Here’s the “Quick Start Guide” that we’re including with our new product. It will give you a great overview of the awesome system that will let you put surveys to work making money for your business, with a minimal investment of time and money.  To get the system, go here.

We’ve been getting LOTS of great questions about how to use surveys to make money in this recession (and if you haven’t posted yours yet go here to post yours; you’ll get 20 free videos on using surveys in your business, plus a tour of our new product!)

Here’s one of the questions you asked:

What’s the most cost effective source of survey respondents if you don’t already have a list? What factors do you need to consider before doing a survey so that you know it’s going to be a worthwhile thing for you do do?

And here’s our answer:

Hi David,

Great question!

As for the Return on Investment (ROI) on surveys, as long as you do surveys well, it’s huge. To be honest, I’ve had people pay me $10,000 to conduct a survey and they were THRILLED with the results. Think about it:

• What’s it worth to create a product?
• To get 100 testimonials to put on your website?
• To produce statistical proof—hard data—that your products and services work?
• To generate referrals or produce original research you can use in press releases or to create buzz in social media? So is it worth it?
• I’d say I’ve never seen a case when it wasn’t.

But here’s the thing: You can do surveys REALLY inexpensively.

• We’re about to put out a product that will let you design a complete survey system for your business, create your customer profile surveys, with templates and step-by-step videos to do everything you need, for LESS than $600. That’s about what 2 hours of my time would cost for consulting!

For the second part of your question:

How to you get respondents if you don’t have a list?

Let’s make the question a little broader . . . How do you get information you can use to make money, if you don’t have a list?

The first step is to figure out exactly what you’re trying to do.

Do you have a clear picture of your target market? That’s always the first step, whether you’re doing a survey or not. If you don’t have that clarified, then your first step is to describe that market very clearly.

• Who are they?
• What are their characteristics—are they male or female?
• How old are they? What do they do for a living?
• How much money do they make?

Once you know who your target market is, then the next step is to look for some information that’s already out there—that’s free data.

• There are enormous sources of data out there, from the census bureau to the Pew Trust to data archives. One of the things we’re doing in MySurveyExpert is showing people where to find these sorts of data and how to use them.

• We’re also going to be collecting data IN the MySurveyExpert community, building aggregate data that online marketers in our community can use. That will be another source of what we call secondary data, or data someone else collected (which means you didn’t have to do the work and spend the $$ yourself). And these will be the first aggregate data of this sort collected inside the online marketing space.

If you want to collect data yourself and you don’t have a list, sources like these can help a lot. But you shouldn’t stop there. Look around in your niche—could you form a partnership with another marketer and collect data from his or her list?

If you’re putting together a product that isn’t a direct competitor of theirs and you can share the data, they might be willing. If you think this way, you can probably come up with lots of ways to get information.

Another way to start to get information is to do just what we did, put up a Traffic Geyser lead page (you can get an account here).

• You can use video and other forms of social media to drive traffic to that lead page; the answers to the questions will start to give you information about what your market wants to know.
• From that, you can build a list AND create your first product!

Hope this helps! Check out the rest of the blog for more info.

The new Kauffman Entrepreneurship Survey results show just how strongly Americans support entrepreneurship and view it as the backbone of our economy.

And a blog survey on the same topic is a great way to “piggyback” the popularity of those data.

Not only will your blog survey get people coming to your blog to take it, the blog survey results will give you something to use to generate buzz about your blog.

Anytime you can link survey results like these to original data you collect from YOUR peeps–like what you get from a blog survey–that’s great fodder for social media and even the press.  It can REALLY help you generate traffic.

You can do this 2 ways.

Here’s an example of the first way:  One of my clients just finished a survey of her list that included some questions on attitudes about the economy.  Lucky for her:  She can take these Kauffman results, link them to her results, and she’s got a gold mine.

By showing how the national data connect with what HER list members think,

• She’s got something awesome to talk about in her blog and newsletter, something that will interest people and generate comments;
• She’s got something to talk about in Twitter, on Facebook, and in other social networking sites;
• She can write lenses for Squidoo and articles for HubPages and Ezine Articles;
• She can bookmark all that in social bookmarking sites;
• Because her survey was sound and done scientifically, she can even write a press release describing how her results relate to the findings from a national survey.

That’s a LOT of return from 1 little block of questions in a survey.

But you can profit from this too, right now, by using the second way of connecting with national survey data:

Do a blog survey, asking what YOUR peeps think about entrepreneurship and the economy.  Here are some examples of questions you can use for your blog survey, taken right from the Kauffman survey:

Even though Wall Street has collapsed, I still believe in capitalism centered around entrepreneurs.  Response options:  Strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree.

How important are entrepreneurs for the health of the US economy?  Response options:  Very important, somewhat important, not very important.

How important are entrepreneurs for creating jobs in the United States?  Response options: Very important, somewhat important, not very important.

And you can do this easily.  Although I don’t like Poll Daddy for doing big surveys (because last time I checked, they weren’t encrypting their data), you can get a free account at Poll Daddy to put a blog survey on your website.

A blog survey like this is a great way to get the conversation going and generate comments.

You can also do a quick poll at LinkedIn or Facebook.

So do a blog survey today–start asking your peeps what they think and reporting the results!