Ryan McFarland

I like to do surveys.  I like filling out forms.  But i really like to find flaws in surveys.  This one they thank me for my participation, tell me my opinion is important and then make me choose — male or female?  There is no question like “What is your gender?” or “Which way does your sexual preference lean?”

I don’t think doing surveys will ever replace real income but i still do them every now and then.  I have always liked filling out forms so the prospect of doing that with a potential reward is pretty great.  Most of the services i have seen offer a drawing of those that participate.  Ugh.  What are those chances?  1 in 10,000?  One service seems to pay out better than that - Zoompanel. By doing most surveys with them you earn points.  Points are redeemable at different thresholds for a variety of prizes.  I checked my point balance today and had 6,060 points.  Granted - that’s a few years of doing the occasional survey.  Most of the time i just delete the survey invitations from my inbox.  Since i’m working on spending absolutely no extra money right now it was kind of nice to spend some of those points on a little shopping spree.  I considered holding out for the 7,000 point mark but things in the 5k and 1k point collections caught my eye.  Most surveys give you 25-100 points for completing them and sometimes you get 5 points if you don’t qualify.  So now i have a webcam and an audio splitter being shipped out.  I think i’ll use the webcam together with the weather station to make a page on this site for checking up on the house - perhaps a view from the second story.  Then i can check the wind speed, inside and outside temperature, humidity, rainfall and see if there is new snow on the ground at the house.  The weather just three miles from downtown can vary considerably.  The audio splitter?  It will split the audio out of my cell phone so when we travel together we can listen to the same tunes.

If you want to start doing surveys for the ability to pick out $40 worth of prizes every few years (really, i bet i have only spent a few hours total completing these surveys) let me know.  If i send you an email invitation and you join then i get 100 points!