The Side Hustle Thats Definitely Not Worth Your Time

The Side Hustle Thats Definitely Not Worth Your Time Amanda Page had serious student debt$48,000, to be exact. She was working as an adjunct professor at a couple of different colleges, trying to piece togetherbei a full time teaching career, and she wasnt making enough to tackle what she owed. So she started supplementing her income withside hustleslike freelance writing, working as a temporary receptionist, and grading math exams online. As she dove into debt and frugality blogs, she came across a new gig taking paid surveys online.Page, now a personal finance blogger, researched paid survey sites and initially signed up for InboxDollars, which gave her a $5 signing bonus just for registering. Then she moved on to Swagbucks at the recommendation of several trusted bloggers.Taking online surveys is a compelling offer. You can earn moneyeither in cash or frequently gift cards or rewards pointsand all you have to do is have an opinion. You can earn that money from the comfort of your own home in sweatpants with a glass of wine, or knock out a few surveys during slow moments at the office, racking up money when youd usually just be trolling Facebook. Who wouldnt jump at the opportunity?Survey sites advertise that you can earn $5-$35 per survey (although a Student Loan Hero reporter found anaverage mora in the range of $1-2 per hour). Paid online surveys are utterly ubiquitousthere are hundreds of sites that feature paid surveys. ansicht surveys are typically run by marketing or research firms looking for consumer perspectives, and you could be asked questions covering just about everything under the sun.But is taking surveys for money worth it?The short answer is No. This is largely because the reality of taking paid surveys differs wildly from the expectationand youre set up for failure from the beginning. And, you just dont make that much money.You waste time up front.To take surveys, you need to qualify. This means answering a battery of questions up frontbefo re the paid portion of the survey. Page attempted a variety of side hustles to pay off her debt, and says that taking online surveys was the least helpful side hustle she tried, mostly because she simply couldnt even get to the surveys themselves. You can spend almost 10 minutes just trying to qualify for a survey, and then get declined, she says. It takes way too long to determine if youre eligible to take the survey, just to make $5, she says. Short of magically being the right demographic for every survey, youre looking at getting turned away more often than not, and wasting time answering questions that dont come with a pay off.You dont get paid right away.About that money Survey companies typically dont pay you for each and every surveyyou have to meet a payout amount to earn your reward. Page says it took her months to reach the $30 payout on one survey sitetime she could have easily spent on more lucrative side hustles. This presents a aufgabe if you need money fast or if you decide to change course and try something elseyou might end up answering tons of questions and never actually see that money.Paid surveys take up way too much time.Prov Tripi has done surveys for Jetblue, and says it takes forever to make it worth anything. Even a minimum wage job is better, she says. Whats more Tripi says that online surveys usually take at least twice as long as they say they will. In fact, if a survey claimed it would take 25 minutes, Tripi would allot an hour.The only way to make this work would to be a serious survey junkie who can dedicate hours to the work, which defeats the purpose of a side hustle entirely. Whats worse is the idea that you cant adequately plan your timea survey might take twice as long as it says or five times as long. That kind of unpredictability means this isnt a side hustle you can rely on.If you run the numbers, Page says, online surveys simply arent worth the time. If youre spending 20 minutes to make $3 on a survey, do the math. Tha ts $9 an hourmaybeif you qualify for the $3 survey every time, she says. According to Page, the survey side gig is just not sustainable. There are wiser ways to spend your time that will earn you more money in the long run.So what should you do instead? There are plenty of legitside hustles that make real money, and feel way less scammy than paid surveys.Tech side hustles like web development, copywriting, and quality assurance testing are part of stable and booming industriesand are certainly less-mind numbing than survey-taking.But the most important factor that makes these better options is the fact that these gigs can bring in thousands. --A version of this article previously appeared on