Making Money from the TNS Royal Mail Survey

Few things are guaranteed in these uncertain economic times we live in. In the face of these uncertainties, some like to hedge their bets by holding wealth in the likes of gold, fine art or property. Not this economic visionary…I’ve managed to get into the postage stamp game. In this article I’ll be explaining exactly how I’m earning free postage stamps from the Kantar Royal Mail TNS survey and what the potential opportunities might be to turn them into a nice little ‘investment’.

I have stumbled upon a rather unusual way to make a little side income, plus a potential and rather unusual way to increase those earnings. I’ll also cover how you can make money from the Kantar TNS Royal Mail Survey so we can all be making it rain postage stamps together.

If extra income is what you’re after, you may also be interested in some of our other lucrative side hustles such as our simple guide to Matched Betting and how we made £3,214 in side hustle income last year.

Who are Kantar TNS?

This all comes down to a phone call I got out of the blue a couple of months ago from a company I had never heard of before called Kantar TNS.

For context, I should explain that I work in a business which involves posting a fair amount of items on a daily basis through Royal Mail – though this isn’t a prerequisite to participating. The phone call was a request to join their postal panel which allows them to track the service Royal Mail provides.

Initially I thought this survey sounded like a bit of a scam, but after lots of googling, I was reassured that the Kantar TNS Royal Mail survey was not a scam, but in fact a legitimate program backed by Royal Mail.

What does the Kantar TNS Survey involve?

After joining up, I had to complete a few administrative tasks. Such as providing information on what I normally post and other straightforward things – this probably took around 20 minutes in total, but wasn’t all in one go.

A few weeks later the first bundle of envelopes arrived. The process was even simpler than I might have imagined. All I have to do is apply postage to four envelopes (the cost of the postage is reimbursed, of course), and send them to the specified address as part of my normal daily mailing.

Once the items are sent, I submit a quick 5-question form to Kantar TNS confirming dispatch of the envelopes, with some basic details such as time and location. It’s a very straightforward process that takes less than 5 minutes. There are batches to post twice a week, so 8 items of post a week all-together.

What is the payment for the Kantar TNS Survey?

For taking part in the survey, Kantar TNS reimburse the cost of the postage as a monthly bank transfer – this has proved to be quickly and reliably paid. On top of this, they ‘pay’ in 12 First Class stamps and 4 First Class Large Letter stamps every month.

In addition to the regular monthly stamps Kantar pay, they also gift a pack of the special Royal Mail collector stamps that are issued every six months. Sure enough, since I have been doing the Royal Mail survey, I have received special edition Royal Mail mint stamps ranging from Harry Potter to Elton John to Marvel and more. I would imagine it’s a stamp collectors dream as these usually retail for around £12.

There is also the bonus of entry into their daily prize draws for 14 prizes of £10 in retail vouchers, and monthly prize draw worth £250. I’ve now been doing the survey for over 2 years and only won vouchers once, so I wouldn’t hold your breath on this, but it was a nice bonus.

If we assume the prize draw is unlikely to materialise and just focus on the standard monthly reward, this equals the equivalent of £12.08 at the current price of stamps. When you factor in the 6-monthly special stamps at £12 a go, this comes to an extra £2 a month. All in then, the Kantar TNS Royal Mail Survey pays £14.08 a month to participate, albeit in stamps rather than cash. There were a few other perks of participating such as a diary sent around Christmas time and some Mini Eggs at Easter – nice touches but nothing to get too excited about.

For around 45 minutes of sending off envelopes a month, that’s not too shabby a side-earner. If a little extra money for very little work sounds good to you, this should be right up your street. The link to sign up for the Kantar TNS Royal Mail survey is incredibly hard to find, but luckily for you I have done the hard work for you there.

On a side note, if extra money from home sounds up your street, you may want to check out some of our much more lucrative side hustles such as our simple guide to Matched Betting and how we made £3,214 in side hustle income last year.

How to turn Stamps into Cash?

This is where things get a little complicated, but also exciting. Now, holding hundreds of pounds worth of stamps is all well and good, but if you actually want to realise that monetary value, you have to find some way of turning the stamps into cold hard cash.

There are a few options I’ve thought of here, some more straightforward than others:

1. Simply use them as stamps, and save on the cost of purchasing new stamps. However, because it’s 2020 and email exists, I don’t use anywhere near this amount of stamps per month.
2. Sell them and cash in. There seems to be a fairly healthy trade of stamps on eBay, with some even selling well above market value which I can’t quite get my head around. This presents the quickest and most straightforward way of cashing in. However, with the small volume I have, I’m unlikely to get the highest prices and (ironically) postage costs will cut into the margins. When paired with eBay fees, this means the actual realisable value may be slightly lower than the face value. Good if you want to cash in stamps quickly, but not as good to maximise value.
3. Hold them and speculate on ‘postal stamp futures’… This is probably the most interesting and/or ridiculous idea, so more on this below.

Speculate to Accumulate

The price of stamps inevitably goes up over time, much like everything else. Usually, this is by a penny or two every few years, more or less in line with inflation. If this is the case, we don’t really gain much, if anything, by holding on to them.

However, let me take you back to the hazy days of April 2012. Barack Obama and Mitt Romney were lining up to go head to head for the US presidency, the London Olympics was just around the corner and Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” was tearing up the music charts (you can thank me for getting that song back in your head later). In the midst of all this, Royal Mail raised stamp prices by an average of around 30%.

Whilst that sounds like terrible news for consumers, if you happened to be sitting on a stash of stamps at the time, you’d be giving Carlos Slim a run for his money in no time! I love this this example, from an excellent article written at the time by MoneySavingExpert:

Take this chap who tweeted:

“I’ve just bought £1,750 worth of stamps”. If he were to sell them all at the full future price he’d get £2,300 back – a 30% return.

This is a phenomenal return, to get the same back in a top easy access cash ISA at current 3.5% rates would take eight years.

Whilst it is impossible to know when and by how much Royal Mail are likely to raise their prices, the temptation is to hold on to these stamps in the hopes that we may be able to seriously cash in on them at some point in the future. With all the uncertainty around at the moment, who knows if a big stamp price hike is just around the corner.

Who says a balanced investment portfolio can’t include a few books of stamps anyway?

If you have any novel ideas for how we could use these stamps, we’d love to hear them. Leave a reply below with your suggestions or comments.