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How To Conduct Your Own Survey Research

March 14, 2012 by Steve Anderson Leave a Comment

online survey researchIf feel like I’m a bit at risk writing this post since it is not a post for those interested in taking paid surveys, which is the majority of my regular readers… Sorry guys and gals.

This post is for anyone interested in conducting your own survey research and wondering how to get started. I envision this post being extremely relevant for students studying marketing research and probably small businesses with small marketing budgets looking to collect some data before they create or revise a product or service line. So let’s get started…

Thanks to technology, do-it-yourself marketing research is definitely possible and you can do it on the cheap as well. Online survey and poll tools make it super easy and affordable for businesses, small and large to engage with their potential and current customers to gather important data about their current and future products and services. Here are some quick tips to help you get started with your own marketing research campaign:

Create an Objective

Before you can begin your survey research, you need to start with a clear objective on why you are conducting your research and what decisions you will make once you are able to collect your data. Once you have an objective in place, it will be much easier to help you craft the right questions and collect the right data to help you make those tough decisions about where to take your business.

Write Your Questions

After you have a clear objective, you need to start mapping out your questions. First and foremost, you need to make sure that each question you ask has a purpose and have a definable objective. Once you have all your questions, you should ask yourself, “will I be able to take action based on the information I receive?” If the answer is no, you should throw out the question and replace it with a better one.

While you are putting together your questions you should also consider secondary data, if you have it. This is data that has already been collected for a different objective. Take a look at your existing data sources that you currently have like customer profiles, purchase patterns, sales data, and customer service calls. You may find that you already have the answers you need in these reports, or you may find that you have not thought of some questions you need to be asking. Secondary data is money if you have it.

Load Your Survey

Once you have your questions finalized, you need to load them into a survey software. There are many free survey research software out there like Survey Monkey with make it very easy to create your survey and administer it to your target audience. If you want to go with a higher end survey research software, you use a tool like Qualtrics. Both are great and both have their advantages, you will just need to figure out what you need and go for it!

Begin With Current Customers

Now that you have your survey ready to go, you should plan on launching it to your existing customers base. Most often than note, these people are your advocates and will tell it like it is. If they would like to see something changed in your current product or service offering, they will let you know. They will also let you know about what they think about new product or service ideas. Tap this resource or you will be sorry!

Once you have completed this, you can begin to reach out to others in your target demographic by tapping into social media hubs like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and others.

Tap Into Social Media

If you have a social media presence, you need to use it like your own personal survey research panel. Putting your survey through Twitter, Facebook, and other social hubs can offer incredible insight and often reveal some surprising results.

If you don’t have a social media presence, you can purchase some cheap advertising on each social network to help spread the word about your survey and get the data that you are looking for. We aren’t experts when it comes to purchasing ads on the social networks, but this post on Top Rank Blog and also this post on The Next Web are awesome posts to help get you started.

Here are a few great tips to help your survey take off on the social networks:

  • Include a short message about the survey within your tweet, update, etc.
  • Include an incentive such as “win a gift card for a completed survey”, etc.
  • Send your survey out on more than one occasion for maximum exposure.
  • Use a link shortening service like bit.ly to shorten your survey URL and track the number of clicks you receive.
  • Ask your friends and family to send it out to their following.
  • Send a final reminder message like, “our survey ends today, results to follow”.

Analyze Results

After you have collected enough data, you’re probably wondering what should you do with your findings? You should first look for patterns, trends, and potential holes in what is and isn’t being offered by you and also in your market. You should write down all of these findings.

Next you need to take feedback and listen to your customer’s or potential customer’s perspective. You should identify products that are currently not available in the marketplace, but are desired. You should add, subtract, and tweak your products or services until it meets the needs of your customer to the best of your ability. The final result? Happy customers who continue to do business with you and also tell all their friends and family about you bringing in additional revenue that adds to your bottom line.

So there you have it… Marketing research is a vital component to every business and marketing strategy. If you do it well, it can be extremely beneficial to developing and maintaining a solid relationship with your customers and give you vital insight to make better decisions regarding your products and services.

Filed Under: Market Research Tagged With: marketing research, online poll software, qualtrics, social media, survey monkey

Become a BizBrag Reseller – Make Money Managing Social Media for Small Businesses

February 6, 2012 by Steve Anderson Leave a Comment

make money online with bizbragThis is a guest post from BizBrag. Just like online paid surveys, BizBrag is a great way to make money leveraging the internet. I hope you enjoy the post!

It is a well known fact that as a small business owner in America the majority of your customers are using some sort of social media. Unfortunately for many business owners, they may not understand how to use social media to market their business, or they simply may not have the time. So how can you use this knowledge to make money online?

BizBrag is a platform that allows a user to create news, updates, and offers in the form of web pages called Braggits. A Braggit can be sent to all of the user’s social networking sites and blogs, are optimized for search engines, and are super easy to create. The only thing the user has to worry about is writing regular content about their business. The BizBrag platform makes this even easier with its scheduling feature. Depending on how ambitious you are, you could create a month’s worth of Braggits at one time and have them publish a few times a week.

You may be thinking, “Well that’s great, but how do I use it to make money?” BizBrag has several different editions ranging from Basic (do-it-yourself) to the Pro and Reseller Editions. The Reseller accounts are managed by you, the reseller and are discounted so that you can add your own markup. As a reseller, you have an opportunity to become a social marketing solution for your clients and build a business around our software. All you need to do is offer your social media services to small businesses for your price, and use our incredibly easy to use platform to handle all of their social accounts from one location.

BizBrag has a built in social network called the BragForce which you can use to cross promote your managed businesses. Since you will be control of all of your clients’ accounts, you can leverage this ability to create Braggits and share them between your clients, allowing you to keep your client’s social accounts full of relevant material, and helping them to reach more potential customers.

BizBrag gives you the tools to be successful and impress your clients. We offer features that put the power of the social web at your fingertips, and make it easy enough for anyone who uses Facebook to use. BizBrag gives you reports about how your Braggits are performing on social media and in search engines. There are analytics built in to see how many people have viewed your Braggits and who ‘likes’, ‘tweets’ or +’1’s’ them. These reports can easily be printed out and given to your clients to show them how well you;re doing.

BizBrag gives you the tools you need to make money helping small businesses reach wider audiences on the web. Start bragging today!

If you are interested in learning more about BizBrag, you can visit their website or their Facebook page.

Filed Under: Make Money Online Tagged With: BizBrag, social media

Top Ten Ways To Make Money Online In 2012

October 11, 2011 by Steve Anderson Leave a Comment

make money online

We’re 82 days away from the New Year… That kind of freaks me out.

At MDX Research, we’ve helped almost a half a million people over the last six years make money online with paid surveys, if you as me, that’s pretty impressive. One thing that sets us apart from other paid survey sites online is the fact that we are truly committed to the success of our visitors and members, we are committed to your success and aren’t a one and done shop like the other guys.

Because of this, we have spent a considerable amount of time over the last six months to research and develop a list of the top ten ways to make money online in 2012. These are legitimate, proven ways to make money on the internet and all but one of them outside of paid surveys (our expertise). So without further ado, here are the top ten ways for you to make money online in the year 2012.

Freelance Content Writing

Over the last few years, there as been a growing demand for online content writers. Did you know that there are websites and networks out there were you can offer your writing services and get paid for it? Most of the opportunities are for writing 200-300 word articles, mostly for search marketers and bloggers. If you want to make more money than the average freelance article writer, it would be smart to develop an understanding of keyword research, search engine optimization, and content marketing. Our favorite and most reliable network we tested out was iWriter.com. Writers get paid 81% of the price of each piece of content written and payments are issued via PayPal on a weekly basis.

Become A Virtual Assistant (VA)

As with freelance content writers, the demand for virtual assistants has been growing over the last few years. There are actually entire books written on how to become a (VA), so this type of online job is definitely worth pursuing. To find these types of opportunities, you can advertise your services via freelance websites like Elance or oDesk, or you can also reach out to potenital customers directly and let them know how you can help them in their business. It is also a smart idea to look into resources such as AssistU, which provides training and direction for new virtual assistants. Virtual assistants typically make between $15 to $35 per hour depending on their experience and availability.

Write Online Reviews For Pay or Perks

This type of online work typically gets a bad wrap, just as paid surveys have over the last few years. Truth be told, there are thousands of businesses online who build new products or services and need willing people to test what they have to offer and write an honest review. Most companies looking for reviewers present two offers to individuals, one, a free product or service in return for a review, two, some monetary reward for testing and offering a review, or in some cases, both. If you are looking for something to review you could start by searching popular mommy blogs on things they are reviewing or you can sign up for a service like PayPerPost. We’ve seen product or service reviewers earn anywhere from $10 to $100 per review depending on what they are reviewing.

Become An Online Tutor

If you are educated and are looking for ways to make money online, tutoring people online is a great way to make some extra cash. Working with companies like e-Tutor, Smart Thinking, and Tutor.com, you can find individuals needing your services and pay pretty decent. If you like help others learn, and have the ability to set aside a certain number of hours per week (anywhere from 2+ hours), you can generate a nice supplemental income. Online tutor pay is based on the subject you are tutoring on and the number of hours spent tutoring. Many online tutors earn anywhere between $500 to $1,600 per month. In most cases, there are also bonuses and performance incentives.

Make Money On eBay

There are many different ways to make money with eBay. The three most popular ways are by going to Garage Sales, Estate Sales, or Abandoned Storage Unit Auctions and buying stuff to resell. If you are dedicated and have a few bucks to get started, you can make some decent money this way. The most difficult part of this method of making money online is the time investment needed to traveling around to find the stuff to sell. Depending on how much money and time you have to invest in purchasing items to resell, we’ve seen people make around $500 to $2,000 per month. The pros (like the guys on Storage Wars), however, make upwards of $20,000 per month.

Become An Online Juror

Never heard of online jurors? Neither had we until we started doing our research on high quality online jobs. Online jury pools are starting to become very popular as more and more people are pursuing higher education, especially in the legal field. New lawyers, right out of school, need to practice and get real experience before they hit the real world. Online resources such as TrialJuries.com stage mock trials where new lawyers can get their practice. Online jurors get paid anywhere between $5 to $70 depending on how complex or time consuming the case is. It’s fun and easy to get involved and the more you participate, the more you asked to join other juries in the communities.

Learn WordPress, Then Offer To Install Plugins & Upgrade It

Anyone who blogs frequently and has their blog installed with WordPress knows how difficult it can be sometimes to upgrade to newer versions and install new plugins. This blog runs on WordPress and every time we upgrade it, something always breaks. Same thing often happens when you install plugins that conflict with WordPress installation or theme. There are people out there who you can hire to install WordPress, upgrade it, and also install plugins. They typically charge $5 to install or upgrade plugins and $50+ to install or upgrade WordPress itself. The demand is there for this to be a full time position so the possibilities to earn are limitless depending on how fast you can work. You can find customers by contacting blog owners directly, get references from bloggers who already have hired you, or check out services like Fiverr.

Interview Industry Experts & Sell The Interview

Interviewing industry experts is a newer way to earn money online and will definitely become more popular in 2012. People we have talked to have said to have made around $600-$800 per interview and try to get 2-3 per month. The trick here is to find a pain point that people are experiencing, interview an industry expert, as the expert questions around the pain point and then selling the interview to bloggers or others in the industry who are interested in the content. This one is a little more tricky because you have to do some leg work to find people interested in buying the content in every industry, but they are definitely out there.

Submit Websites or Blog Posts To Social Media Websites

Submitting websites or blog posts to social media websites is not very exciting work, but this type of work is in high demand from bloggers and small businesses trying to gain visibility online. This type of work consists of setting up accounts on all the major social bookmarking sites like Digg and Reddit and then bookmarking your clients websites or latest posts to help them get more traffic and backlinks. The real money comes to those who set up legitimate profiles, build relationships and grow your following because the links from these profiles bring more traffic and credibility. One of our team members used to do this full time and made around $50 per submission package. Each submission package was about 20 bookmarks.

Take Paid Surveys

Lastly, paid surveys will continue to be a viable way to earn money online in 2012. More and more big corporations are looking to collect data about their customers and potential customers and will continue to spend in this market.

If you truly want to make money online and create a life where you can work from home and spend more time with your family, then it takes some work and effort on your part. These are the top ten ways that YOU can make money online in 2012… Enjoy!

Post Author: Steve Anderson

Filed Under: Make Money Online Tagged With: ebay, freelance writing, online juror, online reviews, online tutor, Paid Surveys, social media, virtual assistant, wordpress

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