Prolific: Can You Really Make Money From Surveys and AI Training Tasks?

I’ve had a Prolific account for a while, but I’ve recently started paying much more attention to it.

Why?

Because I’m currently trying to work out which side hustles actually deserve a place in my attempt to replace my £43,000 salary.

And Prolific has become slightly more interesting than I originally gave it credit for.

It is still largely a research platform where you get paid to take part in studies and surveys.

But I am also now seeing short AI-related tasks, including tasks that take around 15 minutes and have been paying me roughly £3.60 each.

So, naturally, I have decided to conduct another one of my extremely scientific Side Hustle Fund experiments:

How much can I actually earn from Prolific when I make a deliberate effort to use it?

What is Prolific?

Prolific is an online research platform that connects researchers with people willing to participate in studies.

Rather than filling out endless marketing surveys about which brand of washing powder you vaguely remember buying in 2019, the studies tend to come from universities, research organisations and companies conducting research.

You create a participant profile and Prolific shows you studies you are eligible for.

Those can include things like:

• Surveys

• Psychology studies

• Decision-making tasks

• Academic research

• Product or technology research

• AI evaluation and training tasks

You complete the study, submit it, and the researcher then approves your submission before the money becomes available.

Prolific itself describes the platform as a way to take part in occasional studies rather than a full-time job, which is important when deciding where it fits as a side hustle.

The AI tasks are what have caught my attention

This is the bit that has made me start checking Prolific more regularly.

Recently, I have been getting access to short tasks involving AI.

The ones I have been doing have taken roughly 15 minutes and paid around £3.60.

That works out at approximately £14.40 an hour if you could complete them continuously.

Huge caveat here:

You cannot assume there will be four of these waiting for you every hour.

Availability varies.

That distinction matters because there is a big difference between saying:

“This task pays the equivalent of £14.40 an hour.”

and:

“You can earn £14.40 every hour on Prolific.”

The first can be true.

The second absolutely is not guaranteed.

The tasks themselves can involve helping to evaluate or improve AI systems. Prolific now has a specific group of participants called AI Taskers, who may complete work such as evaluating content, creating training data, developing prompts and providing feedback on AI outputs.

Not every Prolific user will necessarily see the same AI studies, and some specialist tasks may require additional assessments or particular skills.

But it is definitely an area of the platform I am watching.

How much does Prolific pay?

This varies massively by study.

Prolific currently requires researchers to pay participants at least £6 per hour, and recommends a rate of at least £9 per hour.

Some studies pay considerably more.

Others are tiny payments for very short tasks. I’m talking 10p…

I have used Prolific casually since May 2023, and to date earned £261.28 over 354 submissions. Which works out at almost 74p per task.

This is why I do not really judge Prolific by the amount displayed on the study.

I look at:

How much am I being paid for the time this will actually take me?

A £1 study that takes five minutes can be more attractive to me than a £6 study that requires 45 minutes of intense concentration.

My time and energy are limited.

So, as with everything I test for The Side Hustle Fund, the question is not simply:

Can this make money?

It is:

Does it make enough money for the amount of time and energy it wants from me?

My current Prolific experiment

I have used Prolific fairly casually in the past.

That means my previous earnings do not really tell me how useful it could be if I actually paid attention to it.

So I am changing the experiment.

I am currently checking Prolific more deliberately and taking the studies that look worthwhile, particularly the better paying AI tasks.

And I want to see what happens.

Can I make:

£28 a day through AI tasks and if so, for how long?

I genuinely do not know yet.

And that is rather the point.

I do not want to write one of those side hustle articles where somebody does three surveys, extrapolates the result and announces that you can make £500 a month.

I would rather actually use it and show you what happens.

Could Prolific help you make £10 a day?

Possibly.

But I would not currently build a £10-a-day plan around Prolific alone.

That is because the biggest limitation is availability.

You cannot log in and simply decide that you are going to work for three hours.

Studies appear based on things such as your profile, eligibility and researcher demand.

Some days you might see several worthwhile opportunities.

Other days there may be very little.

That makes Prolific much more useful to me as one part of a wider side hustle stack.

For example:

A Prolific study might make £3.60.

Another side hustle might make £4.

Cashback or an affiliate payment might make another few pounds.

Suddenly the £10-a-day target starts looking much more realistic.

That is increasingly how I think about side hustling.

I am not necessarily looking for one magical app that gives me £300 every month.

I am trying to build several flexible sources of money that can collectively get me there.

And then, eventually, much further.

Getting paid

Once you have at least £6/$6 in approved earnings, you can normally cash out to PayPal. Prolific says payments generally arrive within 24 hours, and usually much sooner.

Your earnings can sit in a pending state while the researcher approves your submission, so the amount you have earned and the amount immediately available to withdraw may not always be the same.

Prolific currently supports payments in GBP and USD, depending on the study.

There is a waitlist

One thing worth knowing before you rush off to sign up is that Prolific operates a participant waitlist.

How quickly you are accepted can depend on demand for people with your demographic profile and expertise.

According to Prolific, some people are invited within hours while others may wait months or longer.

So this is not necessarily a side hustle you can decide to start this afternoon and immediately begin earning from.

What I like about Prolific so far

For me, the biggest advantage is flexibility.

There are no clients.

No shifts.

No need to promise somebody that I will definitely be available next Thursday at 2pm.

If I have 15 minutes and there is a worthwhile study available or AI task, I can do it.

If life has descended into chaos again, I simply do not open Prolific.

That makes it particularly interesting to me because my side hustles need to fit around caring responsibilities and fairly unpredictable energy.

I also like being able to see roughly what a study pays before deciding whether I want to spend my time on it.

And the newer AI tasks have made the potential return for short blocks of time much more interesting.

What I don’t like

The obvious problem is that you cannot control the supply of work.

There may be nothing suitable available when you have time.

Good studies can also fill quickly.

And although some tasks have a decent hourly equivalent, that does not mean you can consistently earn at that rate throughout the day.

This is therefore not something I would currently rely on for essential bills.

It sits firmly in the category of:

Useful extra income when worthwhile tasks appear.

Does Prolific pass The Side Hustle Fund test?

For now?

Yes, provisionally.

It is flexible.

It requires very little setup once your account is established.

I can choose whether a task looks worth doing before accepting it.

And some of the AI tasks I am currently seeing offer a much better money-to-time ratio than traditional survey sites I have tried.

But the real test is going to be consistency.

Because earning £3.60 in 15 minutes sounds excellent.

Earning £3.60 and then seeing nothing worth doing for the next three days is a rather different proposition.

So I am keeping Prolific in the experiment.

I will keep tracking what I earn and report back once I have enough data to say whether this is genuinely useful as part of my £10-a-day strategy.

Because my ultimate goal is considerably larger than £10 a day.

I am trying to see whether I can eventually replace the £43,000 salary I gave up to help support my elderly and disabled parents using flexible income streams.

And when you are trying to do that without endless amounts of time or energy, every side hustle has to earn its place.

Prolific currently has one.

We will see if it manages to keep it 🫠

Disclaimer: Earnings from Prolific vary considerably between participants and depend on study availability, eligibility and the amount of time you choose to spend on the platform. The £3.60 AI tasks mentioned above are examples from my own recent experience, not a guaranteed payment rate or indication of future earnings. Any income you earn may also have tax implications depending on your circumstances.