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Paid Focus Group Opportunities |
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Focus group is a group of people participating in an interactive discussion and expressing their opinions about products, services, advertisements, ideas etc. Focus groups are held by market research companies and participants of focus groups are compensated for their time and opinion.
Generally focus groups pay more than regular online paid surveys. There are basically two types of focus groups: online focus groups and offline focus groups.
1. Online Focus Groups: Focus groups are conducted online in a real time "chat/meeting" room or a private discussion/bulletin board. The real time discussion usually last 1- 2 hours and there is a moderator hold the meeting, everybody in the room answer questions asked by the moderator. In a private bulletin board, the project could last for days, each day the moderator leaves questions/assignments, everybody need to answer/finish the questions/assignment by the end of the day.
Focus groups pay between $20 and up to $150 (maybe even more). Lot of paid survey companies on my Paid Survey list offer this kind of online focus group (or online interactive survey) opportunities, such as Greenfield Online, Lightspeed, Global Test Market, SurveySavvy, SurveySpot.. I have done lot of such online focus groups/interactive surveys for those survey companies. There are also some survey sites offer focus groups opportunities, but I have not been able to qualify, such as BrandInstitute and Focus Forward Online. Just make sure you sign up with those paid survey companies and sooner or later you will have a chance.
Please note that many of these market research/paid survey companies that have online focus groups opportunities also offer paid telephone interviews - usually last 30 - 60 minutes, and pay quite well.
PS: I have indicate if a survey site offer focus groups/interactive survey on my paid survey lists or paid survey reviews.
2. Offline Focus Groups: Are held at a physical location, usually at the a market research facility. Offline focus groups pay at least $50 and up to $200 (maybe even more.) and last from 30 minutes to 2 or 3 hours. In order to have offline focus groups opportunities, you need to live in a city that has such market research companies conduct focus groups. Such popular "lucky" cities are (not limited to):
Atlanta, Austin, Bay Area, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle.
How do you find out if there are focus group companies in your city? Here are two great resources:
http://findfocusgroups.com/
This site actually list focus groups opportunities, and also have some information about focus groups companies in certain states.
http/www.paidfocusgroups.org
From this site, you can search market research companies in your city.
I have found the above two sites very useful. Here are more tips on getting more focus group opportunities:
- Sometimes market research companies post focus groups opportunities on Craigslist - just type "focus group" in the search term and only search in "title" - and be aware of scams when you search Craigslist, and don't response to ads that have no company information.
- If you don't live in those "lucky" cities, you might want to sign up with the market research companies that located close to where you live. Sometimes those off line focus group companies will also have online focus groups opportunities as well.
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 20 September 2009 )
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Paid Survey Guide 
This is a great site for valuable information about focus groups and research studies. I've been doing it for some time now, but thank you for all this great incite.