Make easy money just by answering questions! Sounds tempting, right? Too good to be true? Well, that might actually be the case. Many of these promising phone apps which guarantee that answering surveys will pay real money (via PayPal or gift cards), do not actually generate a great revenue However, Joshua Schoonmaker, ‘18, yours truly, is set to determine which hold any water, and which aren’t worth your time.

The tactics are very clever; these companies generally never technically lie, so their offers  can’t be considered scams. However, what they will do is grant money upon an initial sign-up, but only allow money to be cashed out at a certain amount, and make it very difficult to generate money after the sign-up. For example, the Zap Surveys app rewards a generous $6.25 for your first survey! But you can only take money out of the app once you’ve made $25. And like many other apps, Zap Surveys makes it very hard to make any real money. Even apps that use a point system make it hard to earn points. They promise a certain amount for completing a survey, but most often users will be screened out of a survey, and only compensated with a few cents or entries into a raffle, if anything. The program seems to reward those who qualify for taking their surveys, more than actual honesty, which incentivizes survey takers to simply lie, claiming ownership of certain products, reporting an inaccurate age, etc., just to make any sort of revenue. “I’ve gotten a few surveys sent to me through email, and those seem even more sketchy than these programs. I’ve never really looked into programs like these though, so this could be interesting.” -Alexa Soto, ‘18.

Photo courtesy of Elitelimoct.com

So far, I have only been using these apps for a few days. I will download more and explore features other than just surveys, but some applications have already made a strong impression on me:

1Q: 1Q is actually the most legitimate app I have found thus far. I made 75 cents just by answering three simple questions, and there was no complicated, repetitive screening process. The only issue 1Q poses is that these surveys do not come around very often, and there aren’t options for making money from anything else in the app. However, you can’t expect too much from an app giving you free money– and reliably. It was sent straight to my PayPal with no complications.

HQ: Unlike the other apps, HQ is actually a live game show. The format is simple: three times a day, a live host asks twelve questions in a row. Answering just one wrong disqualifies you, and getting them all right gives you a chance to win some money, and even a huge grand prize. The likelihood of winning is extremely low, but the game is set up fairly and it’s fun to participate with a live host and chat, and the grand prize can actually be huge– I have seen it range from $5,000 to $25,000 in the time I’ve been using it.

LifePoints: Though I haven’t earned enough points to redeem any rewards yet, it seems as though there is a reliable way to do so, but it will take a long time. The LifePoints app has a few features: you can take a “daily challenge,” which gets you a few points and supposedly increases your odds of “achieving maximum earnings from this app,” whatever that means. You can “earn on the go,” which allows you to take surveys upon visiting certain destinations and earn points that way, and of course there are regular old surveys that appear in your app. However, the screening process for these surveys prevents significant progress towards rewards. Of the twenty surveys I’ve “taken,” I was only able to complete about a fifth of them. Those got me points, but the rest got me entries into a sweepstakes for $2,000 that will end in June. Not the most fun, it’s sort of tedious, and probably not worth your time, but from what I’ve seen, you can get something out of LifePoints.

“I’ve seen you take those surveys during lunch,” says Jonathan Evangelista, ‘18, “they take you quite some time to do even before they screen you out. Seems like an okay use of your time, if you’ve got nothing better to do. It risks being a distraction from more important things, though.”

Panel App: This app seems to beg for referrals without actually delivering much content. Surveys are scarcely delivered, it’s possible to be screened out, and thus it will take a long time to redeem any reward you’re getting without question, though they do offer entries to sweepstakes for a low amount of points.

Swagbucks: I’ve already deleted this app. Though it seems to be a popular and famous survey program, in my opinion, it’s trash. The surveys will always screen you out, at least in my experience. Oh but don’t worry, you can get free points just for watching videos! That is, if you have the patience to watch the same three minute video on repeat for what’s basically the equivalent of one cent each time. Really the only thing I’d recommend the program for (and this uses the website more than the phone application) is getting points for signing up for other programs and services. If you’re someone who is just starting to sign up for streaming, gaming, cooking, really any service of any kind, then I suppose Swagbucks can get you something extra out of it. But really, I strongly believe it isn’t worth anyone’s time.

The progress made in these apps, and any more if I discover any that stick out, will be updated more in future Beacon articles.