Getting Paid for Your Opinion: Hoax, or Hidden Financial Secret?

You see the banner ads: "Get Paid For Your opinion!" "Product testers needed!' "Hurry--we need 50 people to test our products and get paid!" Are these programs for real? Are they a hoax?

There really are marketing firms that need focus group participants to try out products, test devices, and give their opinion so that products can be improved, and advertising campaigns can be changed if needed. "Focus groups" are groups of peoplebrought together to help companies with marketing campaigns. Who can be hired to make money as a focus group participant?

Well, everyone.

But not at the same time! Every single person is needed for some kind of focus group. The point of a focus group is to gather people who are the type of person who will buy a certain product or service. Whatever opinions the focus group holds tells the company how other purchasers will act-and that information is crucial in making products and services appealing to customers.

For instance, if you're testing baby food labels, you wouldn't gather together a bunch of childless career men, right? Of course not-you'd gather parents of small babies, to find out which label is most appealing, and why.

WHY is the crucial question here. Why are certain products more appealing than others? Why does one advertisement sell more services than another? Why is one movie ending more popular than another? Marketing research companies want to learn why through focus groups-so they can sell more stuff!

If you've built a new Ford truck, who would you gather to test the product on in a focus group? Ford truck owners, right? A new stroller? Parents of babies. A new, very expensive perfume? Women with high incomes. A line of diet foods? People who want to lose weight. New toys? Kids.

So focus groups are about matching the right people to the right product or service. And paying those people who are testing the items or services.

Not every person will be chosen for every focus group, of course. And each focus group company has different clients, so one company might need lots of senior citizens to test a new large-print book technology or a nutritional product for seniors, while a different focus group company might need loads of college students to test a music download service. Each company has unique needs at any given time, so being part of their "pool" of focus group particpants is important.

The key thing to remember: every person is needed, somewhere, sometime, in some focus group.

Focus groups can be broad-all people who eat frozen dinners. Focus groups can be incredibly specific-cat owners between the ages of 34 and 45 who have incomes over $75,000 and spend more than $2000 a year on cat food and supplies. Most lie somewhere in the middle, but again-every single person can find a focus group to fit into. In fact, market research companies are desperate to find you.

You can save them the trouble and come to them. To find focus group companies in your area, look in the phone book under "Marketing Research" or use an Internet search engine to look for "[your city] focus groups."