Paid Surveys and Paid Survey Sites - A Players' Program Guide for Survey Takers

Surveys, as a method of marketing research, have been around for a long time. Recent developments of shorter product life cycles, rapid innovation and the rapid response times possible though the Internet have drastically changed the way surveys are being handled. New companies and new types of companies have emerged, and it is sometimes difficult to understand what is going on without a 'program' or guide book. This article gives you a first rough "program guide" to help you identify the players.

The Need. The developed countries basically have market-driven economies. That is, economically speaking, the consumer, not the producer or transporter, is King.  Consumers decisions of what to buy, what products and features to favor and which to avoid, are the determining force, the driving force of the marketplace. 

And where the marketplace goes, producers must more than follow, they must accurately anticipate! Producers must know, and know well, what is of interest to and what is preferred by the ultimate consumers, their customers.

Product life cycles are getting shorter, competition is increasing and good marketing intelligence is increasingly important.  This means that the market changes rapidly and market researchers must run very hard to keep up with it and keep their producer-clients informed.

Bad predictions of what consumers want and will do can leave manufacturers with warehouses full of unsaleable merchandise, and huge losses and write-offs.

The Environment. The Internet is providing a rapid-response, low cost medium for sampling consumer opinion.  Gone are the costs of printing, paper, envelopes and stamps. Gone too are waiting for responses in the snail mail.

Survey makers are finding it economically efficient use part of the money they save to pay the survey takers individually for filling out survey questionnaires. This payment assures an adequate data bank of willing survey takers and that vital results can be had rapidly, within hours.

The paid survey business scenario has evolved and changed.  This process is ongoing as this article is written.  While the types of players are not all crisply defined at this point, several useful generalizations can be made.

The Players in the New World of Paid Surveys:

Market Research entities. These are both stand-alone professional research companies and the marketing research departments of large companies or divisions of companies, charged with providing market information and intelligence to their own marketing departments.  In carrying out their functions of providing marketing research info to clients or their company, these entities formulate the key questions and usually design the actual questionnaires to be used in online surveys. 

They are also involved in product testing, focus groups and many other aspects of market information getting.

Survey Makers. These are the companies that actually get the questionnaires to the survey participants.  They handle the nitty-gritty work of getting the answers, compiling the results and getting them back to the Market Research people.

Survey makers exist because to maintain a database of willing survey takers you have to keep them busy.  So one survey maker can handle the mechanics of the surveys instigated by many different market researchers.

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