Need Money Blog: MyView Surveys, is it worth it?

If you’ve never heard of MyView before the concept is simple: you get paid to take online surveys. Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Letting a company know about your opinions brings the same sort of pleasure as taking quizzes in magazines, that sense of self-exploration and at the same time the feeling that you are letting your opinions be known to others and making a difference, all the while pocketing some quick cash. Well, I don't want to burst your bubble, but not all online surveys are created equal. More often than not, surveys site promise the world but leave you with nothing but endless advertisements and no money in your pocket.

MyView is legitimate and you will receive e-mails from them stating that you will be paid $1 to $5 to take a 20 minute survey. You will begin to take the survey, so grateful to be offered one that pays cash, and usually 10-15 minutes in the survey will suddenly end and they will say "I'm sorry you do not qualify for this survey. You will not be paid but we'll enter you in our monthly raffle." I do not know anyone who has won that raffle. Call me a skeptic, but I often think that they take the information they want from and just never pay up.



Let’s look at the best case scenario. Each survey you take pays $5 and takes 20 minutes to do. That means you’d be making $15/hour which, assuming the only reason you are doing this is because you don’t have a real job, is not too bad. If you could keep that up for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week that would be a nice little income, $31,200/year. However, from my experience with MyView surveys this is impossible to do. Why? First of all, not every survey is valued at $5. Some are $5, some $3, others $2 or $1, and then there’s the $0 contest entry only surveys. There aren’t always surveys available for you to take either. The surveys that are available usually end up as a waste of time anyways because halfway through it tells you “Sorry, you don’t qualify for this survey” but never tells you why you don’t qualify. Not to mention who knows how long it really takes to complete each full-length survey as it could be over twenty minutes. Oh yeah, I almost forgot, you have to make $25 before you get paid. The one time I did complete a survey for $2 I was never able to go and view my rewards.

This is my real case scenario. Out of the twenty surveys I took I only qualified and finished one of them for cash, worth only $2. I’m pretty quick with a mouse so let’s say I can complete the listed 10-15 minute survey in 5 minutes. That’s a pretty good average because the surveys I don’t qualify for are shorter than and the actual are longer. In one hour I can take 12 surveys (still not entirely realistic but we’ll go with it). That means every two hours I would complete 1 or 2 surveys for cash. At most, that is only $2/hour. This translates to a yearly salary of $4160. Now some of you might be thinking “well that’s 4160 more dollars than I have right now” but again that was being optimistic that you could even take 96 surveys per 8 hour day due to available surveys and length of time to complete.

As you can see, you can make money from MyView but in my opinion it is nowhere near worth the time commitment or effort. I read on a forum that one individual said she’s been taking surveys now and again over the course of a year and has only made $25. Then again, if you have no other source of income and plenty of time you might as well give it a try, maybe you’ll have more luck qualifying for surveys than I did or perhaps even win one of their “giveaways.” I have also heard you get money for referring other users but I am not sure how that works. You can test your luck with MyView but don’t expect too much.