Reader Mail: Get Paid to Read E-mails and Take Surveys

A reader writes:

Scott:

I am a stay-at-home mom with two young children. I'd like to earn some extra money online, but am not really sure how. Because of the kids, I can't really do phone work.

I've seen sites where you can supposedly get paid to read emails and take surveys.

Do those work? How much money can I make? And how do I make sure I'm not getting scammed?

A.H.

This is actually one of the things I most frequently get asked about.

In short, yes you can make money with these programs, but not much. And you really have to do the math to know which activities, even with the same company, are worthwhile and which are a waste of time.

Let's look at the numbers behind a couple of the most popular, well-established sites: MyPoints and InboxDollars. Both offer paid emails and surveys, as well as rebate points on shopping and other miscellaneous rewards.

• InboxDollars pays $0.02 for every email you read and $0.50 for qualified survey completion. InboxDollars doesn't pay anything on unqualified survey responses.
• MyPoints typically pays 5 points (about 3.5 cents) for emails, 50 points ($0.35) for qualified surveys, and 10 points ($0.07) if you're not qualified for the survey.

So let's run the numbers.

I did some testing, and it takes an average of about 15 seconds to open an email, click on the link, confirm it online in the browser (if required) and close the browser window.

What we want to do is try to work that out into an hourly rate. Not that you can ever get enough of these to sit and do this for an hour straight, but it gives us a familiar value for comparison purposes.

So...

15 seconds per email = 4 emails per minute = 240 emails per hour

240 emails per hour @ $0.02 per email = $4.80 per hour (InboxDollars)

Now if you're in the United States, that's less than minimum wage (ranges from $6.15 to $8.00 per hour, depending on the state). However, in many parts of the world, that's a fairly decent wage. For example, even in Puerto Rico, the minimum wage is $4.10 an hour. But in China, the average (not minimum) wage is $1.82 per hour.

So whether or not that's "good money" depends entirely on where you live.

MyPoints works out to a little higher rate -- about $8.40 an hour. However, it's only available to residents of US and Canada.

Let's look at the surveys, though.

It takes about 4 minutes to complete a survey. Using the InboxDollar numbers:

5 minutes per survey = 12 surveys per hour

12 surveys per hour $0.50 per survey = $6.00 per hour

There's only one little catch. InboxDollars doesn't pay you if you don't qualify for the survey, and it takes about 2 minutes to answer the qualifying questions. Let's assume, generously, that you qualify for 1/3 of the surveys. I won't bore you with any more math, but it now works out to $3.33 an hour - big difference.

MyPoints pays less for surveys, but they at least pay you something if you don't qualify. Using the same assumptions as for InboxDollars, it works out to almost exactly the same rate.

These are a couple of the most prominent and highest-paying get-paid-to-read-email programs. There are some survey programs with higher payouts, but be careful. Some want to charge membership fees, some have very high requirements in order to get your payout checks, etc. Our Frugal Living Guide has some more detailed advice on getting paid to take surveys, including sources for reputable survey companies.

Bottom line:

Yes, you can make money reading emails, but not very much, at least by U.S. standards. Furthermore, you probably can't find enough companies to have it be a significant source of income on its own.

However, it's work you can do even with screaming babies around, and it requires very little skill and no capital. And done a few seconds at a time, you hardly even notice it, but you certainly do notice when you get to trade in your points for a $50 gas card or gift certificate.

You have to figure out how much your time is worth, and if it's worth more than you can make viewing emails, even a few seconds at a time, don't do it. Your time is better spent elsewhere.