If you’ve been reading up online about odd and unique jobs, you may have come across the idea of being a focus group participant. This position is a critical part of business decision-making, yet not that many people know about it. The following will explore what a focus group participant is, how you can get involved, and why you might want to join in the first place.
What Is A Focus Group?
Focus groups are interesting entrepreneurial innovations that are designed to help businesses, brands, and organizations gather useful information about their products or services. Focus groups tend to be smaller groups (often somewhere around six to eight people) who give feedback on what a business comes to present. Often focus group meetings take somewhere between an hour and an hour and a half. They can be paid or unpaid and can end up making you $150 to $250 an hour!
What Is A Focus Group Participant?
A participant in a focus group is someone who attends the focus group meeting, either online or in-person. Their duties include trying out a product or examining what they are asked to examine and then speaking honestly about their experience and interest in the product or service being tested. This involves answering any market research questions the group moderator has and, sometimes, responding to other participants’ statements.
How Do You Get Involved?
If being paid to try new things and be honest about it seems like it would work for you, you might be wondering how you can get involved in focus groups. Occasionally, ads will be posted by the company itself asking for volunteers, but often participating requires you to register with a focus group company.
In most situations, focus group companies and those who use focus groups don’t want people traveling a great distance for work. Part of the focus group draw is that companies can figure out what people in x age range and in y city feel about their product. This means you’re going to want to search by city when you’re looking to participate in focus groups. Of course, online participation is becoming more common, so you always have this option if your area doesn’t often have focus groups.
It is important that you provide honest information to a focus group company if you’re going that route. While claiming you live in a neighborhood that you don’t or that you make more money than you do might help you get picked for one focus group, it might just as easily prevent you from participating in the next one. Moreover, if you get caught in a lie, a company might decide not to work with you in the future.
Why Might You Want To Participate?
Participating in a focus group has many benefits. Besides supporting a business’s growth and development, you’ll be making an excellent hourly wage for trying something new and speaking your mind. To many people, this is a dream scenario. All you have to do is be honest and answer some questions.
Focus group participation is also something that is quite flexible. If you are selected and the company reaches out to you, you can choose to accept or reject the job based on the pay, location, and time needed to complete it. Moreover, online focus group participation is common and can offer you the ability to live anywhere while doing the job.
In addition, the structure of focus group work allows many people to maintain full-time or almost full-time work elsewhere. This means you don’t have to quit your day job to participate in a focus group.
Who Is This Not Right For?
This might not be right for someone who has trouble being honest, even when asked to do so. If you can’t tell your best friend her outfit is terrible even after she’s asked you five times if she looks okay, your responses might not be helpful to companies. Moreover, it is not uncommon for sessions to be recorded or watched through a one-way mirror. If you are someone who doesn’t like being recorded or has trouble being candid on camera, being a focus group participant might not be right for you.
Hopefully, the above information has explained what a focus group is, what participating in one entails, and how to get involved with one should you be interested. If you’ve ever marveled at an absurd product and been clueless as to how it got approved of and produced, participating in a focus group might be the right gig for you. You’ll be able to both stop the next terrible product from making it to market in a flawed state and also encourage useful and impressive products.
