Side Hustles – The Law Student Blog

This is the first of my series of in-depth posts about methods I’ve used for making extra money while I have been a student. In this article, I’m focusing on a survey and crowdsourcing App called Premise.

I will start with a disclaimer that this is not going to make you a millionaire (or even pay for your weekly food shopping). But from my experience so far, it does provide a good level of earnings for the effort involved and is very easy to get a pay out from.

I have categorised Premise as a survey app, but there is much more to it than that. On their website, Premise describe themselves as:

Premise has hundreds of thousands of real people crowdsourcing data worldwide giving you access to a whole new world of data. Unlike some methods of crowdsourcing, Premise uses targeted tasks to collect information via a network of local citizens. Our task-oriented, incentivized data capture generates structured inputs that enable a rigorous signal analysis of more complex questions.
premise.com

So, what does that actually mean for you as a contributor? Premise provides three categories of tasks with increasing levels of payouts.

Surveys

The most simple tasks that Premise offers are short daily surveys, which take a couple of minutes to complete and pay about 5p each. These surveys cover a variety of topics from your feelings on COVID-19 to crime and safety in your area, provision of basic services such as electricity, etc. There are usually 1 or 2 surveys a day, so you can earn perhaps a couple of pounds a month at most ,but they are so quick to do that you could literally do them while waiting for the kettle to boil.

Locate

The next category of tasks are what Premise describe as “Locate” tasks, which involve taking a photograph and answering a few questions about a specific category of item in your local area. These can range from restaurants to public sculptures and ATMs and many more (there are about 20 different categories on the app at the moment). Each task will pay you about 40p and again will only take a few minutes to complete (as well as the time it takes you to go to the thing you are photographing). These are easy tasks that you could do while you are out and about getting exercise or walking to the shops, just keep your eyes open for things that Premise wants photographs of while you are out and about.

Explore

The best paying category is the “Explore” tasks. These involve going to a specific location given to you by the App and taking a photograph and answering a few questions. I have only recently started getting these tasks appear for me (not sure if that is down to my rating in the App improving or them only recently becoming available in my area), but it is possible to earn more from these as they pay around 90p per task.

So, does Premise work?

I have been using Premise since September or October and in that time I have earned about £30 from it and there have been periods during lockdowns where I have not really done any of the photography tasks. The app also has a relatively low cash out limit of around £15 and pays via PayPal, so it is easy to get your money. I have cashed out once in mid January and the payment was received the following day and I am now nearly at the threshold to cash out for a second time.

As I said at the start, it’s not going to make you rich, but there are regular tasks and they hardly take any time to complete, so it is definitely worth the effort for a bit of extra money.

If you would like to give Premise a try then your can download the app on both Android and iPhone from the PlayStore/App Store. If you are using an Android device then you can use my Invite link https://y2pge.app.goo.gl/premise.

Blogging

At the time of writing this article, this blog is not actually monetised as I don’t feel there is currently enough content for it to be approved by Google for AdSense and I haven’t had the time to search out relevant products to link to. But I do have a couple of other blogs on niche topics that I have adverts and affiliate links on, which earn me between £50 and £100 per month.

Tutoring

If you are happy teaching children and other students then tutoring is well worth considering. I used to do face to face tutoring locally, but now I do it via video calls. My students are all local to me and I don’t work through a platform, but there are a number of tutoring platforms out there that will match students to tutors and provide the infrastructure and payment facilities for you.

Vlogging

I’m going to start of by admitting that I have had no real success with vlogging, but that may just be because I haven’t spent the time to successfully build a channel and dedicated followers. There is definitely money to be made from YouTube in terms of advertising revenue and sponsorships, but it does require a lot of time and effort to make your channel stand out from all the others that are out there.

Surveys

This is an area that is definitely not going to make you rich, but there are a plethora of survey sites and similar out there. The premise of most of them is the same, answer a few questions and get paid a small amount of money for your time. Earnings are usually less than £1 per survey on many of the sites, but those survey usually only take a few minutes of your time to complete, although there are sites that will offer larger payouts for longer surveys on more technical subjects.

Focus Groups/Web Testing

I’m lumping these together as the idea is similar, you get paid for providing feedback on a website or a product. These are usually undertaken via video conference and involve giving your feedback on the navigability of a new website that is under development or your impression of packaging for a product that is being marketed. They are similar to surveys, but usually take up to an hour and will pay £15 – £25 for your time.

There are many other ways that you can make money as a student, and I would love to hear your suggestions, so if you have a method that has worked for you, leave a comment.