Does it Pay to take Survey's OnLine?

Everyone wants to make money with little effort. There are infomercials, books, magazines, and websites promoting how you can make a year's worth of salary in just one week. All you have to do is spend a week's salary to purchase the material that will change your life!

Get rich quick schemes have been around since Cain slew Abel and will be around until the 2ND coming, there's no getting around it. There is also a saying about there being no substitute for good, honest, hard labor.

We decided to take a chance on the internet's latest version of making big money with little work; taking surveys. We noticed the opportunity on Google Ads and clicked to check out www.paidsurveysonline.com. Sites like the aforementioned paidsurveys charge a price for membership to their exclusive money making club. Sites such as these promise to reward you taking just a few hours a day of your time with hundreds of dollars in compensation, or trips, or other prizes. Very leery of giving out my credit card to any Tom Dick or Harry, we decided to look for scams associated with that site. To no ones surprise, a huge list of sites or entrees were found. In reading some of the commentary, some paid survey victims mentioned that you can found the same service for free, at sites like www.surveyclub.com. So, I spent the next few hours signing up not just to surveyclub.com, but about 10 other free survey sites that are linked with it.

2 days have gone by and I finally got my first free survey pay off. For a 2 week participation on a panel about coffee, I would be rewarded with 20 cups of coffee, and a free coffee grinder. I need only supply my credit card in order to pay for the shipping and handling charges. Too bad for me, I only drink tea.

I will be providing weekly updates on my progress, so make sure to check back.

Gary Whittaker

www.TENWEBZINE.com goes under cover. Check out the blog for weekly updates to see if it is worthwhile to spend your time in online money making schemes.

editor@tenwebzine.com

Employee Communication Surveys: Seven Tips For Successful Design and Implementation

Organization Communication Problems?

So, your organization is suffering from poor communication practices. John complains that his boss never tells him anything. Sally is expected to come up with sales targets without being briefed on this year's company strategy.

Where do you start in improving ineffective communication between people? A good first step in fixing communication problems in any organization is to survey employees. Even if there are no obvious problems, surveys can help get an organization to the next level of performance.

What are the benefits you would expect to see in conducting a communication survey and acting on the results? Well, you could experience some of the following:

* improved employee satisfaction
* lower turnover
* reduced absenteeism
* less political infighting
* greater levels of manager-worker trust
* reduced defect rates
* higher customer satisfaction

A well-run survey can give your organization these benefits. However, a poorly conducted survey can have the opposite effect. Surveys badly planned, rolled out and followed up can actually increase employee cynicism and resistance to change. It may also worsen employee turnover and absenteeism. And this impacts on customer satisfaction and your bottom line.

Communication Survey Tips

So, what do you need to consider before rolling out your survey? Here are seven useful tips to get you heading in the right direction.

Question types

Include in your survey questions requiring limited tick-the-box responses, such as Yes/No and Strongly Agree/Agree/Disagree/Strongly Disagree. Including these questions will allow you to perform quantitative analyses that you can use to compare results between different demographics and to use as a benchmark for future surveys.

However, just as importantly, allow provision for free form comments. Everything that people will want to say will not fit into your pre-packaged boxes. A good idea is to run Focus Groups with a random sample of survey respondents after the survey forms have been collected and analyzed. These discussion groups are invaluable in performing a sanity check on your results so far and in teasing out issues that have surfaced in the written survey.

Anonymity

Guarantee absolute anonymity for the people completing the survey and make this clear in the survey instructions. Some employees will either not complete the survey or give sanitized answers if they believe that their identity will be disclosed with their answers and comments.

Sample size

Should you survey the whole organization/department or a select group? Preferably, survey all employees as this gives everyone a sense of being listened to. If the organization/department is excessively large or budget is tight, draw a random sample from each of the demographic groups that you will be reporting on.

If your selection is not random, the survey results will not be representative and you will lose credibility with your client managers and employees. If a demographic group comprises 50 people or less, you will need to survey 100 percent of the people within that group.

Mode of delivery

If the people completing the survey are small in number and at the one location, then hardcopy distribution will not be a problem. As the number of respondents increase and the locations become more dispersed, give more consideration to the need for electronic distribution. Think about putting the survey on a local intranet or internet web server.

To make filling out the form easy for people, have it so that the form can be completed online. If this is not possible, either send the form by email or put it on an accessible server from which people can download it. If your survey respondents are not comfortable with technology, then be wary of online options and provide plenty of employee support if you decide to go down that road.

Inducements and Reminders

Survey participation rates are typically ten percent or less. You can dramatically improve on this completion rate by conducting some simple follow up. As you get closer to the survey cut-off date (of course, you will have publicized that date with your survey), send out an email reminder or have someone call the respondents personally. Advertising a prize to go to the first to complete the surveys will also increase the participation rate.

Distribute results

Once the results are in and analyzed, distribute your findings first to your client managers and then to employees. Withholding results from employees will only breed cynicism and distrust and make your next survey all that more difficult to get a satisfactory response rate.

Break down your results into meaningful groups, such as by department or by region. The reporting groupings need to be small enough that people can identify with the group enough for a meaningful action plan to be developed.

Be prepared for some kickback from defensive managers. Frank employee feedback is both confronting and jarring, especially for those managers not used to it. Use your best facilitation skills to deliver the key messages. If you are in a politically charged environment, use a professional facilitator to perform this sensitive task.

Follow up and Rewards

A survey conducted with no plan for action is not only a waste of resources but will leave employees asking why they bothered to feedback to managers how they felt. Work with each manager to construct an action plan that they agree with. Remember, it is the manager that will be implementing the plan, not you. Get back with each manager three or six months later to review how they are progressing with their plan and report the results to the organization. As you see communication practices improve across the organization, make sure that managers get rewarded.

By following the above tips, you're sure to get the most benefit from your employee communication survey. The key is to leave room for free form comments on the survey form whilst guaranteeing that participants will not be identified in the results. Make the survey accessible and follow up to ensure that a sufficient number of people respond. You can maximize your response rate by offering rewards. After analyzing the results, distribute to all employees. A survey report ignored is a survey wasted, so develop an action plan and follow up with managers.

Vicki Heath is the Director of Business Performance Pty Ltd, a company providing practical online information and resources. Her company's guides, tools and templates assist organizations engage and develop people, manage organizational change and improve project delivery. Visit her at www.businessperform.com to download a ready-to-go Organization Communication Assessment Survey

Earn Extra Income Taking Paid Surveys

Most people spend their time on the computer chatting, checking emails, playing online games, and general time wasting. A lot of people don't realise this but the internet has so many opportunities for an individual to make money online. So far one of the most efficient ways to make money online is by taking an online paid survey.

An online paid survey means that you get paid per survey that you complete. Great that means I'll just do a hundred a day and I won't have to work for anyone but myself. If only life were this easy. Before we go into detail about how it all works lets start with what is a paid survey.

A paid survey is conducted by a market research company who works for a company that's testing out their new product or service. In general a paid survey is for companies to test out the market and get some general feed back to how they should develop or market there new product or service.

How To Start Now if you're interested in participating in online paid survey you'll have to sign up with a paid survey service. They have all the necessary connections with the marketing companies and when there is a particular survey to be conducted they will contact you via email and if you're interested you can response and be a part of the survey.

How Much Does It Cost? When signing up to a paid survey service you'll have to pay a setup fee. Depending on the survey site it might give you a money back guarantee. In general you'll expect to pay anywhere between $50 to $150.

How Do I Request For A Survey? In general you'll have to fill out a questionnaire that will in turn profile you into a group. Once you've been profiled you'll be assigned surveys according to your profile. This helps companies get a more accurate survey on their product and services. However some survey sites don't guarantee you any work so be careful and read the fine print. It there's no guarantee then at least look for a money back guarantee.

How Long Does It Take To Complete A Survey? In can take anywhere between 15mins to an hour or more. It really depends on the type of survey you take

How Do I Get Paid? Some paid survey agencies off to pay cash, cheque or through pay pal.

Top 5 Online Paid Survey websites reviewed side-by-side. Find out which Paid Survey is our number 1 pick

How To Make Money With Online Surveys

If you?re got some spare time and you?d like to make some money without much work, online surveys are just the thing for you. With a computer and a little advice, you?ll be all set to make some extra cash for you and your family.

Be realistic

You first have to realize that when you take online surveys, you won?t be paid thousands of dollars. In fact, the people that do take online surveys regularly will usually say that the best way to make more money is to take more surveys.

You?ll need to sign up for a few different online survey sites in order to have a constant stream of surveys to complete.

Watching out for scams

When you do see ads to take online surveys that supposedly pay thousands of dollars, you can be certain that these aren?t legitimate claims.

In order to make money with online surveys, you will need to file your information with reputable companies. These are easy to find by looking for the company information to see if they give you ways to contact them. Those companies that seem to be hiding from you usually have a reason.

And if the company tells you that you need to pay money in order to make money, then go to another web site. You shouldn?t have to pay to earn extra money.

Market research

One of the best ways to make some extra money or earn some free products is to participate in market research surveys. These tend to come from the big name companies that want to know what their customers think. You?ll answer questions about their products and give suggestions about ways that they could improve.

In many cases, you can be rewarded with free products or cash payments.

Focus groups

Another way to make money online is to become a part of a focus group. This is an invitation from a company to set with other customers and discuss a particular product or service. You can also do these online in the form of chat rooms and message boards.

You are usually compensated for the time or the amount of information that you give to the company about the product.

Following the rules

The most simple advice for making money for doing online surveys is to make sure that you?re completing the surveys in their entirety as well as giving your correct contact information.

What many people don?t realize is that you may need to confirm your email address before you will receive new surveys to do. Check your email after you first register with an online survey web site to see if there are any other steps that you need to follow.

And check your junk email box too, as this important email may have landed in there.

Online surveys are a great way to make a little extra money when you have a little extra time on your hands. And you don?t have to get dressed up to do it.

Daphne Cameron is an online marketer and owner of http://www.online-paid-surveys-info.info and http://www.best-paid-surveys.info where you can find useful tips on making money with surveys.

Making Money With Paid Surveys

Completing paid surveys is an easy way to make extra money while not leaving the comfort of your own home. It's easy money, no experience necessary and most of the time there is no membership fee. Companies need to have your valuable input on their products and for that; they offer prizes, money, gifts, trips, all the bells and whistles. If you have a computer that is connected to the internet, you are in business. And the money from these surveys can go as far as to double and triple your income, depending on how much time you spend in front of the computer. Your income level is left entirely up to you and the number of surveys you fill out.

How it works is that brand name merchandisers like Sony, Whirlpool, Chef Boy-ar- Dee, who are looking for consumer opinions on their products, their advertising methods, everything that touches the public produces a survey and enters it with a survey company. The way they obtain the desired public information is by soliciting it through the surveys. And that is where you come in. There are literally 100's of paid survey websites out there.

Pick one and try it out. Once you are enrolled, they will send the surveys directly to your mailbox. You then have the choice to accept it or not. Short entry-level surveys, or screeners usually pay in gifts - DVD players, things like that. When you participate in the full survey, then you will be paid for those that you do complete. They try to match the surveys to your skills, abilities and preferences, so you get ones you like. And it's just that simple.

When choosing a company to enroll with, look for these few things. * What is the membership fee? * Is the company entered with BBB? * Check to see that your email name and info will not be sold to another company. * Do they provide any testimonials on their website

Here is one way to make some extra money, on the web that is very straightforward. If you want to make some extra money - here is a simple, no-risk way to add to your bank account.

This article was written by T.Potter. You can visit Guide To Paid Surveys for further information and survey resources

Sex Survey Reveals Kinky Tastes

A recent survey undertaken by PleasureMeNow.com sex toys reveals people's favorite toys in the bedroom. The research also found many Valentines may receive a sex toy wrapped in red this Valentine's Day.

The survey revealed 74% of both women and men would "love" to receive a sex toy as a gift. The other 26% thought it sounded fun, and no one in the survey found the idea objectionable.

The survey established that, of those participating in the survey, 24% already owned 1 or 2 toys, 56% owned 3-6, 11% owned "Gobs" of toys and 9% don't currently own a sex toy.

Regarding the question "What is your favorite sex toy?" respondents had a fill-in-the-blank response, not a multiple-choice answer. They wrote in the following choices: 17% Rabbit Vibrator 11% Glass Dildo 10% Vibrator (Non-Specified Type) 8% Love all sex toys 7% Sex Swing 7% Strap On Dildo 6% Bullet Vibrator 5% Dildo 4% Cock Ring & Vibrating Cock Ring 4% Anal plug or bead 3% Cyberskin Sex Toy 20% other toys or none yet

"We were surprised by several of the results," said Ron Jacks, partner at PleasureMeNow.com. "One result that amazed us, even though our survey was taken on our adult toy website, was that everyone found receiving a sex toy as an appealing gift. Another result that raised several eyebrows here was how many straight men indicated their favorite sex toy was not for use on themselves but rather for use on the women in their life. Of the total men surveyed, 16% indicated their favorite toy was using a vibrator on their significant other with another 7% suggesting a glass dildo."

618 people participated in the survey. 10% of the women and 7% of men described themselves as bisexual, and 4% of people indicated they were gay.

For more information on this sexual survey, contact Lance Russell: lance@pleasuremenow.com; call 1-858-428-0306. PleasureMeNow.com is a top adult toy site offering the latest breakthroughs in pleasure technology.

Lance Russell is the author of the book "Recipes for Better Sex: 75 Delicious Ways to Spice Up Your Love Life." He has lectured on human sexuality at several California universities. In addition, he is co-owner of the sex toy store www.PleasureMeNow.com

Tips on Taking Paid Surveys

The web is filled with hundreds of sites, which offer cash, rewards, gifts for taking surveys. The surveys are often simple and targeted at common man. And their are millions of web surfers who think that taking Paid Surveys is a very good and easy way to make some money.

Well, there is only little truth in this. Not all paid survey sites are genuine. Their are a few who do pay to their subscribers for taking the surveys. It takes certain research and experience to find this sites. Proper planning and perseverance can help in your quest to make money through this route. A few tips can surely help in this quest.

Firstly, you should make an email account with a good email website. Ensure that you have sufficient space available on the site. Also check that the mails received from the Paid Survey sites are not blocked or labeled as spam by the email service provider. Always use this email to subscribe to Paid Survey sites.

The next step is to find genuine Paid Survey sites. Surf the web and try to find a site, which is in the business of paid surveys for considerable amount of time. Read the testimonials of its subscribers. Also a good site would have tie-ups with payment sites like Pay Pal to facilitate easy transfer of payments. Also these sites may require you to pay a one time or annual registration fee. Read the conditions related to this carefully. To be on safe side, surfers who are new to this should start with either one or two sites. Never send your registration fee or any other payment through cash. Also, if paying by credit card, ensure that the site has proper security certificates from companies like Verisign.

Surf the site and carefully read the legal disclaimers, terms and conditions. Often paid survey companies mention Guaranteed Payments. They may also display document images as proofs. Many of this are fake claims or proofs. Beware of such sites. Such a site would also fake subscriber testimonials.

Once you are subscribed to a paid survey website, fill the surveys with interest and true data. Remember if subscribers don't fill genuine data in the survey forms, the consumer companies (who finally use the data) would get incorrect information. They would eventually stop paying the Paid Survey websites and that only would hit you.

Lastly keep in mind that there is no free lunch. Stay alert of the changing terms and conditions on the site. Keep checking for the site reviews on various forums. If you are alert, there would never be a fraud or scam and you would keep making money.

Rob owns a blog and website helping people choose between paid surveys companies. Please visit the site for more information on online paid surveys

Survey Your Site Visitors!

The Internet is changing the face of marketing research. Time was when research involved among other things, printing and mailing surveys, data entry, and long distance telephone calls. Because of the time, effort, and expense involved, surveys were done infrequently or not at all. Without valuable information collected from surveys, marketing opportunities and client feedback were often missed. The Internet is changing all of that.

Online surveys provide a fast, efficient, and flexible way to learn more about your customers and prospects. The speed of response and the flexibility of online surveys can provide an organization with critical information quickly. A product concept developed in the morning can be tested and results received the next day! Strategic decisions can be made in a fraction of the time.

Online surveys can take different forms. Below are examples:

General Website Survey - This survey is placed on a website and is open for all site visitors to take. Because the survey is open to all, the sampling cannot be controlled or considered a statistically valid poll. However, general website surveys can be significant for two reasons:
oWhile not scientific, the information collected can provide an organization with valuable information. For example, a professional baseball team asked the following question on their website, "What item would you most like to see offered at the concession stands next season?" Following this question, several food items were listed. The number one response was, cheese curds(of all things!). Although this cannot be considered the definitive answer to proceed with cheese curds next year it does give the team reason to test market the product next season. Without this information, the team would have missed a potential opportunity to provide their fans with the food they desire and additional revenue from concession sales.
oWebsite surveys can also increase repeat visits to the website. A well done, fun survey that changes frequently can provide the motivation for site visitors to return to the website repeatedly. It is also important to provide the respondent with the real time results of the survey once they have submitted their responses. This provides the satisfaction of seeing how their responses stack up with other respondents.

Market Research Survey - The market research survey involves developing a survey for a targeted population. If you are a diaper manufacturer you may want to purchase a list of women between 20 and 35 with children under 3 years old in the home, for example. The difference between purchasing a list for a standard survey and a list for an online survey is that you are buying their e-mail addresses rather than their home address or phone number. A market research survey involves the following steps:

oThe development of a survey in a password-protected area of your website.
oPurchase of an opt-in e-mail respondent list. (Opt-in lists are available from companies like Survey Sampling, Inc.) Make sure sample size is proportionally related to the size of the population you are targeting.
oSend broadcast e-mails to members of the list. The e-mail will instruct recipients to click on the link to take them to the password-protected survey. An incentive will help boost the response rate.
oUpon completion of the survey, the database of answers can be queried to pull information based on selected variables. The data can also be exported to a statistical software application for further analysis.
oUpon completion of the survey, a new survey can be developed using the online administrative screens provided by high-end survey developers and the process starts over again.

The advantages of the online market research survey are numerous. From the development time to the delivery of results, these surveys present distinct advantages over traditional research methodologies.

Online surveys can also be designed to appear in a pop-up box at specified locations on a website. Such surveys will ask the visitor if they have a few seconds to take the survey and then proceed to ask them a few questions about their site experience to that point. By asking a series of questions the company can ascertain if the site is well received by the visitor. If not, the survey should provide specific clues to improve your site.

To summarize, online surveys offer the following benefits over standard surveys:

Speed of set up - using web-based administrative screens, online surveys can be set up and delivered quickly.
Data entry - Respondents do the data entry, so no data entry staff is required. Additionally, accuracy is greatly improved since no data is being rekeyed.
New designs and concepts can be presented online. Respondents can view new products, packaging and other offerings online while they are responding to the survey. Standard surveys required mailing package concepts to the respondent in advance. The costs associated with printing, postage and data entry, combined with the time inefficiencies, make online surveys far superior in most instances.
Results are tabulated quickly for fast analysis.
Early results are showing better response rates. One company that has typically surveyed their employees in the past by traditional means has seen a response rate improvement from 25 to 50% since moving their surveys online.

The opportunities to learn from your customers using the Internet are enormous. By surveying your customers, prospects, and employees online you can uncover opportunities and address issues faster, more accurately and at greatly reduced expense.

Brent Niland
Spindustry Systems, Inc.
ph. 515-225-0920
bniland@spindustry.com
www.spindustrysystems.com

Why Passenger Surveys Are A Transport Operators Best Friend

Public transport operators who already use passenger surveys may not fully appreciate the multiple benefits that surveys can bring. Not only are surveys an efficient method of market research that will help identify areas of passenger dissatisfaction, they are also perfect for measuring the effects of improvements and can, at the same time, help promote new initiatives to customers using the service.

Public transport operators who already use passenger surveys may not fully appreciate the multiple benefits that surveys can bring. Not only are surveys an efficient method of market research that will help identify areas of passenger dissatisfaction, they are also perfect for measuring the effects of improvements and can, at the same time, help promote new initiatives to customers using the service.

Establishing a Starting Point

When embarking on any change management programme it is always good practice to establish a base line before any changes are made. This baseline survey can serve four purposes, it will:-

allow the proper targeting of investment
allow measurement of the effect of change
assist in the moral of those implementing change
ensure that new issues are kept separate from the original plan and budget

Targeting Investment

There are many areas of any public transport system that can cause passenger dissatisfaction all of which need to be monitored to ensure that the service being provided meets, and where possible, exceeds, performance level targets.

Issues that can be of concern to passenger include:-

- safety and security
- punctuality
- fares and ticket types
- capacity and overcrowding
- quality and design of vehicle
- cleanliness
- facilities at stations and terminals
- facilities for passengers with disabilities

Often limited resources and budgets means that investment needs to be carefully planned and properly targeted.

Passenger surveys allow operators to identify those areas that are of most concern to their customers. Through the analysis of passenger feedback the operator will be able to ensure that their improvement and investment plans are inline with passenger demands and concerns. Issues can be classified into high and low priority, as well as long and short term plans.

Some capital investment such as the building of new terminals, runways, laying new track or upgrading air traffic control or rail signalling equipment may take years to implement. However, the initial survey is also likely to identify some high profile areas that can be implemented almost immediately at a relative low cost.

Measuring Change


From having established a comprehensive programme from an initial survey the objectives for running periodic surveys are twofold.


One objective will be to ensure that the changes and initiatives that are implemented have been effective in addressing passenger issues. A second objective will be to promote and advertise the initiatives that have been implemented and also inform and educate passengers of ongoing improvements and future plans.


Passengers will always be more positive if they can see that improvements have been made and more accepting of outstanding problems if they know that those problems are being addressed.

Keeping Moral


Those implementing change can often develop a siege mentality. Change can take time to take effect and for the passengers to appreciate any improvement.

By monitoring passenger opinion and measuring the results against earlier surveys a successful change programme should see passenger issues change over time, some issues that were problems will no longer be raised.

Passengers will take time to appreciate progress and often those working on a change project will be demoralised with constant criticism from what is often a negative public. It is important that a team implementing change can see clearly the effects of their efforts.

Identifying New and Old

In any long term change management programme issues can change over time. Events can happen that make what was important, no longer important and what wasnt an issue, an issue.

The baseline survey will ensure that the passengers concerns are chronologically documented. Passengers are themselves an evolving group, individual travel arrangements change, fashion changes, life styles develop along with technology. Periodic surveys will allow changes in passenger attitudes to be monitored.

Online Surveys Make It Easy

Online surveys can reach a broad cross section of any travelling public. They are quick to design and implement and they provide feedback in a format that is ready for detailed analysis. The low cost and flexibility of online surveys allows passenger concern to be targeted at specific groups and particular concerns.

Online surveys provide operators with important market research data as well as a platform to promote and advertise their commitment to passenger satisfaction.

Passengers benefit by having an effective channel to raise issues and through periodic surveys will begin to appreciate that the operator is continually investing and improving the service.The following are links to samples of Passenger Surveys

Sample Passenger Survey for an Airline
http://www.surveygalaxy.com/surPublishes.asp?survey_id=1166

Sample Passenger Survey for a Train Operator
http://www.surveygalaxy.com/surPublishes.asp?survey_id=1170

Sample Passenger Survey for a Bus Operator
http://www.surveygalaxy.com/surPublishes.asp?survey_id=1167

 Martin Day is a Director of Survey Galaxy Ltd a web site that allows anyone to create, design and publish online surveys. For more information please visit http://www.surveygalaxy.com