Why I Went Looking for a Side Hustle in the First Place…

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but December is not for the weak. Christmas is a month away, my daughter’s 10th birthday hits right after the holidays, my water heater is making its final dying noises, and my washer straight up gave up on life. So now I’m hauling laundry baskets to my grandma’s house every week like it’s 2004. Love her, but this is not the vibe.

Naturally, I did what any stressed-out, slightly panicking mom does: I opened Google and searched for “easy side hustles I can start right now.” That turned into a rabbit hole, which turned into a black hole, which eventually sucked me into Penny Hoarder’s “50 Ways to Make Money This Week.” And honestly, some of the ideas were cute… but then I hit #2 on the list.

Branded Surveys.

Really?

They’re out here suggesting you can make about $140 a month doing surveys?

I actually laughed because the way I remember Branded Surveys from years ago, you’d need the patience of a medieval monk or a small army of referrals to hit numbers like that. And before anyone says maybe I’m remembering wrong — trust me, I’m not new.

My Actual Experience With Branded Surveys

I’ve had my Branded Surveys account for years. My lifetime cash-out total is $21. That’s it. Twenty-one dollars across multiple attempts over multiple years. Clearly, I was never the chosen one.

So of course, curiosity kicked in — plus desperation because, hello, it’s December — so I redownloaded the app to see if it had magically transformed into a reliable $100–$150 per month opportunity.

Spoiler alert: it did not.

What Branded Surveys Claims You Can Earn

The big selling point floating around is that if you just do “a few” surveys a day, you can hit around $100 to $140 a month. On paper, it sounds simple and painless. A couple of surveys while you’re watching TV, another while you’re waiting on dinner, boom — extra money.

But as soon as I logged into my account again, reality set in. The app offered me a “Top Survey” worth 50 points, and I couldn’t even see anything else until I completed it. If 50 points is the going rate now (and it definitely feels like it is), that number tells us a lot about how realistic this $100+ a month idea really is.

The Numbers Behind That $100 Goal

Branded Surveys runs on a points system:

• 500 points = $5
• 100 points = $1
• 10,000 points = $100

If you’re mostly getting surveys worth around 50 points each, here’s what that means:

• You need 10,000 points to reach $100.
• At 50 points per survey, that’s 200 surveys.
• Two hundred surveys in a month is about 7 surveys per day, every single day.

And the app likes to claim that these are “five-minute” surveys. Cute. Adorable. Precious. Except half the time you get kicked out after answering a handful of questions, and the other half, the survey quietly stretches into a 15–20 minute ordeal.

Even if you try to trust the five-minute estimate, you’re still spending 35–40 minutes a day. Realistically? It’s closer to an hour or more once you factor in disqualifications and slower surveys.

Thirty hours of surveys for $100 works out to about $3.30 an hour, and that’s if the survey gods are unusually kind. Once you factor in all the time you don’t get paid for because you don’t qualify, you’re probably earning closer to $1 an hour.

Is $150 a Month Even Realistic?

Now let’s push it further and talk about the big number: $150 a month.

To hit $150 on Branded Surveys, you’d need 15,000 points. At roughly 50 points per survey, that breaks down like this:

• 15,000 points ÷ 50 points = 300 surveys
• That’s 300 surveys a month
• Which means about 10 surveys every single day

Ten surveys a day, for 30 days straight, while dealing with kids, holidays, work, errands, broken appliances, and general life chaos is not “a casual side hustle.” That is a part-time job paying somewhere between $1 and $3 an hour, depending on how many surveys you get kicked out of.

Could someone technically do it? Sure. Someone out there is probably grinding hundreds of surveys a month and making it work. But for the average mom with a real schedule and limited emotional energy? It’s just not realistic.

New: Earning Points by Playing Games

To be fair, I did notice something new when I logged back in: it looks like you can earn points by playing games now. That genuinely wasn’t a feature back when I first used the app.

If you’re already the kind of person who plays mobile games, this could be a slightly less soul-crushing way to earn points. You’re basically swapping doom-scrolling or game time for something that occasionally spits out a little cash instead of nothing.

But even with that, the core issue doesn’t change: hitting $100–$150 a month consistently still requires a lot of time, a lot of tapping, and a lot of tolerance for low pay.

Where Referrals Fit In

People love to say, “Well, you can make more with referrals!” And yes, technically, that’s true. Referral programs are how a lot of survey apps make their numbers look more impressive.

The problem is that Branded Surveys’ referral payouts aren’t huge, and you only earn when people actually stick with it and complete surveys. Most people are not going to wake up every day excited to do 7–10 surveys, so building a big, active referral base is harder than it sounds.

If you don’t have a large audience or friend group willing to grind surveys daily, referrals probably won’t push you into that $150 a month range either.

And here’s the part nobody mentions: Branded Surveys doesn’t just pay you a flat bonus for referrals. Your referral earnings depend on your own activity level on the app. They use a badge system — Bronze, Silver, Gold — and the higher your badge, the more points you earn when someone signs up with your link. But to get (and keep) a higher badge, you have to be doing surveys regularly yourself. So even if you somehow convinced fifty people to join, you wouldn’t earn much unless you were personally grinding surveys every day too.

On top of that, your referral points are tied to whether the person you invited stays active. If they drop off — which most people do — your earnings basically stop. So the fantasy of “easy money from referrals” just isn’t real here. It’s work on your end, work on their end, and most people won’t stick around long enough for it to ever hit meaningful numbers.

The Burnout Nobody Talks About

On paper, everything sounds simple: answer questions, get points, cash out. In reality, survey burnout is very real.

Somewhere between survey 60 and 100, your brain will start asking very reasonable questions like:

• “Why am I doing this?”
• “Is this really worth my time?”
• “Why does this brand care so much about my breakfast cereal habits?”

Doing 200–300 surveys a month requires a level of mental stamina most people just don’t have, especially if you’re juggling kids, work, and everything else life throws at you. The money you earn doesn’t always feel worth the time and energy you’re trading away.

So, Is Branded Surveys Worth Your Time?

Here’s my honest verdict after having an account for years, cashing out a grand total of $21, and taking another fresh look in the middle of a very stressful season of life:

Branded Surveys is fine if you:

• Need a quick $5–$20 here and there
• Don’t mind repetitive, low-paying tasks
• Want something to do while watching TV that isn’t totally mindless
• Understand that this is not going to replace a real side hustle or part-time job

But as a serious, consistent way to make $100–$150 a month?

No. Not for most people. Not for most moms. Not for anyone who doesn’t want to spend hours every week clicking through surveys for the kind of pay that barely beats playing games for free.

If you need emergency Christmas cash, Branded Surveys might give you some pocket change. If you’re trying to build a real income stream that actually moves the needle? You’re going to want something better.