Can Online Surveys Really Pay Your Bills?

Can surveys and other online gigs pay your bills? Well, that depends on how big your bills are. Do you just have a $30 a month phone bill, and nothing else? Yea, they can probably pay your bills. But as for the rest of us - certainly not.

Let's think about this. If taking online surveys could give you enough money to pay insurance, car payment, mortgage payment, utilities...wouldn't everybody be doing it? Certainly they can help you pay these bills, but making if you're looking to make it a part-time job, you should probably look elsewhere. But before delving into this, let's look at the two types of survey sites.

1. First we have the sites that have hundreds or thousands of surveys to complete, all which range from approximately $0.10 to $1.00 once completed. Sounds great, but the only problem is, these aren't your normal surveys from companies that want feedbank or demographical information for their particular company. These are "Win a Free IPod!" surveys, that put you through page after page of "offers" to try and snag your money. Most people simply click "No" to every offer, finish through the survey and grab their $0.50 or so, and be on their way.

So why not just do that for a few hours and build yourself up some good money? Well, for one, many of these aren't quick surveys. They're 5-8 pages long of offers and/or personal information. That's right, each survey wants your name, address, phone number, list of your greatest fears, etcetera. Now I can see giving this information to legit companies looking for information - but these sites are built to try and take your money, fine print and all. So giving them your personal information is like sending a memo out to all available telemarketers with your phone number and usual dinner time.

Are there ways around this? Of course. There's sites that give you a free online phone number, and sites that give throw-away e-mail addresses. You could potentially make hundreds of dollars or more on the sites per month, but that requires a few hours a day sitting down and going through the same agonizing process, of trying to pull-one over on the scam sites for a little bit of change.