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I’ve been able to make money from home since 2008, and I have to tell you… when I first went home, it felt like I was getting away with something. Like someone was gonna call me and say, “Sorry we made a mistake. Report back to the office starting tomorrow.”

I mean, here I was, earning money from home and no longer racing out the door at dawn on my  white-knuckle, 80 mile-an-hour commute to work.

Now, I’d just walk upstairs and sit at my desk in my sweats, my PJ’s or whatever I felt like wearing. I worked with my dog at my side, and suddenly I was hitting the gas station once a week instead of three or four.

Whatever your situation is now – whether you’re working for an employer, you freelance, are a stay at home mom, or unemployed – there’s a way to make money from home.

This post focuses on ways to make money from home if you don’t have a lot of time, and you need to earn money quick. There are online surveys that’ll pay you for giving your opinion on a variety of products.

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If you can devote more time – like several hours a day to working at home, here are two other posts with a lot of options to work for various companies, or for yourself:

• 20 Companies Who Will Hire You to Work From Home
• 20 Side Hustle Ideas to Make $100 a Day

Four Simple Ways to Make Money From Home

What’s a survey company?

Suppose you owned a sneaker company and you’re gonna have the factory make 30,000 new pairs for the Spring season. You think the two new colors, one blue and one grey are pretty cool, but will they sell? When so much money is on the line, businesses want to be reasonably sure that the product they ship is going to sell.

Businesses need a way to poll the opinions of consumers. But they already have a primary focus – like making sneakers, or floor coverings, or coats. So, they’ll pay companies that specialize in market research to see what percentage of the customers they’re targeting would likely buy their product.

And those market research companies will pay you to give your opinion.

You won’t get rich by taking surveys, but it’s a great way to make money from home, and do it literally whenever you want.

Why Use Surveys to Make Money From Home?

Here’s why I’ve used surveys:

• They were perfect when my time was unpredictable. Like when my kids napped at various times of the day, or over the next few years, when I’d find myself sitting in the car waiting for soccer practice to end.
• If you’re trying to pay down debt, it’s amazing how a few hundred extra dollars dedicated to debt can help.
• Or maybe you just need money for something – a vacation, Christmas, or something nice for the house, but your budget is already stretched to the limit.

Surveys are just a convenient way to make money from home on your terms. When and where you can.

Whether it’s 15-20 minutes on your lunch break, or waiting for the kids, or even from the couch watching a movie. They’re simple enough, that they don’t require a lot of thought. It’s just a matter of running down a list and checking boxes.

The companies below, are the ones I’ve found are easy to sign up for and simple to use. It’s best to use multiple companies because surveys are usually targeted to a certain demographic group. So, if you don’t fall into one group, you’ll be in another and you’ll receive enough surveys to make it worth your while.

Here are the ones I’ve used and was able to receive regular payments from. They’re all free to sign up.

Survey Junkie

Survey Junkie  – Really simple to sign up for and use, Survey Junkie has over 5 million users. For surveys you take, payments are made right to your Paypal account.

Inbox Dollars

Inbox Dollars  – In 2016 Inbox Dollars paid out over 50 million dollars to users. One way to earn through Inbox Dollars would be to participate in surveys. But you can also play all sorts of games, like card games, word games, or strategy games and get paid while you play. Or if you use their toolbar for your searches you’ll earn money just for doing the normal searches you’d be doing anyway. Another way to earn through Inbox Dollars is by referring friends. For every friend you refer, you’ll earn 10% of what they earn.

Paid Surveys at Home

Paid Surveys at Home – Paid Surveys at Home will pay you not only for taking surveys but also for watching movie trailers (really!) or for trying new products or participating in focus groups.

Swagbucks

Swagbucks  – Swagbucks is one of the more flexible ways to make money from home. You can take surveys, but you can also watch videos and give an opinion. You can search the web and earn because Swagbucks values your search preferences. You can also earn SB points by making purchases that you’d be making anyway, and then redeem those points for gift cards to major stores like Walmart, Target, Amazon and Starbucks.

Final Points

Some people are reluctant to sign up for anything online because understandably, there are some companies that aren’t legitimate. But there are a few things you can keep an eye out for.

• Be on the lookout for any site that’s asking for a fee to sign up. There are some sites that’ll promise you can earn money from home without any investment, and then ask you to pay for a membership. None of these survey sites ask you for any money to take part. They’re all well established. If you come across any others that do ask for a signup fee, I’d avoid them.
• Most survey sites are a great way to make money from home but they’re not designed to make an entire income from. So if you encounter a site that is promising you several thousand dollars per month, I’d be very wary.

If you’re stretched to the limit each month, and spending everything you take in, then cutting out your $2 coffee may help, but it’s not gonna move the needle much. Making extra money dedicated to what you need it for, will.

The thing is, we don’t have decades to assume that one day we’ll get caught up. The post below, is a great example of how saving just a few hundred dollars as early as possible in life can mean the difference between retiring on $16k per year, or $100k per year.

• 3 Simple Steps to Become a Millionaire

If your schedule is full… you find yourself up at the crack of dawn, and falling into bed at midnight, then making money from home through surveys could work out well for you. It’s one of the only ways I know of, to earn money in little snippets of 15 minutes here, 20 minutes there.

In fact, I’ve used them to eliminate the last few credit card debts we had, and when that was gone, I kept them up and paid for Christmas too. If you try a few of these out, let me know how you do. I’d love to hear!