Market research has come a long way over the years and the internet is at the forefront of the changes.
There are countless websites that offer consumers the chance to earn free e-gift cards for taking paid surveys, and although these sites are genuine and do make consumers money, the downside to many of them is that you will have to fill in multiple very lengthy surveys to earn a decent £20 e-gift card.
No need to fill in lengthy forms
These days, however, there are websites that don't require you to fill in any lengthy surveys at all. Instead, they just require that you install a small application on your machine or mobile device and keep it on there for as long as you are willing to.
These apps subtly track your internet browsing to gather information on the types of websites you visit and how long you visit them for.
Some people don't like the sound of an app snooping on their internet activity but the legitimate sites that offer these are completely safe and they are only interested in tracking activity on sites that are of interest, such as shopping, news and blog sites.
The data they share is anonymous. Your privacy is protected
The data they collect is shared with their clients but it's all anonymous so third parties will only get non-sensitive data to analyse.
You're already giving away this data for free
Really, it's not much different to what the big internet giants are doing such as Google, Facebook and others, only they don't pay you anything for all the activity they are tracking on your machine.
Facebook has tracking pixels on millions of websites so if you are logged in to your account and land on one of the websites that have their tracking implemented, they know that you have visited and can collect that information without paying you a penny.
Likewise, with Google. When you perform a search using their search engine and click through to a particular website, they know exactly where you have gone and for how long. Again, you don't get paid for sharing that info with them.
So considering that the big internet giants are getting all that information for free, it sounds pretty good to know that you can willingly share that information and get paid for it.
Consumers can earn up to £20 a month
You can earn up to £120 a year by having one of these apps installed on your computer or device and many of these firms give you a welcome on board bonus just for installing the application and then they give you a fixed amount every month you have their app installed on your device.
More and more people are jumping on this bandwagon, after all, every penny counts and your time is valuable.
Next: 
Previous: 
