Ever since I can remember, I’ve always wanted to be financially free and independent. I never liked the idea that your wage should be directly tied to your job. What if something goes wrong? What if, for whatever reason, I lost my job?

As a teacher, that’s probably unlikely, but it’s crossed my mind for sure. Why should I be reliant on an outside influence to ensure that I can continue to live my usual day-to-day life? If you’re working in the private sector, this thought has probably crossed your mind too. If not, sorry; it just has. Certainly, when the pandemic struck, this thought crept into my head more and more and more. The question remains, though: as employees, what can be done?

Well, for one, you could start a side hustle. Write a successful blog in the evenings when you’re done with work, health and happiness. Or you could set up a proper business. Maybe you want to sell backpacks or stationery, or some online service, like a course or ebook; something that doesn’t require physical distribution.

That can take effort. You’ve seen me take blogging breaks before; even if you really want to do it, it can be a lot of work. What one ‘side hustle’ takes absolutely zero effort, other than your time?

It’s a website called Prolific. Read on to find out more about what Prolific is all about, how it works, how to get started, and how it can earn you hundreds of pounds.

How does Prolific work?

I’ve been using Prolific, on and off, for about five years. Whenever I get a hankering for some easy cash to supplement my busy lifestyle, I’ll log on and get back to the grind.

Prolific is a survey-serving company, which you may have heard of before. What I really love about Prolific, however, is that it serves academic researchers. Every study is really clear on a few things:

1. The purpose of the research (unless you’re told after you’ve submitted your answers)
2. Who and what you’re answering questions for
3. Roughly how long the survey will take
4. How much money you’ll make (the most important part)

Let’s break each of these sections down even further.

1. As a University of Birmingham graduate, it was really important to me that that the answers I gave would be used for good. You know how you’d often get lousy pop-ups when scrolling the internet, pre-ad block days? Yeah, I was desperate to avoid those. I wanted my answers to actually mean something, so knowing that academic institutions were the only ‘customers’ I’d be serving through these surveys was a huge win.

2. There’s so much clarity on Prolific with the purpose of the study. It even dictates the platform needed (laptop/desktop/tablet/phone) and whether you need to use your microphone or camera. I tend to avoid those surveys
   
3. You get such a massive range of the amount of time it’ll take to complete a survey, and it’s great that this is clearly advertised before agreeing to take part. The more time, the higher the payout – and it even breaks down roughly how much you’d be paid if you did the study for an hour, allowing you to easily compare studies and choose the ones you’re best suited to. I tend to stick to the shorter ones for a couple of reasons: they’re nice ways to break up my day if I’m working from my desktop after work or blogging on the weekends, and I’m not a fan of staying glued to my screen for long periods of time. Sometimes you can get really lucky and complete the survey much quicker than is predicted.
   
4. The most important part: how much you’ll make is attached to every study. I’ve already made £1.10 while writing this blog post (we’re currently 20 minutes into the writing process) and it took me all of 6 or 7 minutes. You can decide whether you’re prepared to spend longer on the platform for the studies that’ll make you wealthier, or if you’d rather log on for a couple of minutes at a time, get a little extra cash, and be done with it. I usually prefer the latter – short, sharp, snappy studies – but I literally just completed another that took all of 1 minute, earned me 45p, and was valued at earning £15.14/hour. Wild.

Before completing any studies, Prolific needs some information from you. What I love is that every single question is optional. If you’re comfortable sharing that you have a romantic partner, but not your gender identity, you can skip that question entirely. The only downside to sharing less information is that you’ll get fewer studies from Prolific, but I’d say that’s a worthwhile sacrifice if you care more about staying completely anonymous online.

Of course, Prolific promises to never share your data, but it’s something to keep at the forefront of your mind when setting up your profile.

How to make £100s from Prolific

Ah. The section that you’re reading this entire post for. The juicy deets on how to make hundreds online from the comfort of your computer chair.

In writing this post, I tried, in vain, to find an exact total that I’ve earned from Prolific in the five years that I’ve been using it. Alas, no such total exists, but I did find a cash-out summary from Paypal, the way in which they send your hard-earned cash, for £24 last year.

While each study may pay pennies at a time, considering the low cost and low effort that each requires, this very quickly adds up. Once you start earning, you just need to wait until your total exceeds £5, and then you’re good to cash-out and pump your earnings into your bank account. I read online that some people like to use Prolific as a savings account, and that they’d let the money pile up in a way that prevented them from spending it.

This is dumb.

Look, I get it, if it helps you to avoid temptation to spend, then fine; but it’s so much better to transfer out the money as quickly as possible and then swap it into a savings account with a high interest rate. If you’d like some expert advice on that, and are UK-based (or just curious), I’d recommend heading over to Martin Lewis’ Money Saving Expert. Their advice has guided nearly all of my financial decisions over the past five years.

The best way to use Prolific

I don’t use Prolific at work. Not only would that be unethical, I’m not sure a class of 30 children would appreciate waiting to learn while I answer surveys! For me, Prolific is a website that I keep open in one corner of my screen whenever I’m lesson planning or marking at home, after I’ve finished my salaried work for the day. While context-switching isn’t always a good idea, sometimes seeing a new study pop up and spending 3 minutes of my time answering the questions can be a good way to briefly decompress before launching back into another Year 9 end-of-cycle assessment to mark.

If you’re unemployed, it could be worthwhile having Prolific open while you write job applications or scroll through LinkedIn. Stay-at-home parent? Why not keep your laptop or tablet open and do a short study while waiting for the kids to drift off? There is a Chrome extension that you can install to instantly notify you of a new study, but I’ve not tried that out yet.

How to get started with Prolific

Upsettingly, Prolific stopped their link-sharing scheme, where you could earn for referring a friend, a long time ago – so I actually won’t gain anything if you choose to sign up. The website does use a waitlist, which I’ve heard varies in length, so you may as well enter your details now so that you can get on sooner rather than later. You can get started by clicking this text!

Let me know in the comments below how your prolific journey goes for you! And more importantly: how much money you make.

If you like that, you’ll love…

• 7 Brutal Questions to Course-Correct your Life before 2026
• Stop wasting time and start teaching: How to super charge Google Forms with Brisk AI and Gemini
• Automating Google Classroom: 8 features that save teachers hours each week
• What I learned from tracking my food intake for a month
• Google Sheets for Teachers: How to automate your classroom

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