Many people, when they first hear about paid
online surveys, are highly dubious. Paid surveys? Why would anyone
Pay someone to take a survey? Is this for real?
To answer that you tell them yes, it really is for real.
Then you explain to them more about how it works.
You explain to them that it works like this:
1. Big companies pay market researchers to find out things that they need
to know.
2. Then the market researchers contact survey companies to actually
conduct the survey and get the answers.
3. Then the survey makers contact a number of survey takers, who make up
a representative sampling of the target
market to get answers to the questions,
and
4. These survey taker/participants get invited to take the survey, for
which they will get paid.
Sometimes that answer will satisfy the dubious. Sometimes it
won't.
Occasionally they counter with something like, "Well now just
wait a minute here. They could simply go out on the sidewalk in front, stop the first ten
people that came by and ask them! Then they would know! They wouldn't have to pay anyone!"
So you take a deep breath, and offer to make it clearer for
them. But you must warn them that the answers have to be a bit technical. There are two
concepts that it is important to understand here:
A. Target market
population and
B. Representative
sample.
