tried the survey site thing everyone recommends to make extra money and want to share my numbers

I've been lurking here a while and kept seeing survey junkie and inbox dollars recommended as easy side income so i actually tried it for a few weeks and tracked everything. I did about 45 minutes to an hour per day. Screen-outs were the worst part cuz you spend 8-10 minutes on qualifying questions and then get told they don't need your demographic anymore, it happened constantly. When I did finish surveys they were paying $0.40 to $0.75 mostly. final tally after 16 days was $9.

Again maybe there's a better strategy i was missing but i started looking at other things and the contrast was pretty stark. 

rocket money: took 10 minutes to set up, found a streaming service and a fitness app i was still being charged for. Recovered around $140 over the next few months without doing anything else.

claimmoney: found it while looking for settlement aggregators. it matched me to a stubhub case from ticket purchases i made back in 2023 and a colgate kids toothpaste case from stuff i'd bought for my kid. the stubhub one paid $43, asked me to confirm my email address and the approximate dates i bought tickets, nothing more involved than that. the colgate one is still pending. took maybe 20 minutes across both filings.

fiverr: did two small writing jobs, $60 and $85. took a few hours each but the hourly rate was incomparable to surveys.

None of these are passive in the pure sense but the time-to-return ratio on all three beats surveys pretty significantly in my experience. Open to hearing if anyone's cracked the survey site thing because I genuinely couldn't figure out how people make it work.