The difference is $32 per square foot. You have to determine how much it will save you to use concrete in place of wood.

    It would be 5280 x 12 x 2.5 x $32. You can use a simple calculator, type the problem into google, or just use paper and pencil.
    They all give the answer as $5,068,800. I’d send in a screenshot of the calculator, but then I’d want to send a photo of of my figures on a napkin.
    Or you can go to google and see it here, http://www.google.com/#hl=en&cp=21&gs_id=3&xhr=t&q=5280+x+12+x+2.5+x+%2432&pf=p&sclient=psy&site=&source=hp&pbx=1&oq=5280+x+12+x+2.5+x+%2432&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=&gs_upl=&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=da8c3ab7508c4c6a&biw=1250&bih=838

    • http://www.nerdenterprises.com Seth David

      Thanks for your reply. The idea here is to show how you can start using Excel to solve these problems very easily. Then hopefully one can begin to extend the application of this knowledge into more complex problem solving.

  • Dan Rudder

    When you convert miles to feet, you do not get square feet at that point!

    • http://www.nerdenterprises.com Seth David

      Correct! As the blog post states then you have to multiply the total feet (from the mile length) by the width which we have in feet to get the square footage.