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.