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Ask500People: Fast, Inexpensive Market Research

Ask500People can give you immediate public opinion feedback and help you make better business decisions. Our polls are more accurate than asking a few people around the office, and much cheaper than a formal outsourced survey.

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Here's how Ask500People.com compares to the usual choices:

  Cost

Time required
Voter Bias Best Suited For:
Polling friends or co-workers
Survey is sent out to friends or co-workers, who participate if and when they have time.
$20 - $200

Days
Small sample size means results are not statistically significant.

Participants are not independent, results are biased.
Internally-focussed decisions.

"What do we think?"
"What do we want?"
"What do we like?"
...
Formal Survey
Survey is contracted out to a professional survey company which polls independent respondents and prepares a report for the company.
$5,000+

Weeks
Respondents are independent. High-stakes decisions where time and cost don't matter.

Formal corporate documents or press releases.
$19 - $149

Hours
Respondents are independent. Externally-focussed decisions.

"What do people think?"
"What do people want?"
"What do people like?"
...
How does it work?

Paid questions are private and run immediately on the polling network (not on the ask500people.com website)

What are people using it for?

Here are some example questions that are appropriate for Ask500People.com

  • "Which domain name is better?"
  • "Click on the better ad"
  • "Which company name do you like better?"
  • "Does your computer have a webcam?"
  • "Would you purchase groceries online?"
Who are the respondents?

We reach a broad demographic of internet users, representing every walk of life.  They are everyday, average people who use the internet.  Ask500People is sort of like polling people on a streetcorner, only it's faster, requires no setup, costs less, reaches people anywhere in the world and it never rains on you.

  • We have no ongoing relationship with respondents.
  • Respondents can only vote once.
  • Answer choices are in randomized order.

How private is survey data?
  • Survey results are private, available only to you when you log into your account.
  • Your identity and company are not visible to the respondent.
How accurate are the results?
Number of Votes Error margin, at 95% confidence level.
5 44%
25 20%
50 14%
100 10%
250 6%
500 4%

Here's an example of what this means in plain English. Let's pretend you have two new possible logos and you're asking people which one they prefer. Let's say you asked 500 people, and 74% of them preferred logo A. If you ran that poll 100 times, then 95 of those 100 times you'd find between 70% and 78% of respondents would choose logo A. (Conversely, that means 5 times out of 100 the number of people choosing logo A would be either lower than 70% or higher than 78%.)

You should not use Ask500People if any of the following apply to your situation:

  • You need to ask multiple or follow-up questions.  (Ask500 delivers results quickly because we ask only one question at a time).
  • You are surveying your own customers.  A more traditional survey is more appropriate here.  We recommend Freedback.