By Dr. Rikki Racela, WCI Columnist
One of my most popular columns is when I told the story of making over $30,000 in surveys. Yes, incredible! In that vein, I have been asked by the WCI team to go in depth, with screenshots, on the process of doing physician surveys. Maybe it's because people are skeptical. What follows is my step-by-step guide on how I come upon surveys, how I go through them, and how I optimize my 1099 income from surveys with a solo 401(k), including my newly minted ability to do the Mega Backdoor Roth.
Turns out, it’s all pretty darn easy.
#1 The E-Mail
I usually get an email about a survey, and this is the first notification that one is available. Some survey companies may text you, but only a few do that. My preferred notification is through email (I usually get 50-60 per month). Within the email is a link to click on, which brings you directly to the survey without having to go through any landing page. Here is an example of an email from Sermo (which is one of my biggest payers).
#2 The Screener
It seems this second step is probably the most frustrating for doctors because even though you might have gotten an email for a survey, this does not mean you actually qualify to participate and get paid. The email notification is a superficial blast email based solely on your specialty. But the screener ensures you don’t have any conflicts, including being licensed in Vermont (which makes it difficult for pharmaceutical products, biological products, and medical devices to give gifts to Vermont healthcare providers), having a family member that works in the survey industry, or having other conflicts as seen in the following screenshot.
The screener also makes sure you see a certain number of patients that the survey concerns. I am a neurologist who sees all types of neurological patients. I am fellowship-trained in clinical neurophysiology, where I learned to do EMGs and perform EEGs. Any rare neuromuscular or refractory epilepsy patients are part of my practice.
Due to my EMG training, I have special knowledge of all muscle locations, so I give Botox for spasticity. I also give Botox for chronic migraines. Many of my colleagues in my group refer MS patients to me since I have attended MS conferences and I am comfortable prescribing all FDA-approved MS treatments. Because of this, I rarely screen out of these surveys. Also, I can now recognize surveys that I will likely screen out of, including surveys regarding thrombectomy devices. When a screener, for example, asks, “How many thrombectomies and other surgical intracranial procedures have you performed?” I know not to continue to waste my time with that survey.
More information here:
Physician Side Gigs for Extra Income
#3 Doing the Survey
Now, I must emphasize that this side gig is lucrative for me (in the mid-five figures) because I really enjoy doing them. Most of the time, I do these surveys at night, when the wife and kids are asleep, and I go to my computer desk (for which I take my home office tax deduction), put on some 80s music, and do these surveys (which usually takes me an average of 25 minutes). As I write this column now, I have Milli Vanilli playing in the background (yes, you may make fun of me in the comments . . . blame it on the rain nostalgia), and after I am done writing this, I will be doing another survey with whatever other 80s song pops up on YouTube.
Online surveys require little mental energy, and I get to access some positive childhood memories through the music, utilizing my bilateral temporal lobes wherein lie auditory cortices to my dominant side limbic system structures (sorry, I couldn’t resist).
#3 Alternative: Doing a Zoom Survey
Another point of emphasis on why I made such a boatload of money with surveys is that I do the most lucrative ones in the form of live telephone or Zoom interviews. These usually last one hour, and I have been paid up to $400 an hour for just sitting on my tush talking about my opinions on future drugs being developed, different types of efficacy and safety data regarding a potential new therapy, or viewing future journal ads. Very easy money!
As long as you have access to a phone, you can do many of these highly paid surveys. Unfortunately, some companies ask that you do these surveys on a computer screen so you can view the material. To enforce this, some of the virtual software they use does not allow you to use your phone, an unfortunate downside since it’s not as flexible. Even worse, some popular virtual interview programs these companies use, including Forsta or Civicom, continually have problems working on my hospital's internet. I am not sure, but I assume that because Forsta and Civicom are programmed to prevent you from doing a survey on your phone, it also creates problems doing an interview through a hospital firewall. I have always had a better interview experience without technical difficulties utilizing survey companies that do virtual interviews on the more common virtual programs like Zoom or Microsoft Teams.
#4 Get Paid
After I complete a survey, I sit back, relax, and wait for payment. The system I use to keep track of payments is quite easy and email-based. Because I learn about these survey opportunities through email, once I complete the survey, I place the email in a “completed surveys” folder in Gmail. Then, once I receive payment, I move the email into the “surveys paid” folder. Once in a while, I'll check to see if there are still unpaid surveys in my “completed surveys” folder, and if I haven’t received payment after a couple of months, I follow up with the company.
Different companies offer different forms of payments—some of them give choices of either Amazon rewards, a variety of gift cards, a check, or PayPal. Some survey companies also have a portal if you want to keep track of how much a particular company has paid you, as seen in the screenshot below.
More information here:
How to Actually Get Paid as an Expert Witness (or Any Other Side Gig)
#5 Contribute to Your Solo 401(k)
Wait, you’re not done yet! All that 1099 income qualifies for placing a percentage of it as an employER contribution to your solo 401(k). Now, if you only have a couple thousand dollars of survey income, maybe it’s not worth it to set up a solo 401(k) since you can only have about 20% of your 1099 income eligible to be placed as a tax-deferred contribution. However, if you have $10,000 or more of survey income (and also any other 1099 income), that'd be starting to get in the thousands of dollars of tax benefit. That's when it's starting to be worth it.
My solo 401(k) was started at Fidelity and was super simple to create, and for the past five years, I was making my employER contribution before Tax Day of the following year. You have to calculate your contribution based on all 1099 income and plug it into an equation that roughly but not exactly equals 20% of earned income. The equation is:
(Self-employment compensation – deductible portion of self-employment tax) / (1 + contribution percentage).
It's kind of a circular equation, so it's much easier for somebody who does their own taxes to use Mike Piper’s calculator. Or you can be like me and ask your accountant to do it for you.
2024 was the first year that I did the Mega Backdoor Roth with my survey income. That year, I asked the company My Solo 401(k) Financial to set up a customized solo 401(k) that allows tax-deferred and post-tax contributions, as well as allowing rollovers to the Roth portion of the solo 401(k) or external rollovers to my Roth IRA. My Solo 401(k) Financial was able to keep this customized solo 401(k) at Fidelity. Before Tax Day, I made my usual calculated employER tax-deferred contribution as well as post-tax contributions to my solo 401(k). Because I have a 403(b) at my W-2 job, that retirement plan money unfortunately ate into the solo 401(k) limit of $69,000, but hey, I still get to put thousands more into a Roth.
There you have it. That's my system for making a whole bunch of dough doing easy paid surveys, how I keep track of payments, and how to contribute to tax-advantaged accounts. I am so happy to have a lucrative extra source of income that’s easy and that I enjoy. It'd be easy for you to do it, too.
As a doc, you have valuable knowledge and information. Various companies want that knowledge and are willing to pay you for it. If you're interested in starting a side hustle as a paid survey-taker while also making a difference in the medical field, check out our favorite physician survey companies today!
Have you taken any paid surveys? Have there been survey emails that you just ignored? How do you take advantage of paid surveys?
Thank you for this post. I did want to be a devil’s advocate here. That screenshot you posted against #1 showed a survey that paid $25 for 20 minutes of time. Additionally, you are doing multiple surveys that pay out $5 and just the screening takes 2-3 minutes so you’re getting $5 for over 5 minutes of time. This is the reason (and perhaps posts like this) why remuneration offered by survey companies have dropped so low. I have a rule that I don’t do a survey that pays out less than $120 per hour and pays out at least $50 a survey. The zoom/ conference calls are the most attractive. Also, I don’t do the surveys on the first email when the honoraria are low. They start super low and on subsequent emails, the honoraria offered keeps increasing. Unless we physicians value our time and stop doing surveys that pay peanuts, it will drag down payments for everyone else.
definitely very true and thanks for reading! I usually do anything above $1 per minute for my time, not including screening questions. Many times I am doing surveys walking to other parts of the hospital, stuck in NJ traffic, half-time at my kids soccer games, etc. This would be time I would be just twiddling my thumbs and not getting paid. I also do them at night listening to 80’s music to decompress. Hence my threshold fo getting paid is low.
the Zoom calls demand more money obviously because I can’t be doing something else a lot of times and my attention is more focused.
You had me at Milli Vanilli.
yes!
Thank you for this Rikki, and strong work! I stopped doing surveys because a. not that many for gen peds (only so many vaccines in development) and b. the number of times I was told “this survey has already reached the number of respondents” AFTER I had filled out several pages of questions.
Thanks Rikki for this information. Can you elaborate on “My Solo 401(k) Financial was able to keep this customized solo 401(k) at Fidelity. ” Does this mean that the ETFs/funds administered for you by MySolo401(k) are managed by Fidelity? Did it make this switch to MySolo401(k) any easier, in that you were coming from Fidelity? (I’m trying to decide whether to make the same switch myself, from Fidelity to MySolo401(k) ), but am somewhat intimidated by the hassle.
Similar question for Rikki — does MySolo401(k) somehow facilitate the entire mega backdoor Roth process using only the Fidelity account and not a separate account at MySolo401(k)? How does that work, especially considering Fidelity does not offer the ability to make after-tax (non-Roth) contributions within a solo 401k plan? Thanks.
MySolo401k is the administrator and Fidelity is the custodian. Same as the WCI 401(k) run by iQ401(k). Still custodied at Fidelity.
The money is still held at Fidelity (the custodian) even when your solo 401(k) is run by Mysolo401(k).
I retired 3 yrs ago to care FT for my wife of 50 yrs, and had hoped to pick up some income this way. I discovered that as soon as I reached the part of the survey inquiring about patients, I was disqualified from every single survey. I wasted significant time doing screenings before just giving up. 40 yrs of experience means nothing, I discovered!
This was my experience as well. I can only qualify to earn 2 to 5 dollars on Sermo surveys, and otherwise I disqualify from every decent paying survey I apply for, as they always ask some question, which if answered truthfully, will boot me out. (How many patients do you see per day, or when was the last patient you saw with this condition, etc)
The ironic thing is while I worked, I never had the time for these, even for $200 for 30 minutes time. Now that I have time, no one is interested.
I always wonder if the purpose of some of these surveys is to simply tell doctors about their product. If you’re unlikely to prescribe it, why spend $200 marketing to you?
That is a likely a valid point. Sort of related, I signed up for a “marketing” meeting 20 years ago which lasted all day and was paid over $1000. Instead of a seminar, we sat in individual rooms and listened to drug reps give short sales talks as if we were in the office, and we gave critiques. The first hour was kind of interesting but the last few were repetitious. At the end I really thought I would rather be back in the office (a very high bar).
I sure knew every nuance of what the company wanted us to know about the product and I really wondered if this was just to drum the product info into our heads. Anyway I never signed on for one of those again.
I like many other above was intrigued by earning extra on surveys after listening to WCI podcasts. However for an FP, I found them not worth the time. Screened out a lot in the questions and did seem like a lot of advertising instead of a true survey. I can make a lot more seeing 1-2 more patients a day and then using those spare moments in the day (ie waiting while picking up a kid from an event or bored with a movie) sending patient result messages and responding to mychart messages from haiku on my phone. Easily can turn that 30 minutes a day into $100+ instead of $0-10. My 2c from my experience
Do you also leverage your business to get the lucrative business credit card sign on bonuses?
Very good information Dr. Racela, especially the idea to save emails under different heads to make sure that you get paid. Recently I discovered that there were a couple of survey companies that had not paid me for more than a year. After numerous requests for information on a log of my surveys completed, they sent me some of the back payments that was in thousands. I have blacklisted the due to being dishonest.
My rule is I discard any requests at 1$/minute. $2 a minute I will complete only if I am really interested in the subject matter. $3 a minute and up I will complete . As far as phone calls and such, my minimum is $400/hr. Anything below that I will pass.
Interesting conversation here – ? has anyone else noticed that Sermo site has deteriorated in recent years ( ? I think they were sold to someone else ?) and they are now just a half step up from just being Clickbait???
I have my suspicions about several other sites being just clickbait magnets for us….perhaps this should be discussed on the FB Physician Community site that is curated by Nisha Mehta ????
If you do a low paying study you will not be offered a higher paying one. My minimum is $3.5/ minute and no less than $50 per study as a screener will take 5 minutes or more
I have a simple Excel Spread sheet – Each company has its own page
Columns are: Date Completed, Study ID, Invoice Amt (or Earned Amt) Date Paid, Amount Paid, Payment Type, Payment ID, Earned and paid columns are set to auto-sum. Dollar amounts are black for earned and red for paid. So i can see at a glance how much is owed to me at any time by each company. Payment type would include check, PayPal, Amazon, ABT. I also add pages for other 1099 earnings in the same workbook. Locums, Editing, Medical Writing for example. easy to print and summarize at end of year for tax tiime.