626: 13 Ways to Get Paid for Your Opinion

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1:14Yes, your opinion is worth something and actually you pay pretty well for it, up to$50 ,000 a month in some cases. But the most lucrative ways to get your opinion, take more time and effort than simply answering your surveys. What's up, what's up? Nick Loper here. Welcome to the Side Hustle Show. it's the business podcast you can actually apply and today I'm breaking down how to profit from something we all have opinions. Now we're going roughly in order from lowest paying to highest paying which is why you want to stick around to the end to see how some people are making a great full-time living from sharing theirs.

1:46Number one is the one I just alluded to and that's to take online surveys. This is probably the easiest and fastest way to get paid for your opinion. It is what shows up on everybody's lists of ways to make extra money. These are companies like swag bucks, survey junkie, inbox dollars. They're not going to make you rich, but they are legit. They're an easy way to make extra money. Plus you can do them in your downtime. Like when you're waiting in line or watching TV, I'll put direct referral links to some of side hustle nation's favorites in the show notes for this episode. If you're consistent with these, Hey, maybe it's 30 to a hundred dollars a month.

2:18Number two is to participate in market research and paid focus groups. These ones are always a fun side hustle for me and they pay significantly better than typical online surveys. In fact, the average compensation for the ones that I've done is between$50 and$150 an hour. $200, I think, was one of them. Now, why would your opinion be worth so much? And the reason for this is that companies are using your feedback and guidance to come up with new product ideas or kind of dictate the direction that they want to go before they launch because it's so much less expensive to pay a few people a little bit of money to get the product right up front than launching the wrong product or with the wrong messaging or with the wrong design or layout.

3:00The downside to these is it's hard to get selected for the studies very often. And that's why you can't really rely on it as a source of side hustle income. But it's like fun, extra money when it comes in. I've got a full post on side hustle nation where I break down the most popular companies in this space. But a couple favorites of mine are user interviews and respondent. So I'll link up my full reviews and direct referral links for those in the show notes for this episode. Number three is product testing. And there's a lot of companies that will facilitate different product testing gigs. One pretty well established one is product report card.

3:35They've been around since 2012. They do product testing gigs, they do paid surveys, they do online focus groups. The best paying tests that I found are for these in-home product tests, and then also the remote interviews and focus groups, sometimes in the 75 to$150 an hour range. Great little side gig again, probably can't count on it to be a reliable source of income. But when those gigs come through, and if you like testing out new products, could be a fun one to play around with. Number four is to test websites. And this is through services like user testing, and IntelliZoom, they'll pay you to give your feedback on websites and similar to the market research and focus groups in that it's easier, faster and cheaper to gather some screen recorded, voice recorded feedback of somebody trying to navigate your new redesign than it would be to launch, especially if you're a big company and you get a ton of traffic, then to have a redesign that's confusing, people can't find the button that they want you to click on.

4:33And it's so much more efficient to do that. And for that reason, these companies will pay, well, they'll pay user testing in IntelliZoom, they'll pay them and then they'll share a portion of the proceeds with testers like you and me, typically like$10 for every 20 minute test or so. So what's that$30 an hour, but the downside is they do fill up really fast. And so you kind of build up a reputation on these platforms as somebody who provides good feedback and you're gonna be quick on the trigger when those tests do pop up. Number five is mystery shopping. And this is where you get to try new things.

5:08Maybe it's a restaurant, maybe it's a hotel, even in some cases, it'll stay for free, get some extra money for writing up a little report about your experience and opinion. I've done a little bit of this mostly through an app called Field Agent, where you would go to your local store. The app makes it really easy to open up and show you the map where the nearby gigs are. And sometimes you find three or four of them at one store. Typically, it is a$3 to$10 gig on checking product displays, verifying inventory levels, taking pictures of that product in the store. Occasionally, it's trying out a new product where they'll reimburse you and give it a taste test and write about your opinion for that.

5:49Another one that's hard to piece together a consistent income on an app like Field Agent, but it's a fun way to make some money on shopping trips you're already making. It would be hard to justify making a dedicated trip just to do that. And one thing that is frustrating and challenging is that sometimes the products that they want you to look for simply aren't in the store or for whatever reason to use like this really hard to decipher acronym about what the product actually is. Just, you know, they're limited to two letter abbreviations. I don't know. It's hard to describe, but if you use the app, you know what I'm talking about.

6:21So it's frustrating to think you're going to make an easy 15, 20,$25 because you saw that several of these quick gigs were listed at one store only to spend 15 minutes wandering the aisles trying to find the things that they wanted you to take pictures of. But I'll link up my full field agent app review for more. Now for better paying mystery shopping gigs, Jen Trinidad recommended starting with the Industry Association. Hi, I'm Jen Trinidad of Budget Divas, and I made about$2 ,000 a month on average mystery shopping. If you're interested in mystery shopping, the first place, I would go to mspa-americas.org.

7:01They are like the government agency of mystery shopping, if you will. So MSPA stands for the Mystery Shopping Providers Association. And when you go onto that site, you'll have access to a list of mystery shopping providers that have gone through this process to become a legitimate mystery shopping company. Okay. So it's primarily done through these kinds of directories versus calling up Target or Walmart and offering to like go check on their employees. Yeah. So for someone who's new at the bottom of your screen on the right hand side, where it says, congratulations, it says elite member 2022.

7:44And so those are the companies that have been vetted through the MSPA and are the companies that people would want to work with. If you're on this list, that means that they're a great company to work for and mystery shoppers recommend them. All right, so that's number five, mystery shopping. Number six is one that not a lot of people know about. I always felt like this was pretty cool when I discovered this, and that's to write software reviews through sites like G2 and Capterra. They will occasionally pay you, usually through Amazon gift cards, for honest software product reviews. And I've received several of these worth over$100 in total for all the different tools that I use to run my business.

8:30And what is kind of the secret here is you gotta leave your first review for free because during that process, they'll ask you what other tools that you use, what do you integrate ActiveCampaign with? What do you integrate ConvertKit with? And you could say, well, I'll use it with Leadpages, or I use it with this other tool, or I take payments with Stripe or something. And then the secret is to not review those right away, is wait for an email to come through that offers a little gift card incentive. Sometimes it's$5, sometimes it's$10,$15,$20, depending on what they really want to build up a critical mass of reviews.

9:06Because their game, we should, you know, you always peel back, well, if somebody's giving me money, what's in it for them, right? Their game is to rank in Google if somebody searches ConvertKit review, active campaign review, and they've crowdsourced hundreds and hundreds of these things. And they can say, hey, on average, it's worth a 4.2 star rating. And hopefully somebody clicks our affiliate link when they go and sign up. And it's a pretty smart business because then they're going to get recurring revenue in the cases of a lot of these software companies for the life of that customer. And OK, so it was worthwhile to pay out a little bit to start to collect those honest reviews.

9:37So anyways, that's kind of a fun one. It's not a ton of money, but it's a kind of a fun one for me. So that's the first half of our list. Number one, take online surveys. Number two, market research and focus groups. Number three is product testing. Number four is to test websites. Number five was mystery shopping. And number six was to write software reviews. We've got lots more ways to monetize your opinion, including some that could be worth thousands of dollars a month or more right after this. as a business owner you worked hard to make that phone ring but missing a business call it's like watching money fly right out the window that's why today's episode is brought to you by quo spelled q u o it's the smarter way to run your business communications quo is the number one business phone system built for 2025 not 1995 in fact it's rated the top choice for customer satisfaction with over 3 ,000 reviews on G2.

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12:24Number seven is one of the most buzzworthy side hustles of the moment or of the year, and that's to review products on Amazon through the Amazon Influencer Program. Now, the reason for this is in most cases, Amazon isn't going to pay you to leave written reviews of the products you buy. But if you're accepted into the Amazon Influencer Program, you can get paid to create short video product reviews. And by that, I mean, they're not going to pay you up front, but they are going to pay you a little commission if someone buys the product after watching your video. It says, hey, thanks for helping us close that sale.

12:58We'll sprinkle a couple percentage points your way. And the cool thing is you don't have to drive any traffic. Unlike traditional affiliate marketing, where you got to have the SEO dialed in or the email list dialed in or the big social following. This is entirely driven on Amazon. They post these videos on the product pages as a way to help close more sales or as a way to help educate customers and kind of give the shopper an honest look at what is this product like in the hands of actual customers. And it's super easy. Like for me, low production quality, just shot with my phone, quick voiceover.

13:33I'm usually not even on the camera. It's me kind of pointing the, sometimes my hands are in the picture, demonstrating what the product is or how it works, but super easy. I made my first$9 after just a few days of uploading is like, this is probably the easiest$9 I've ever made. You know, maybe around a hundred bucks a month on average, and probably more during Q4. Very little effort, very passive. Once these videos are uploaded, connected with other side hustlers earning$2 ,000 a month or more sharing their opinions on Amazon products through this program, it's become a really popular side hustle.

14:05And when anything like that kind of takes off or blows up, or there's perceived easy money to be had. You get a lot of these early adopter gurus pitching their course on the topic, and maybe there is some secret sauce, best practice strategy going on behind the scenes, but the people I see having the most success with this are simply the ones who upload the most videos, who cast the widest net. I remember meeting this woman at a podcaster meetup in Seattle last summer and sharing just how genuinely excited I was about this new semi-passive income stream of mine, And it turned out she was doing it too.

14:40And she was kind of like, oh, you're making$100. That's cute. But she probably had 50 to 100 times more videos than I had. And so she was making way more money per month. And so I asked, well, how did you get all those products to review? I feel like we're just about tapped out with the stuff that we have in the house that's from Amazon. And she said, oh, that's easy. When I ran out of stuff, I just started reviewing the stuff at all my friend's houses. So that's one way to solve the problem. And I've heard from other Amazon influencers that after a while, brands will actually start sending you free products to review, which is another way to keep adding fuel to this fire.

15:16Now, long-term, there's lots of speculation over, is that low production quality iPhone video going to cut it? If somebody else is creating a more YouTube style, more professional appearance, like after all, which one is going to get clicked on, on that product listing page on Amazon? That's hard to say, but for the time being, is still a pretty low barrier to entry. It is a program that you have to apply for. They do want you to include your YouTube, Instagram, TikTok. They want some level of social following, but they don't say how much of a social following that you need to have. And importantly, while I'm sure they would love for you to post your product reviews onto your social media accounts, that isn't a requirement once you are accepted.

15:54So that's number seven, the Amazon Influencer Program. Number eight is another one that you might not have heard of, and that's to solve interesting problems. There are sites like MindSumo.com where these corporate companies come on and ask kind of deeper questions, like trying to crowdsource some creativity, some innovation, some answers. And in exchange for that, they're offering rewards that sometimes will go from 800 to 2 ,500 bucks. So when I was browsing, I saw questions like, what's the next big food trend or propose a new way to learn about different cultures. And so it kind of gets your creative juices flowing.

16:36If you have opinions about the things that are being asked, you kind of throw your hat in the ring, so to speak, or throw your ideas out there and you have a shot at winning some of these decent prizes there. So that's mind sumo.com. There's a few other ones that are similar, but it's kind of where these companies are trying to crowdsource some ideas and innovation. Number nine is freelance writing. And even in the age of chat TPT, there's still a strong demand, maybe even more so because of chat TPT, there's a strong demand for real human writers who've got experience, who've got a voice, they've got an opinion on what they're writing about.

17:14And so companies are hiring freelancers for website content, for articles, for email newsletters, for sales copy, for brochures and training materials. And freelance writers can command anywhere from$50 to$500 or more per article. And you can connect with clients through your network. You can connect with clients through Upwork or Fiverr like Georgia Austin did in episode 479. Here's how she described getting her start. I wasn't necessarily thinking anything would come of this Fiverr account, but I made it and I uploaded my first, I think it was just one gig at the time. It was a website content gig.

17:52And to my surprise, I got my first order within two days. So that was an amazing thing to happen. I wasn't expecting it. I kind of expected it to take at least a week to get my first order, or I wasn't even expecting to get one at all. And then I just kept getting orders and kept getting orders. I did that for about one or two months. And then I got offered a full-time position as a marketing manager in New York, funnily enough, the same day as I got accepted to Fiverr Pro. And obviously me being me at the time, I was thinking, oh, you know, it's going to be more secure and maybe I'll have better career opportunities if I take this full-time position.

18:32So that's what I did. And then I did that for another eight, nine months. and then the company sadly broke down a bit because of the pandemic or had a bit of a rough ride at the time i think they're okay now which is good but then i decided to turn my fiber pro back on again and it literally just blew up i was not expecting it at all when march came around my revenue was tripling and tripling every month and with that wizard of content was born So quite the journey. Sounds like it. I want to pause and go back to this initial Fiverr gig, a website content gig. There are hundreds, probably thousands of other freelance writers on this platform.

19:13How did you set up this gig to get eyeballs, to get exposure, to get anybody paying attention to you, to get an order within just a couple of days? So one thing I did do, which I actually took this tip from Alex Fazzullo. I'm sure anyone who knows Fiverr knows Alex. I know you know Alex as well. So she gave a piece of advice for you to get your friends and family to purchase your gig. So obviously, other prospective buyers are really going to put trust in people who have a few five-star reviews. So that was something that I knew would be really important to gain that immediate trust. So what I did is I I did some example work or practice pieces for my friends and family.

19:55And on my two gigs that I had at the time, I made sure I got five reviews on each gig. So that really was, I think, the stepping stone for me to be able to get more orders from real buyers. So if anyone's going to create a Fiverr account, I highly recommend that you do this strategy. And it doesn't have to be a fake order. And I know that Fiverr, the internal team there, they're actually getting quite hot on this. They know that people are doing this. So they obviously want every transaction to be as legitimate as possible or only be legitimate transactions. So I would definitely recommend that you do real work for your friends and family.

20:32Maybe your dad has a medical company or your mom needs some blog written for her company, anything, any friend or family member, get them to buy your gig, do the job, and they can leave you a nice five-star review. And then I can almost guarantee you'll at least get one order come through pretty soon. Again, that's Georgia Austin from episode 479. At the time we recorded, she was posting some huge sales numbers, like up to$90 ,000 a month. And she'd hired a team of writers to help deliver that work. Now, as a freelance writer, you're typically following a content brief or outline, but in most cases, you'll still be allowed to sprinkle in bits of your opinion if the employer is open to it, and they'll give you some guidance as to what kind of tone that they'd like the finished piece to have.

21:19But that's number nine, freelance writing. Number 10 is to write a book. This is one of my all-time favorite and most passive side hustles. And passive, I mean, after the whole writing the book part, that is. But my books share my opinion on topics like, what are the most important items every website should have? That's like the small business website checklist from 2014, I want to say that was published. I did how to work with virtual assistants starting way back in 2012, opinion on how to start a side hustle, like lots of books on this topic. And over the last decade, that collection of titles has earned over$80 ,000 in author royalties.

21:57I can't call myself a full-time author, but it's a fun way to get paid to put your ideas and opinions out into the world. That is number 10, write a book or the self-publishing side hustle. Number 11 is to start a newsletter. So email newsletters, another hot side hustle of the moment, low cost. You can eventually monetize with ads, with paid subscriptions, with your own products and services. One fun newsletter and a very opinionated example that I get is Cody Sanchez's Contrarian Thinking, which maybe has rebranded to business buyers. He's a guy, I don't know what it is now, but it used to be Contrarian Thinking.

22:31And in it, she breaks down topics like entrepreneurship, buying businesses, alternative investments, all through her quote unquote contrarian lens. And here's Cody explaining how you might come up with your newsletter topic and how she got her first few thousand subscribers. I typically say to start with, look for where do people ask you your opinion on things consistently? What would you do even if you weren't getting paid for it? What are the hobbies that you'd like to get into and learn more about? And you're okay sharing your journey on that. What are you actually really, really good at that you don't have to think too much about doing?

23:07And when you answer those four questions, you'll find a little short list of things that you can create a newsletter or a products business around based on your ideas or your experience. And there's plenty of people. Like my newsletters are basically all about building wealth or building businesses in unconventional ways. And I'm not saying that I have it all figured out. My newsletters are usually me experimenting with it as a former journalist. I'm like, man, I think you could probably build a business that makes 100K pretty quickly from an e-product. Let's try it, document how we did it, and then tell people how it turned out.

23:40And so anybody could do that with anything from cooking to incense sales to creating an app. Yeah, there's lots of different ways to go here. And as long as it's welcomed in somebody's inbox, then people are likely to stick around. People are likely to read it, to share it. Tell me about getting this thing off the ground because everybody's starting with day one, zero subscribers. We actually did a kind of a fun post, which was zero to 10 ,000 subscribers. And how did we get there? And we did it within 30 days, like sort of what would those first 30 days be like if you were to go from zero to 10.

24:13And so there's like a couple overarching themes. Essentially, where you start is with the people that you already know. And so I think the most important thing for anyone who's starting a newsletter is for some reason, I don't know if you felt this when you first create something, but it's scary to share. And so we posted on social media because it's sort of out there and it's not exactly in somebody's face. But what we did that I think will accelerate you the quickest your first, let's call it a couple hundred subscribers, is we pinged it to all of the people that we actually know personally via email.

24:48So, you know, did a mail merge to my contacts, which, you know, everybody in their Gmail, whether you realize it or not, you have a couple thousand people that you've been communicating with, and we just allow them to opt in or not. Hey, we built a business baby. Do you want to celebrate it? Do you want to come along for the ride? Yes, no, maybe so. Not pushy, no opt-ins, but allow them to join the journey if they want to. Because so few people actually follow through and create things, you'll be surprised. I think we We had maybe like a, I don't know, 30 or 40 % of the people we sent that to actually followed up.