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Fun Surveys
I voice my opinions everyday and was surprised when I was first told I could get paid for them. Why give them away if I can earn money from expressing my thoughts? Have you ever been stopped in the mall while shopping and asked a few questions? Have you ever filled in a questionnaire for a store or company?
Why are companies interested in your thoughts?
Businesses are constantly looking for input into how they can make their products and services more appealing to the consumer (that’s you and me!). The more attractive their offers, the more likely the consumer is to purchase (and if they are good, recommend) their product and/or service.
If their product/service does not attract customers, they are out of revenue – and potentially out of business.
So what do they do to make sure that the customer is as interested in their product and services as the company thinks they should be? They do market research.
So how do I get started taking surveys online?
There are many companies out there who are conducting research everyday. Typically a company will hire a market research company to conduct their research. There are a number of reasons for hiring an outside party to do the research including:
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They are not invested in the results, so are less apt to influence the research,
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They have expertise to conduct the research without taking staff offline who may not be as well versed in how to gather and analyze data,
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And these companies have ready resources to gather consumer groups together to conduct the research.
Finding and getting ‘hooked up’ with these marketing groups
To get involved in taking surveys you will need to find and register with the companies that are doing the research. There are a number of ways to locate companies that are doing market research.
You can go to your search engine and type in keywords related to taking paid surveys. Your result with will give you thousands of sites to look into. Here you can find companies that do not cost any money to register and get started taking surveys. Some of these companies include: Panda Research, Greenfield Online
There are also a number of paid resources that will get you started in the get paid to take online surveys biz. These resources can have some great information (and they save out the time to search through the internet to find offers). A word of caution, do a little research here before investing $29-$69 (or so). You want to make sure that the site can deliver on what they claim and don’t just give you a list of outdated links for your money. Especially check to see if they offer an opportunity for a refund if you are not satisfied with their product. Two sites that fit in this category are: Survey Scout and Paid Surveys Online.com
An offline option is to look in the yellow pages of your phone book to locate companies doing research in your area. If they are accepting applications, you can register with them and they will call you in when they are looking for people who meet your demographic characteristics.
Getting Started
When you register with a company, they will ask you many questions about yourself. This helps them to match you to the correct surveys. When a company contracts with a marketing research company, they generally have a demographic group or groups that they are targeting. Your profile (all those questions about you), will help the research company know if you match the group that is being targeted.
Remember to check your inbox (or log on to the site you are registered at) regularly to take advantage of the online surveys that are offered to you. Some of these may have time deadlines, others may cut off after they have a certain number of participants taking the survey from the target group.
Ok, so I'm taking surveys - what can I expect to get?
What you earn from your survey taking will depend on several things including the payment or reward offered to complete the survey and the number of surveys that you take. You probably will not get rich completing surveys, but you can get some cash, merchandise and prizes for your participation.
Typical ways you get paid:
Cash - some surveys offer a cash reward for taking surveys online.
Merchandise - some surveys offer you merchandise to participate in the survey, or they may offer points that can later be exchanged for merchandise.
Prizes - for some surveys completing the online survey will get you an entry in a sweepstakes or prize drawing
One last word - as you register with various companies to take online surveys, be sure you read their terms and conditions and privacy policies. Be aware of how they pay you and when they pay. As with any other business you want to do your research and be informed
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