One thing you will read about often on this blog is my many “money making adventures”. This all began a few months ago when my roommate told me about “focus groups”. I had done one in college for the university bookstore and got a $50 gift card to the bookstore for my opinions, and I have heard about focus groups on all those make money online websites and mystery shopping websites, but I kinda thought they were not as real and common as the websites would have you believe.
Boy was I wrong about that. My roommate told me about some local research firms and how to sign up for their focus groups and within a few weeks, I was getting calls to come to all these market studies and taste tests. So, as part of my regular blogging, I will be reporting on my adventures in focus groups, because there is really a LOT of humor in these things. In the future I will be making a youtube video and tutorial guide explaining how to be successful with focus groups. In just two months, I have made over $800 doing taste tests and focus groups.
Last Wednesday, I traveled about 20 miles into the suburbs to a market research center that I’ll call “True North” – this particular place is where I do most of my taste tests. The thing about taste tests is that you really want to eat all of the food but usually they give you way too much to do that with. You feel like you are wasting, and on the other hand you are thinking about all the weight you’ll gain from eating all that food. So at times it can be a struggle just to participate! On this particular occasion, we were testing four new Arby’s sandwiches. The first was sooo amazing, It was a turkey sandwich with Avocado and candied bacon!!! I wanted to eat the whole thing, but I had already lost 6 lbs last week as part of my new years resolution to get in great shape and be healthy.
Following this stellar meal was three more less than stellar sandwiches, each getting progressively worse until the final sandwich which was utterly disgusting. But Im getting paid right? Yes, I got $50 in the form of the check to taste some pretty amazing food, lots of it, a free meal that will suppress my hunger for most of the rest of the day. When participating in these things, you are instructed not to speak because they dont want your opinion to influence anyone elses. In the parking lot afterwards, I asked a lady which was her favorite? “The first one was amazing and it just went down hill from there!” – perhaps many others felt the same way.
By Friday, I was back for another where we tasted… of all things, those cheese crackers with peanut butter in them that you get at gas stations. We had to taste four of these crackers all which looked exactly the same, tasted pretty much the same, but we were supposed to rank them in how they tasted. I mean really? That’s like tasting four samples of table salt – whats the difference?? Questions on the survey included:
“What the peanut butter flavor? Was it strong enough or too weak?”
“How salty was the cheese cracker? Too salty?”
When it was over, in about 20 minutes, we were waiting in line for our $45 check and the girl who was sitting next to me during the test was like “Thats it? for 45 bucks?” She was telling me that this was her first taste test and that was the easiest money she’s ever made! Part of me thinks that the REAL reason they dont want us to speak is not to influence each other but so we wont call out the ironies of the testing methods, comment on the silly procedures they put us through, and to keep our laughter to ourselves.
