I received a phone call today from a company that was interested in doing some kind of consumer research about people who work in or have connections with people in the IT industry involving servers during normal working hours. They mentioned that as a form of compensation they would give me $20 for my time for an hour interview.

The interesting thing is that I would probably do it for free under normal circumstances. I must admit, for some reason the $20 figure turned me off. I think the main reason was that I have done simple things like food tasting before and even for those items they offer about $30 plus a free meal. They last for like 30 min only too.

Would it of made a difference if they said $30? Not really for me personally. There’s just something about asking you to go out of your way in this case that makes me think the time is worth more.

One thing that I have been seeing a lot recently are advertisements from companies who are interested in doing consumer research for their products or services and in exchange they are willing to give participants free products to take home.

I saw one in particular which was for a large video game company here and it appeared that the session would take about 2 to 4 hours or so. In exchange, they were willing to feed people and give them a free game of their choice. I have personally done these types of consumer research sessions before, but all the ones I participated in they compensated you with money instead.

It can actually be a fun and casual way to earn some pocket change. Although, I’m kind of surprised when there are people who are willing to go out of their way to participate in these types of sessions as the compensation usually isn’t too good, in my opinion, compared to if you were focusing with your regular income earner.

While I think normally cash would be a better compensation, I suppose if you agreed to participate in a study with receiving one of the company’s products as a form of compensation that you were interested in the product to a certain extent.