I saw an interview with Matt Cutts reported on in the last few days that hinted that page loading speed may in the next year become one of the factors for how a website ranks in the search results. Now, to be honest I already suspected that there might be something used in the weighting already that related to page load speed. Why? Well, one of the things google has emphasized in its terms and conditions is the idea of sites that give a good user experience. Pop ups and deceptive redirects for instance are “bad experience” kind of things and affect sites negatively, while you would assume that a fast loading page would be a “good experience” kind of thing and perhaps benefit a site in the search results.

Anyway, along with the interview I saw a link to a new (to me) resource at Google and that is their listing of let’s make the web faster utilities. Some of them are tools from google and others come from other sources, but you may want to make use of any tricks and tools you can to try to improve the speed of your pages.

I could imagine that this would be a fairly simple metric to add to their current ranking algorithm. The main question would be how much the web site page load would be weighted and as you may know, the way the various ranking components are weighted is one of the main reasons the new algorithm changes can dramatically affect search results for keywords. You never know, initially they may rank the speed a bit too important and we may see search results change dramatically initially and then through several search algo updates they may dial the weighting down a bit to where they like it. The only way I see to be in a spot where you should be impervious to this is to make your site as fast loading as possible now and then you’ll avoid the dance between the future algorithm and weighting changes.

Many people are not aware there is money to be made online. They thought only the smart and well-informed ones are the ones who are capable to make money online.

Nowadays, taking online surveys is an easy way to make some extra money or create an extra income stream. It is not time consuming to make money taking online surveys and you can fit the work around your current employment or hobbies.

Where to start?

The best place to start when looking to make money taking online surveys is to ask friends and family if they are or have done it in the past.

A personal recommendation is best and will give you a good place to start and compare. Use a internet search engines to search for online surveys and programs than compare and see what each site has to offer.

Which paid survey program is best?

Selecting a program to make money taking online surveys is an easy process and is generally based around the commission they pay for each survey.

Also compare the reward programs they offer to see how many bonuses you can get when you have completed a large number of surveys.

Make sure the paid survey site you are to join has a testimonials page and a secure login area to ensure your funds and details are safe.

What type of Commissions are we looking at?

The commission is in fact the amount of money received when you make money taking online surveys. Commissions are generally paid on a monthly basis however, some programs offer instant payment.

Commissions will vary depending on the program, the length of the survey and the company providing the survey.

Taking the surveys.

Each survey you take will be different so they all require you to think and give honest answers. It will become easier to make money taking online surveys when you are used to the format and the process.

Some surveys can be completed in a few minutes where others require answers to be entered in about a few days or a week.

What are the benefits?

You can make money taking online surveys any time of the day, and any day of the week. Using your spare time to take surveys and make some extra cash is simple compared with finding a second job.

Surveys are fun and rewarding and can be very addictive when you see the cash rolling into your account. Most programs also offer an affiliate fee so if you sign up a friend or relative you will be rewarded!

Be Careful

The only thing to be careful of when you make money taking online surveys is to ensure the site has a secure area for your personal details and is serious about privacy issues.

This way you are protecting yourself unnecessary harrassement and inconvenience while enjoying earning money at the same time.

Quickly logged on your internet and learn how to make money taking online surveys and change your old paradigm into a new this 21st century and see how your income exploded with it.

Therefore, I strongly urged you to start your journey to know how make money taking online surveys as soon as possible.

Two weeks ago I re-launched the ProBlogger weekly newsletter. The first email I sent out to subscribers was a story of how I’ve been changing my approach to blogging over the last year. The reaction to the email was huge – literally hundreds of readers responded with emails telling their own stories, asking questions and simply reacting to what I’d written.

I’ve never had that kind of response from a newsletter before – I’m not sure why it happened this time, perhaps it was that it was a story (of sorts), perhaps it was because I shared how about how little I know and that I’m still learning….. or perhaps it was just a day that people felt like reacting.

Whatever it was – it reminded me of the fact that email newsletters can be interactive.

Bloggers with newsletter lists sometimes get trapped into thinking that their blogs are the interactive component in what they do (they have the ability to collect comments after all) and that a newsletter is more of a ‘broadcasting’ tool.

Perhaps there’s some truth in that – email is useful for broadcasting and at their best blogs are great for conversation – but my first email illustrated that email can be interactive too.

Building on the Interaction – with a Survey

I decided to build on the interaction of the first email with a second one that was ALL about interaction. A few days later I sent out an email to my subscribers that simply invited them to participate in a 4 minute survey.

The idea came as I read the reactions to my first email. As I read I realised how little I knew about those who were subscribing to my newsletter and why they subscribed.

I decided to put together a survey to help me do 2 things:

1. Tell me about my subscribers and their blogs – including some basic demographics (age, gender) as well as some about their blogs (how many they have, platforms that they use, topics that they blog on etc
2. Inform me of what people want out of my newsletter – including questions asking subscribers to identify the challenges/problems that they face as well as inviting them to write about what they’d like me to cover in future newsletters.

The survey contained 16 questions which were mainly multiple choice questions that could be completed in 3-4 minutes. There were also options on some questions to write more and two optional open ended questions inviting people to write as much as they wanted.

I created the survey using Survey Monkey.

I sent out the newsletter (unfortunately my timing was terrible as it went out just as Aweber were doing an upgrade so those who got the email in the next few hours were unable to open the survey link – which meant I had to send out an other email…. it was a real mess up) and in the 3-4 days that followed have had 1989 responses from subscribers.

The email went out to about 20,000 people so the response rate has been around 10% – more than I expected considering the mess up with the email and the fact that my list has gone a little cold as I’ve not sent much to my list in a while.

Within an hour or so of people starting to complete the survey I realised it was one of the smartest things I’ve done for a long time. It was producing incredibly useful data in each of the areas identified above.

I’m still working through the responses (the open ended questions are rich with powerful feedback but will take me some time to crunch through) but am already feeling as though I have a much better understanding of:

• who my subscribers are
• why they’re subscribing
• what their needs are
• how I might be able to help them.

I will share some of the results from the survey with subscribers in an upcoming newsletter but one of the bonuses that also came out of the survey is that from the 1000 people who took the extra time to respond to the open ended questions I have literally hundreds of questions and ideas for blog posts. Any time I’m stuck for something to write about in the next year I can just dip into those questions and I’m certain to come up with something to write about.

Take Home Tips

• Whether your blog is big or small – a survey can help you improve your blog on numerous fronts. Even in the first hour after I got results in and only had a handful of responses I was already learning valuable lessons about my readers that would improve my blog. Having lots of responses is great – but even a small number would be useful.
• A survey is a great way to ‘warm up’ your cold newsletter list – I’ve not really sent out too many ProBlogger newsletters for over a year – as a result my list wasn’t overly responsive or feeling connected to me. This survey has really ‘warmed things up’ and already I’ve had a few readers responding with feedback that they feel valued and more connected.
• Ask mainly closed ended questions – think carefully about what you want to find out and try to make the bulk of your questions as easy to answer as checking a box in a multiple answer question. This makes doing your survey quick (respecting the time of those who do it) but it also makes collating your data easier.
• Ask a couple of open ended questions – the multi-choice questions have produced some interesting data for me, but its the open ended ones that have produced the real Gold. I asked one that asked readers for questions or suggestions on what they wanted me to cover and another that simply asked for feedback on any aspect of my site. Both questions have been fantastic and both seem to also have given respondents a chance to feel as though they’ve been heard (and they have been).
• Survey Your Readers and/or Subscribers – in this case I’ve chosen simply to survey those who subscribe to the newsletter of my blog and not all readers and RSS subscribers. I partly did this because I wanted to be informed about how to improve the newsletter but also to help me manage the amount of responses – however valuable information could also be gleaned by surveying everyone or by targeting other specific sub groups within my network. Perhaps for you it makes more sense to survey your readers, your Twitter followers, your facebook fans, those who’ve bought your products etc – really it comes down to your objectives of your survey and how big your network is.

Have you ever run a survey with your blog readers (or some other subset of your readers)? What did you learn? What tips would you add?

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Survey Your Readers and Discover Who They Are and How You can Be More Useful to Them

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