Jasmine Birtles
Your money-making expert. Financial journalist, TV and radio personality.
Make Money Selling Your Personal Data
Teresa Etheredge
17th Mar 2020
Ever considered selling your personal data to companies like Microsoft, Twitter, Google, Pinterest and Facebook? Such companies already follow every swipe of your mouse, collecting information to sell to advertisers and marketers so they can better target you.
You might as well get paid!
Here’s how you can take advantage of a practice that’s already going on:
- What is ‘selling your data’?
- How do you make money selling your personal data?
- Who do you sell your data to?
- DataWallet
- Panel App
What is ‘selling your data’?
Have you ever been browsing Facebook, only to then be distracted by an advert to something you’re interested in?
These are called ‘targeted ads’, which are directed specifically towards you as an individual.
Tracking companies use sneaky technology like cookies to follow:
- The sites you visit
- What you look at there
- What you buy
- And sometimes even what you post to social media
The data brokers might then sell this information to other corporations, or they might use it themselves to help them choose which ads to show you next.
So all these businesses are making money selling your personal data, making billions from this fountain of information, but most of us will never see a penny of it.
But is there a way we can?
How do you make money selling your personal data?
The data brokers want to know everything they can about you that is digitally accessible, including your:
- Gender
- Age
- What you buy, where and when
- Social media posts
- And sometimes some extra, like education or employment history
the internet is not free
A few sites have now set up to help redress that balance and give you a cut of the profit.
One of them is called DataWallet and the idea behind the site is that:
- Personal data should be under the control of the individual.
- The person deserves to make money selling their personal data
- You only sell what you want to sell.
The advantage of these data-pooling sites for data brokers is that they unlock much richer, more detailed information. This is willingly volunteered by the participants, for a small payment, of course.
what data do you sell?
Typically, the data brokers have access to public data only. But when the individuals themselves are involved, exciting new information is obtainable to them. That’s why they are willing to pay for it, these include:
- What users are talking about online
- When they’re online
- What they care about
So how do you make money selling personal data?
The people making adverts want to know as much as possible to entice consumers to buy. That is why they’re willing to pay sites like Datacoup, and by extension; you, to get this information. It is much more accurate and detailed than the generic, boring, low quality data available everywhere else.
Who do you sell your data to?
Two of our favourite people to sell your data to are DataWallet and Panel App.
DataWallet
DataWallet allows users to fine-tune the settings for the exact pieces of data you want to share. For example, you might want to leave out your social media posts if you consider these private, but you may not mind them seeing what you buy on Amazon.
Your data will be:
- Stripped of anything that could personally identify you such as name, email address, and phone number.
- Lumped together with everyone else’s data.
- Turned into an analytics report to be sold to whoever wants it.
You will be given full transparency over what is happening with your data, as well as the reassurance of anonymity and extensive security measures.
Your data increases in value along with the number of accounts you connect.
The app’s maker, Engel, says that the typical amount of money you can make selling your personal data is around $10 or £5 per report, although it has been known to zoom all the way up to $50!
These payouts are to be expected around every 2 months, but as more users join the app Engel predicts that both the frequency and value of payments may start to increase.
However, something important to bear in mind is that DataWallet only accepts 1,000 new participants per month, so it’s a good idea to sign up as soon as possible to get a head start on the waiting list.
For those queue-jumpers among us, the way to be accepted quicker is if you either recommend the app to a few other users or if you get a lot of invites yourself.
Make money selling your personal data to DataWallet here.
Panel App
Panel App is slightly different to the other two, tracking your location rather than your online accounts. It jumbles up all your information with everyone else’s in your area, again removing anything personally identifiable, and sells the reports to different third parties.
Since the information is not available at the individual level, it is usually used to help researchers develop an understanding about our different population trends.
To take advantage:
- Download it onto your phone,
- Enable WiFi and GPS,
- Sign in with some demographic information e.g. your age,
It will then work quietly in the background.
This works with a points system, which allows you to win in two different ways:
- Guaranteed Rewards – Where you exchange your points for an Amazon gift card that will be emailed to your account after the following Monday.
- Sweepstakes – You have the option of winning Amazon gift cards up to a value of $25. Fewer points are needed than for Guaranteed Rewards, and the more entries you redeem the greater your chances of winning. These prizes will be received within two weeks.
So how do you earn points?
- As soon as your account is verified, you start earning points for every day it is left running in the background.
- Surveys might be sent to you occasionally, depending on where you are or have been.
- The best method is probably referring friends, as you will get a 10% boost of all the points they earn, as well as 5% of all the points earned by your friends’ referrals.
As you can see, once you start inviting others, the money can start becoming a little more substantial. Also remember; you’re getting all this for not much effort. Your data is taken and used every day so take advantage and earn yourself some extra cash.
Make money selling your personal data to Panel App.
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I love this!!! My name is [email protected]
Some good tips in this interesting article.
It is too complicated to sell data. You need huge datasets, also one buyer is not going to pay anything significant. You need a shortcut to your data and you need many buyers. Consent Token (consentok.com) is a shortcut. You grant the consent and you get the value from anyone who uses your consent to gather, analyze, save, etc. your data.
how much do they pay? i want to be paid daily for my data
It depends on each company. You will likely be paid monthly for most options although, as the article states, it’s two months on average for DataWallet.