Survey Jobs UK: How Do They Work?

If you’re interested in taking part in UK survey jobs, this guide will let you know what to expect.

While it’s difficult to replace your full-time income, you can certainly earn a decent amount of money if you take survey jobs seriously as a respondent for market research sites.

Read on to discover how paid survey jobs work in the UK, plus some ideas for what you can do to maximise your earnings.

UK Survey Jobs: Expectations vs Reality

Perhaps when you first discovered the concept of survey jobs in the UK, you picture a life of waking up when you like, answering some fun survey questions on your laptop, taking the dog for a walk, then earning a fat cash reward at the end of the day.

As great as this sounds, the fat cash reward won’t be easy to come by. You’ll have to hustle hard if you want to earn large amounts of money – and even then it’s not guaranteed.

The reality is: paid survey opportunities aren’t consistent. On some days, you might have 10 new survey invitations emailed to you. On others, you might only get one or two.

Also, a survey invitation doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be able to complete the survey and get paid. A lot of survey websites have strict deadlines for members to finish a survey, or a restriction on the amount of members who can take part. Some will disqualify members mid-way through the survey if it turns out answers from their demographic aren’t needed.

On top of that, all survey websites require you to rack up a minimum amount of points before you can cash out – and some only let you convert your points into gift cards.

So, as nice as it sounds to ditch your office to spend more time at home with the dog, it will be difficult to make a full-time living from these websites. However, if you’re looking to make some extra money on the side, earn some free gift cards to give out for gifts or keep to yourself, or just want to earn cash if you have extra time, surveys are a great fit.

Are you eligible for a survey jobs UK?

A great aspect of these paid survey websites is their inclusivity.

Some paid survey websites might have a minimum age limit, while not all of them accept members from the UK, but if you can pass these two tiny barriers, you’re free to register and start making money within minutes. You don’t need to possess any special skills or do any sort of training.

It’s easy enough to register with dozens of paid survey websites, increasing the amount of survey-taking opportunities made available to you. However, this could potentially mean it will take longer for you to reach the ‘cash out’ threshold on each of these websites.

How to maximise your income from paid survey websites

Below are some tips to help increase your earnings from paid survey websites, so that you can consider answering surveys a job worth doing!

1. Register with plenty of different websites

This will maximise the amount of surveys offered to you per day. It only takes a couple of minutes to register to these websites. We suggest creating a new email address specifically for survey-taking, so that any notifications you receive don’t get lost in your main inbox.

Some of the top survey sites in the UK include:

Branded Surveys UK – $1.00 USD joining bonus offered
Panelbase – Receive £3 just for joining and becoming a full community member
Lifepoints UK – Cash surveys offered

We have listed 10 of our favourite UK paid survey websites in this guide.

2. Make use of other paid activities

A lot of paid survey websites allow you to earn extra money by completing other online activities, helping you earn more with your online surveys job.

Some websites pay you to complete simple tasks like watching videos or playing online games, although the pay per task completed tends to be ridiculously low.

Others offer you the opportunity to take part in product testing, focus groups or mystery shopping. These tasks actually pay a lot better than surveys, although they take longer and are more difficult to be selected for, as there are few spaces and a lot of applicants.

Even so, these additional tasks can potentially help you top up your earnings if you have run out of surveys to take.

SwagBucks UK – Receive $5.00 USD for joining
PrizeRebel – low cashout minimums

3. Download the smartphone app

If a paid survey website has an accompanying smartphone app, it’s worth downloading it.

The app will make it easy for you to answer surveys during your dead while out and about. Instead of mindlessly scrolling through Facebook while you’re in a queue or sitting on the train, you can make money.

Some apps will send a push notification every time a new survey becomes available, giving you the best chance to complete that survey before the opportunity to do so disappears.

Sites that offer survey apps in the UK include:

YouGov – take interesting political surveys with this UK-based site
Pinecone Research – earn £3 per completed survey

4. Turn email notifications on

Most paid survey websites will be able to send an email notification if a new survey opportunity becomes available, but some will require you to opt in to this service.

It’s worth doing, as this will save you from logging into the website every day to check for new surveys.

5. Consider converting your points into retail gift cards

A lot of websites make it more cost-effective to convert your points into gift cards instead of PayPal payments or bank transfers.

As an example, it may cost 500 points to buy an $5 Amazon voucher, but 600 points to receive a $5 Paypal payment.

If this is the case, browse for gift cards at retail stores that you would have shopped at anyway.

You can earn gift cards on the following websites:

Univox – receive a $2 USD bonus for signing up
Panel Champ – highly remunerative music surveys offered

If there are no retailers on your list which sell items you need, consider buying a gift card and selling it on an exchange website like cardyard.co.uk.

6. Stick with your favourite websites

Yes, you should initially sign up for a lot of paid survey websites. But, eventually it will make sense to stay loyal to your favourites. Most likely, these will be the ones that offer the most surveys and pay the best.

It’s worth considering which websites are the most fun to use as well! That way, your survey-taking will feel less like a job and more like a hobby!

The bottom line

A full-time online survey job in the UK is possible in theory. In reality, you’re likely to burn out trying to earn enough money to support a basic lifestyle.

With that said, these websites are a useful money-making tool.

We recommend you sign up for a few and start spending a bit of time filling out surveys, with no initial expectations for how much you can earn.

Who knows? If you enjoy it, this may turn into a serious money-making activity for you.