Earn cash and have fun (sarosresearch.com)

Member Name: offy

Product:	sarosresearch.com
Date:	02/12/01 (1895 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Get paid real cash, very interesting, express you views and eat

Disadvantages: You have to pay your own fair, there could be a wait until you are needed, currently only in London, but hopefully expanding soon

How long would it take you to earn between £30 and £50 on Dooyoo? Certainly longer than 1.5 – 2 hours I’m sure! On Monday I earned £30 for 1.5 hours of my time, met some interesting people, enjoyed myself immensely, ate some good food, gave my opinions and fulfilled one of my (sad) ambitions. I attended a focus group recruited by Saros Research.

The purpose of a focus group (or forum or market research discussion) is to elicit opinions from various groups of people on products, brands, advertising, or in this case, about the general feeling following 11th September in relation to the economy, the world and advertising. Expert facilitators guide the groups of people through topics of interest by asking open questions, and ensuring that everyone gets their say. Sometimes you are recorded on video (if your reactions to a product are important) or watched through a one-way mirror (either to check reactions or for the commissioning company to see how the groups are going). Other times just the sound will be taped.

I work for a Bank that occasionally uses focus groups and I watched one from behind a one-way mirror where the facilitator was trying to work out how people used Yellow Pages, to see if it was worth the bank continuing to pay for large adverts. It wasn’t. I have heard that since getting into power, Tony Blair also commissions focus groups to gauge public reaction to Labour policies. Oh, wouldn’t I like to tell him a thing or two!

Certain sections of the population will be needed for each discussion (or sometimes a cross-section), so if you sign up with Saros, don’t expect to be called immediately, although you may be lucky. My group had a specific age group, we must not have participated in a forum in the previous 6 months (which is a general rule) and none of us had children. I understand that there was a similar group to be run later in the week for people with children. I would be interested to see
how different their opinions were.

If you fall into the required category you will receive an e-mail invite followed up by a phone call and then a letter, which clearly explains the topic of discussion, the fee to be paid, directions (to Carnaby Street in this case) and the fact that there will be refreshments. Please note that there is no allowance for transport costs – this is paid for by the participant.

I arrived a few minutes before time (6.30 p.m.) and picked up my earnings in a white envelope (they must trust us to pay us before the group!). They were real notes and not vouchers. We were ushered into a room heaving with food (sweet and savoury) and drink (alcoholic and soft) and the facilitator explained the purpose of the evening and the format. We were only being sound recorded, but as soon as you start talking you forget the ‘big brother’ feeling. Before I knew it we were in the middle of an excellent conversation about the effects that 11th September had on us all. We did a (dreadful in my case) drawing of how we felt about the war as an ice-breaker and all in all had a great time. No-one in the group was overpowering, and I wouldn’t imagine that the facilitator would have let it happen anyway.

Before I knew it, it was all over. I wanted to carry on for another few hours I was having so much fun. Strangely enough, we all generally agreed on most things - quite unusual I would imagine. At the end we all stuffed a few more handful of crisps and wondered out into the cold evening. I walked to the tube station with the majority of the group and we all commented on how much we enjoyed it. The funny thing was that we were all a bit nervous and even read the papers the day before, but in the end it was more about gut feelings (which is what the advertisers/manufacturers want) rather than facts. If you are doing a product review, there would not be this pressure I would imagine.

I found out about Sar
os by reading about it on another consumer site and joined up. The address is www.sarosresearch.com. The site is easy to use and they have an excellent privacy policy (loads of detail on the website), including using a secure server to transmit personal information. For obvious reasons you have to give quite a lot of information about yourself like number of children, car details and educational level. If you want to know more about market research, just go to the ‘About us’ section in the site. You can easily be removed from the database if you no longer wish to participate and you can also turn down any forums you are invited to. You can even apply to become a recruiter and earn money from getting other people to sign up (no spamming allowed).

The website does mention surveys and questionnaires, but I understand that the company is currently concentrating on discussions, so don’t expect much in that line.

Although Saros currently recruits for focus groups in the London area, it is worth signing up if you live reasonably near to other cities, as if they can demonstrate that they have enough people for other groups, they can tender for the work and before you know it, you may be invited to join a group.

I would thoroughly recommend signing up for Saros. You have nothing to lose and lots to gain, as it is excellent fun and well worth the effort. Every active Dooyoo member reading this is already an expert at expressing their views, so sign up and give even more manufacturers the benefit of your wisdom. Have fun – I certainly did!

UPDATE April 2002
I have decided to become a recruiter to earn a bit more money and support a great company. You are paid £0.25 per person you get to sign up to Saros Research and 10% of the amount paid to participants in groups. Saros Research have a multitude of professional looking goodies to help you recruit, such as various sized posters, postcards, questionnaires and
also telephone support if required. There is a Yahoo group dedicated to sharing recruiting tips and they encourage 'events' such as hiring a stand at a fete/shop/event. Being a recruiter is worth considering if you are organised and fancy a bit more money. For more details about recruiting please ring Saros on 020 8317 3997.

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