As you can see from that sidebar over there ->, SurveySavvy is one of our few "highly recommended" sources of digital pennies. So a new payment scheme that they announced in 2021, "SavvyShares," is worth investigation.
SurveySavvy has not gone away, and the site still operates as usual. You can still use it as you always have for years now, nothing is different and it's still highly recommended.
But now you have the option of trading your old SurveySavvy account in for a new scheme called "SavvyShares," which is actually a partial ownership scheme. Instead of being paid in cold cash, SavvyShares pays you for your surveys in dividend shares - in other words, fractional entitlement to the company's bi-annual profits.
Is this profit-sharing arrangement better than sticking with your old SurveySavvy account? Let's dive in, crunch some numbers and look over some terms & conditions.
What Are SavvyShares Worth?
SavvyShares says that you can earn "4 to 40" shares per survey. There's little information out there on SavvyShares right now, and you can't get into it for an inside look without sacrificing your old SurveySavvy account, so we'll have to do a little theorizing and assuming to come up with some estimates of expected value here.
So let's say those "4 shares" surveys equate to the fairly common SurveySavvy ones that pay about $1, and the "40 shares" are the rare birds that pay $10+ (I think the most I've ever personally seen on SurveySavvy was a $30-ish payment for watching a 30 minute TV pilot episode).
Now, once you're established and have built a little history with SurveySavvy, a realistic expectation is maybe 5-10 surveys per week for maybe $50-100 or so. Let's stay at the more conservative end and assume $50 a week, as we don't know if survey availability changes with SavvyShares.
So let's say your $50 a week SurveySavvy payment translates to earning 200 shares a week with SavvyShares. Sounds like a lotta shares, right? I mean, 200 shares of Google would get ya about half a million bucks right now!
Of course, the key is what a dividend share here is worth (presumably of parent company Luth Research, as I don't see them listed as a subsidiary of anything else). Now, this is dividends in a private company, not publicly traded shares on Wall Street. So it's all about division of the company's actual profit per earnings period, not what people are willing to pay for them.
For that, we can go to the SEC-mandated biannual declaration of such things. And, we find for the first period (latter half of 2021), each dividend was worth ... a mighty 5 cents. At 200 shares, your week of work that would have paid $50ish cash is now worth a recurring payment of $10 twice a year.
But this is all about cumulative value over time. So let's say you manage to rack up 200 shares per week for let's say 50 weeks out of the year. Now you've got 10,000 shares, at that nickel dividend price earning you $500 twice per year. Still a little rough for 50 weeks of part time work, but you could theoretically then sit on that $1000 a year in payments for years to come with no further work.
What Are The Potential Risks?
Now, that's a lot of assumptions. We have to make some more in assessing exactly how likely you are to continue making that money year over year.
There are a bunch of added risks to switching to getting paid in this way:
> You only get paid once every six months ... but probably it'll be longer due to processing times and such, and right now the only option is to be mailed a paper check. So I'd assume like once per seven to eight months realistically.
> The dividend is only paid if the company declares a profit for that period. If they declare a loss, presumably you get nothing.
> Always the chance they'll go out of business too, leaving you with months of uncompensated work plus no more future payments.
> 5 cents per share may not be the regular price or the bottom. It could get better ... or it could get worse. Like, 5x less money worse. I'm just using the one payment we have to work from so far as an estimate.
> I don't see any information on whether survey availability goes up or down when moving from SurveySavvy to SavvyShares, but I have seen a little chatter (on Reddit and such) indicating that some survey types may no longer be available with the latter (specifically, stuff that involves video chat like focus groups).
> There is a total cap of available shares at 200,000,000 ... plenty to go around for some time, but this may get tapped out eventually before you build a solid regular check for yourself.
Is It Worth It?
It is tempting to try to rack up like $2000 or so of annual payment in a year, then just sit on it for a bonus $40,000 over the next 20 years of your life. But ... you're gonna be rolling dice that entire time. On the company continuing to be profitable, on new ownership or changing times not altering the deal, and on them just plain staying in business.
Given the lack of guarantees, the fact that SurveySavvy cash payments are among the better in the business, the rumors of fewer surveys available at Shares, and the fact that you have to deactivate your SurveySavvy account to move over (I can't find clear information indicating you can ever switch back if you want to), personally I feel like sticking with SurveySavvy is the better move right now.
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