I do paid surveys for money. There, I said it. It started years ago when I was first hooked on the promise of miniscule rewards for my time, but now I leave my email clients open in the off chance that I catch a survey invitation early and get to fill it out for what, $1? Don’t worry, this blog post is not an advertisement enticing you to join the wonderful world of paid surveys.

To be honest, most of the time it’s not bad to earn money for doing nothing, and it was a great way to ward off boredom in the classroom while somebody else has an endless debate on the relevancy of Socrates. I don’t think it affected my work in the class, but god, if I keep this up in law school I’ll be on the first train to failure. Unless I can rev up my multitasking capabilities.

So, what do I get in return for my wasted youth? You’d be surprised at the amazing amount of money/prizes that marketers give people for filling out simple forms. Just off the top of my head, I’ve gotten money in the form of cheques. I got free wireless Internet access for a year (thank you, Bell Sympatico). I got a free Zune before they were even out in Canada (thank you, Matchstick). I got countless spam emails (no thanks).

But today I’m bitching about the very surveys that earn me actual cash or various incentives. Have you ever filled out an online survey? They’re fucking boring. Here’s an example of a PAGE out of dozens you’ll have to fill out:

Snore.

Seriously, it’s enough to make you hate marketing people. What are they hoping to achieve with a survey like this? Who had the bright idea of making choices from 1-10? Do you know if your love of Smarties is a 7 or and 8? Does it fucking matter?

Which brings me to my main point: marketers would be screwed if they relied on my data for market research. When I see forms like the one you witnessed above, I just randomly click or select 5 for all of them. Who has time to read them all? Just when you’re done one page like that, another 30 come up right after. The pain I go through to earn $5 is evident, even if I make up false data. It’s not beneficial for me or for them to make their surveys like this. I get bored, and they get fake data.

Of course, they don’t think like this, and since they don’t have to do the damn surveys themselves they have no idea what a fucking chore it is. In their minds they’re probably popping up their collars and collectively slapping each other’s asscheeks while commending themselves for their impact “synergy”. I’d like to give them an impact myself, and “empower” them with a nice knock upside the head.

So, the next time you wonder which brilliant product group thought green ketchup was a great idea or that people would buy reuseable tampons, you have me to blame. I’ll then subsequently pass on the blame to the marketing types for making boring surveys.

This ClashBang.com article was written by Chris Chu. Tired of privately venting his frustration in vain, Chris decided to share his discontent with the rest of the world.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 26th, 2008 at 6:08 pm and is filed under marketing, surveys. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.