Archive for April, 2009

Collecting Survey Data That Meets Your Objectives

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009
surveys
Ryan J Bell asked:


Creating a survey should be done only after considering your objectives for the data. The data you collect can offer a valuable glimpse into the perspective of your customers, employees, vendors, or any other party to which your organization is exposed. But, if the survey is designed or executed poorly, the data can be useless (or worse, misleading).

Surveys can be a powerful tool that can guide you in making the decisions that can expand your business, bring new clients on board, or take advantage of opportunities. In this article, we’ll help you determine why you need the data and the questions you should ask to ensure your surveys elicit the right kind of information. You’ll also discover the various survey options available to you.

Define Why You Want The Survey Data

Even if a survey is designed and executed flawlessly, it can be useless if you’re unsure of why you want the data. Before launching your survey, consider its purpose. For example, let’s assume you’re planning to survey your employees. The success of your survey depends upon your objectives. Are you trying to determine if your employees are happy with management? Or, would you like to know if they enjoy their jobs? Each objective requires a different approach.

Dig Underneath The Surface

Determining the overall purpose of your survey is only the first step. You should also dig deeper. What would you like the data to clarify? Continuing with our example above, how will you analyze the data to gain an understanding of your employees? Most importantly, what actions will you take once you’ve analyzed the data? Considering these questions before you execute your survey can be valuable in designing its structure and content.

You should involve employees during this stage of the survey design. They can provide helpful insight regarding the primary concerns of their peers. This insight can be useful in creating survey questions that elicit critical information.

Determine Your Survey Options

There are several ways to launch a survey. These can include personal interviews, telephone surveys, web-based surveys and those which ask participants to fill out hard copy forms. Each has inherent benefits and drawbacks. Some surveys (such as personal interviews) are more costly to implement but typically yield richer data. Others, such as web-based surveys, are efficient but can yield conflicting information if not designed carefully.

Your objectives for conducting a survey will determine the type (or types) of surveys you should use. Many times, you’ll find that using a combination of survey types will produce a rich source of data that would likely be unachievable if only 1 type of survey was implemented. For example, personal interviews (either done in person or over the telephone) can yield information that a hard copy form survey may not.

Analyzing The Data

If your survey has been designed properly, analyzing the information it produces should be simple. In fact, many software-based surveys have an accompanying analysis program that can evaluate answers based upon preset algorithms. That said, a manual review of the information can be invaluable. Quickly review the answers given by participants to determine if they make sense. If half of the employees surveyed are in the warehouse division and the other half are in the marketing department, their responses could (and likely should) reflect a different perspective.

Obtaining useful survey data begins with understanding your objectives. Once you know the purpose for which you want the data, you can design and execute your surveys to stimulate the right kind of information. That’s the way to help ensure that your surveys and the data they produce are useful to you and your organization.



STEPHEN

Free Paid Online Survey - Get Paid Real Money For Surveys Taking Paid Surveys at Home

Monday, April 27th, 2009
surveys
Jorge Chavez asked:


To start making money on the Internet, consider taking paid surveys at home. You take a free paid online survey or three and get paid money for surveys. No special skills required, you just give your personal opinion when you fill out the questionnaires. Easy money, if you do it right. Read on and learn how to avoid the pitfalls, do it right and get paid well for only a few minutes of your time each day…

You can get paid good money for surveys taking free paid surveys at home - if you understand the business, follow a few simple rules and do it right. About 20% of the thousands of surveys being made over the Internet each week are first class, legitimate paid online surveys that pay in cash, on time, and respect your privacy.

Another 40% are O.K. They pay, but not as much as the first class ones. Most of the remaining 40% are just time-wasters; forget them. You can’t make money with those. They will just fill up your in-box with offers for everything under the sun, trying to sell you stuff and make money off of you.

So when you consider a free paid online survey then, pay much more attention to the “paid” part than to the “free” part. There are many surveys that are free for the taking. But if you are serious about getting money for surveys, you will need to expend some effort to find free paid online surveys that really pay.

Typical surveys pay $10 to $25 for a survey that takes 6 to 18 minutes to take. That’s not a lot of money, but neither is is much time. The idea is to have a steady stream of survey offers coming in. If you take a $10 and a $25 survey each day, it’ll add up to over $1,000 a month. Now that’s real money for surveys!

The secret to success with paid surveys at home is to get a good list of survey makers. That’s tricky to do because the good ones don’t advertise. They don’t need to. The bad one, the lower 40%, have to advertise to replace all the survey takers like you who just quit because they were not making money for surveys taken!

These survey makers offer finders fees (per head) and/or commissions (a normal $10 survey becomes a $6-8 survey and the guy who recruited you gets the other $2-4! If you look around on the Net, you will see lots of offers for “free lists”. Actually, there is no such thing as a free list. Someone is always paying for it.

If you are not paying for your list, the “survey makers” trying to recruit new survey participants are. Your best bet is to find a good paid survey membership site that maintains lists for its members, join up and use the list of makers of free paid online surveys that they provide.

Only consider dealing with paid survey membership sites that offer strong money-back guarantees, backed up by a financial company like PayPal or ClickBank. Then, from amongst those with such guarantees, pick one with a low (3-6%) refund rate. Low refund rates mean happy, satisfied clients.

Pick your membership site, join, get their list, and sign up for the maximum number of survey makers for which you qualify. (Some only work in certain geographic areas). To make good money for surveys, you should be signed up with 100-200 good survey makers. Signups for paid surveys at home are easy and free, done online.

For more details about how to use free paid online surveys to get paid good money for surveys, how to get good lists to help you make money with paid surveys at home, just follow the links below…



EDWARDO

what paid survey services are there in the states?

Sunday, April 26th, 2009
paid survey
honduranhansens asked:


I just tried to register with a paid survey service, but found it was out of Great Britain. I like the idea to get paid for answering surveys but I need one in the states.

thanks

ELIJAH

What to Do to Take More Paid Surveys for Cash

Sunday, April 26th, 2009
surveys
Jhon smith asked:


As a beginner survey taker, you must have come across dozens of surveys that only give out free stuff or enter you into lottery drawings. Many survey takers get disinterested in taking surveys, because they wish to get cash, instead of prizes. The major misunderstanding among newbie survey takers is that a survey site that gives out prizes does not give out cash. Read more to learn what to do to take more Paid Surveys for cash.

Paid surveys are only one of the many paid programs that are now available in the web space. Incentivized advertising comes in different forms, but surveys should not be confused with spam or direct marketing. Free online Surveys are launched by market research companies that collect and analyze consumer feedback for the purposes of merchandisers and service companies that need to remain competitive on the market. In order to stimulate people to respond to the surveys, companies distribute various rewards and bonuses in cash or in freebies. What determines whether you get a free item or cash payment for surveys?

Surveys are easy to complete for survey takers, but before they reach you, survey designers carefully prepare and design the survey format and structure. Moreover, the target audience of surveys differs substantially – each survey targets a different consumer segment. This is so, because you may expect the group of people who buy diapers or cat food to be somehow different from the group of people who buy mortgage plans. Even though some people may buy both diapers and cat food, and mortgage plans, they will be significantly less than the people who will buy only diapers and mortgage plans, but not cat food, for examples. Therefore, surveys must be designed to reflect these differences. Whether a survey is more or less complicated also means whether a survey will bring a more or a less attractive reward.

What to do to be able to take more surveys for cash? You should keep in mind that survey companies have a mix of survey incentives that apply to different surveys. If the survey is really simple, for instance – a one-page survey that asks you about your favorite color, you should expect that the incentive is more likely to be an entry into a lottery drawing, rather than $10 cash. However, if the survey asks you to evaluate a particular purchase of an electric appliance that you made in the past 6 months, there might be less survey respondents from the whole mailing list who will be eligible to complete it. Therefore, the incentive for such a survey might be cash, instead of prizes. However, it takes more than just waiting for the surveys that you’ll be eligible for to get cash from paid surveys.

Another trick that newbie survey takers may not know purely from taking surveys is that the initial surveys that companies send to newly subscribed respondents are usually surveys that give out prizes, rather than cash. Companies need responsible and reliable survey takers that will supply them with adequate and realistic feedback. Therefore, there is some degree of selection process matching the highest-pay surveys with the most reliable and outstanding survey respondents. Therefore, to maximize your chances to earn cash, you should go through the initial stages when you’ll get simple surveys that pay out less that you wish. Being patient and persistent is what will eventually get you to where you desire to be – to the highest-payout surveys.



RANDOLPH

Earn Money Taking Online Surveys: Free Paid Online Surveys Advice

Friday, April 24th, 2009
surveys
Peter Nisbet asked:


Worldwide, people earn money taking online surveys for cash. It is one of the more popular means of making money online, but be careful, since without paid online surveys advice you can end up very disappointed.

Getting paid for online surveys seems like an easy way to make money, and getting paid money for surveys has indeed become a popular means of making money online. However, there are one or two truths you need to know, and also some tips to help you earn money taking online surveys to maximum effect. You will be able to make money taking surveys, but keep these factors in mind:

1. WHAT TO EXPECT.

Don’t expect to make a fortune from paid online surveys. This will not be the basis of anybody’s online home business, but more of a means of making a reasonable amount of pocket money. Yoiu can earn money taking online surveys, and you will hear of people making up to $200 an hour or more, but ignore that. No doubt somebody might make that with a unique survey program that they found, but your average will be nearer $2 - $5 a survey.

You can work it out yourself from there. Each survey takes on average around 10 minutes to complete, so if you work for a morning a day, say 8 till midday, then you can complete 5 surveys and hour, earning you an average of $17.50 an hour so each morning you will earn four times that, or $70. If you do that 6 days a week, then you can earn around $1700 monthly. With a little experience, that 10 minutes can often be cut to 5.

It’s not a fortune, but that’s for only 4 hours a day, six days a week. If you work 8 hours, that comes to $3400. That is an average figure, but many earn more than that by being selective and registering with several online paid survey programs. If you take it really seriously, and seek out the best paying surveys, it is possible to make a lot more than that, and the $200 an hour advertised could possibly become a reality ($288,000 monthly), but that’s for the experienced!

However, it shows what can be done by some and with the right programs. I have yet to do it, but I have read about it online. Don’t get your head turned because you will not earn that - not until you have spent a while learning the basics, and that will take a year or two.

2. HOW TO START

To start to earn money taking online surveys for cash, you have to find a good paid survey directory. These will offer a variety of paid online surveys, and while some will pay cash for surveys, others will offer you free goods for surveys. Don’t be upset if you are offered free goods, because these can be sold on eBay at a good profit, and often earn you mire than if yoru were paid for a cash survey.

Therfore, you should register with a respected survey directory first: that could cost you anything up to $50, but if you pay then you are being taken to the cleaners! There are sites that offer you surveys without you having to pay. You can then choose the surveys you want to take from these. They are not over-advertised because those promoting them have little to gain. However, free paid online survey directories are available if you know where to look for them, and don’t expect an online search engine search to find them for you, because ‘free’ isn’t always free!

3. PAID ONLINE SURVEYS ADVICE

a) Never use your regular email address for your surveys. Open up a new address with Yahoo, Techemail or Gmail. You could receive a lot of emails when you get really deeply into this, and you want to keep your personal email address for personal emails. You can even set up a new email address for each survey group with which you register. It is free to open up these email addresses for your cash surveys. When you start to make money taking surveys, you will get a lot of emails (hopefully telling you how much you are making from your paid surveys).

b) Some will be cash surveys, and some for prize draws. Make sure that you register for a directory that offers mainly paid surveys, and the occasional prize draw, because you could get lucky. However, you still need the cash survey for a regular income. Nevertheless, it’s fun to enter a draw survey now and again, so go for a mix.

c) You will come across the message “You do not Qualify for this Survey” now and again. It happens to everybody. Make a note of that survey site and never use it again. It is due either to your post code, country, age, *** or some other information you provided at the start of the survey, so don’t take it personally.

d)Never lie in any porfile you are required to provide because you might then be given a paid survey that is irrelevant to you.

e) You will need some form of password maintenance, since you could be registering for 50+ online cash survey sites eventually. If you want to earn money taking online paid surveys seriously, than a few dollars for password and login protection, security and maintenance is well worth the $20 or less it will cost.

FINALLY

A lot of people earn money taking online surveys, but be careful about free online paid surveys; because if they are free surveys then your payment will be either small or it will involve a draw for a gift. It can be very profitable to be paid for online surveys once you have learned how to go about it correctly, although you should go for the cash surveys and use the free draws as a side amusement just for fun to find out your luck.

Draws for gifts are OK as a sideline, but your main focus, if you want to earn money taking online surveys, must be on paid surveys, or cash surveys. These are what will be earning you the bulk of your income, and if you are getting paid for online surveys then you want it to be in cash and not in the chance of winning draw for a vacation. Good luck!



TIMOTHY

What are the highest paying internet surveys with the least hassle?

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
surveys
Robin M asked:


I want to take online surveys as a way to earn extra cash without having my email flooded with garbage…theres gotta be a way to do this! So,looking for easy,simple,and fast surveys that pay decent cash instead of 50 cents for and hour of questions!

KIM

Are paid survey companies for real or a hoax?

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
paid survey
finlyngrace asked:


There are so many websites out there who claim they pay you for taking surveys. Anyone ever do one and have it work and actually get paid? The only ones I’ve found require you to pay a subscription fee. If I pay it and it doesn’t work out I want to know I can get money back. Or just not have to pay a fee. Please help me understand this system!

BRENT

are there any legitimate work at home jobs without me doing any surveys?

Sunday, April 19th, 2009
surveys
Cherese G asked:


the only ones i can find are to do surveys online and even they are asking for a fee. rebate processing, typing online, anything else besides online surveys

VALENTIN

Paid Surveys - Money for Doing What Comes Naturally

Sunday, April 19th, 2009
surveys
Strategic Financial Publishing, Inc asked:


Our human nature has traditionally been characterized by a willingness among individuals to express an opinion on just about any subject known to mankind.  As far back as history can relate people have eagerly rendered their viewpoints on anything and everything.  Traditionally we have been taught that opinions should be taken with a grain of salt because that is all they are worth.  Well, according to the economics of today, opinions are not only valuable, but they are worth money.  Paid surveys have become the rage of the Internet in the first decade of the 21st Century, and people around the world are beginning to join in the frenzy. 

 

There is not one subject in the history of mankind that has been sheltered from public opinion.  The entire sports gambling industry, a twelve billion dollar annual business world wide, is built on the fact that people have diverse opinions about the outcome of sporting events.  There were differences of opinion back in ancient Rome when royalty would bet on the outcome of the chariot races.  Heaven forbid if it was your neck that was riding on the outcome of a wager.  The entire Olympic development emerged because people from different countries had a divergence of opinion as to whose athletes were better.  The fields of wrestling, bow and arrow shooting, chariot and horse racing, and a variety of other competitive events laid the foundation for wagering on these varying opinions.  The differences were ultimately settled by Olympic competition.  These events helped shape peoples’ opinions regarding which army was better prepared to fight, which country made the most effective warring equipment and which country constructed the sturdiest chariot.  Today, by virtue of paid surveys, people are being paid for expressing their opinions.

 

Technological advancements have propelled certain industries to the forefront.  Within those industries, there are products manufactured that sustain these businesses.  Competition in the free market is what drives the price of the products.  Their ultimate success or failure is determined by the amount of sales generated in relation to their competition, and for this reason paid surveys have become an invaluable marketing tool today.

 

Paid Surveys - Test Market for Products

 

Paid surveys are the test tracks for marketing firms hired to determine how the public views a particular product or concept, and whether or not the product will be ultimately successful on the open market.  Paid surveys have become an important facet of the world’s economy over the past ten years.  Since the utilization of the Internet as a tool in business today, the use of paid surveys has increased by leaps and bounds.  Paid surveys have been around for decades, however, and many companies have used paid surveys strategies in order to make critical administrative decisions regarding the production and marketing of a particular product. 

 

One company based in New England that employed paid surveys to make administrative determinations regarding their product is the manufacturers of what we will call X Brand Ice Cream.  X Brand Ice Cream was produced by a New England company that wanted to give their ice cream a special quality.  The firm understood that the ice cream industry had some major players in the 70’s, such as Sealtest, Borden, Carvel, Baskin-Robbins and the packaged brands of the big-time supermarkets, such as A&P, Key Food, Shoprite and Pathmark.  The makers of X Brand hired a marketing firm to conduct paid surveys to test their product.  The paid surveys were conducted initially in New England.  Subsequently, there were additional paid surveys in the New York metropolitan area, paid surveys in the Washington DC area, and paid surveys in the Philadelphia-Trenton area. 

 

Since the company’s philosophy was to produce exotic ice cream flavors, the paid surveys would be a great indicator of the preferences of the public. The initial response from the participants of the paid surveys was luke-warm at best.  You must keep in mind that these paid surveys consisted of a taste test of various flavors of ice cream  However, during these paid surveys, neither the name of the company, which was X Brand, nor the name of the flavor of the ice cream was disclosed to those participating in the paid surveys.

 

The results of the initial paid surveys were curious at first, but they taught marketing firms a crucial lesson in the value of paid surveys.  The reason that the people were not that receptive to the different flavors of ice cream was because the paid surveys revealed that the participants felt that the ice cream lacked a pizzazz about it.  Several months later, the same paid surveys were administered once again to the same corps of paid surveys participants.  This time, the name of the brand of ice cream, X Brand (actually a European sounding name), was revealed to these paid surveys takers.  The paid surveys had a completely different outcome.  The participants of these paid surveys approved overwhelmingly of the different flavors of the ice cream.  The reason given in these paid surveys for the change of opinion is because the paid surveys participants believed they were eating ice cream imported to the United States from Europe, presumably Holland or Switzerland.

 

The makers of X Brand then utilized paid surveys to determine which particular flavors they should market, and which others they should not.  The cities that they chose were:

Paid Surveys - New York City, New York

Paid Surveys - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Paid Surveys - Baltimore, Maryland

Paid Surveys - Boston, Massachusetts

Paid Surveys - Portland, Maine

Paid Surveys - Providence, Rhode Island

Paid Surveys - Cape Cod, Massachusetts

Paid Surveys - Montpelier, Vermont

Paid Surveys - Concord, New Hampshire

Paid Surveys - Cape May, New Jersey

Paid Surveys - Old Greenwich, Connecticut

Paid Surveys - Dover, Delaware

 

The interesting findings in these paid surveys was that the more affluent the area of the paid surveys, the more favorable the results were.  Additionally, the paid surveys yielded the information that the more affluent the area, the more impressed those tested were with the foreign sounding name, and the more willing they were to pay a higher price for the ice cream. The more exotic-sounding the flavor of the ice cream, the more positive was the response from the paid surveys.

 

These results allowed the manufacturers of the ice cream to concentrate on those areas earmarked in the paid surveys, and X Brand Ice Cream became a staple in the American culture.  The same ice cream that received moderate reviews in the initial paid surveys had received a completely different opinion by the same corps of participants in subsequent paid surveys simply because the brand was given a foreign-sounding name.  The people thought they were purchasing ice cream that was a better value to them than their American counterparts.

 

Paid surveys are now conducted today through the services of the Internet.  People are in great demand to become participants in these paid surveys.  If you are interested in participating in paid surveys, kindly log on to your computer and consult a search engine, such as Google or Yahoo, for the term “paid surveys.”



GORDON

Get Paid for Doing Surveys From Home by Joining Online Paid Survey Web Sites

Saturday, April 18th, 2009
surveys
Jack S asked:


Get paid to answer surveys from home. It’s true that many people do get paid for doing surveys online. But don’t fool yourself into believing that you’ll get rich from doing paid marketing research surveys.

Paid online surveys work like this: you join a paid market research company in order to get paid to answer surveys at home. You’ll fill out a profile and may get invitations to take surveys and get paid cash or other prizes and rewards.

The reason these paid survey companies want to pay you for doing surveys is because they need your opinion on their consumer products and services. This way they can have an idea of consumer perception of the goods and services they’re about to release to the public. So you can get paid for doing the surveys, so that the product companies don’t lose money later on.

In order to take surveys at home you can join a paid survey website that offers access to paid survey online directories. Those paid survey lists contain links to paid-survey companies that you can sign up to to do surveys for them and get paid for your opinion. Some of these paid survey directory websites will charge you a one-time fee for access to the paidsurvey lists.

However, the paid survey company itself should never charge you in order for you to get paid for doing surveys. The opposite is true: they should pay you. This is why you’d want to take their surveys, to get paid for taking the surveys, and not the other way round.

Also, you can search for yourself paid survey companies to sign up with. You can find plenty of them. But paid survey directory sites have them already organized for you.

There are international paid survey companies that have offers for you to take paid surveys outside the US as well. You can find Canada paid surveys or paid surveys in the UK or Australia or other countries. You can get paid taking those surveys. Some paid surveys are only for USA residents. So make sure you understand if you qualify for the paidsurveys.

Also, before you take a survey, you’ll often get “screener” surveys to complete. Those are short ones, to fill in your basic info, to determine whether you qualify for the longer surveys. Some will pay you for the screeners as well, and some will enroll you in drawings to win cash for taking the surveys.

Others won’t pay you for the screeners, which have only a few questions and don’t take much time to complete. If you match up and qualify for the real online paid surveys, you can get invitations in your E-mail to get paid to complete a survey. Do complete it, because you can not only get paid but also be registered as a more valued survey taker and get more surveys to complete and get paid for them.

Joining a survey company, make sure they’re legitimate paid survey websites, and not paid survey scams that can rip you off.



STEPHEN