I just finished reading Jim Edwards new Article “Make Big Bucks With Real Surveys“, and in it, he tells the story of how he used to make lots of dumb mistakes!

“In a former life I believed in doing things the hard way and learning (or maybe not learning) from mistakes.”

In this article, Jim discusses surveys, and how powerful they are when it comes to giving your customers what they REALLY want, rather than letting your ego dictate what you “think” they want (but often find out you are wrong!).

I first met Jim last year, in December, when my business partner Clayton & I flew to the USA to attend the “Jim Boat” cruise he put on, with his good friend & business associate Mike Stewart.

Jim’s a fascinating guy in many respects (plus his mother & father are just lovely folks), but I think one thing I got really strongly from Jim was that he’s a no-nonsense “tell it like it is” kind of guy.

Down under, we’d say he’s a “no bullshit bloke”, but that would be rude, so I won’t say it!

Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is simply that Jim’s advice is pretty damn solid. He’s got PLENTY of runs on the board, so far as creating financial success goes, so I’m inclined to follow his advice when it comes to Surveys.

One thing I have learned in my last 2 years of working at Australia’s top SEO firm is that too many people venturing into online businesses make the mistake of NOT surveying their customer base (or their future potential customer base) for what it is that they want.

They just get it in their mind that the market wants “x”, and then they invest lots of time & money into producing “x” and building a website to promote it, and so on & so forth, and then when it comes to them actually selling any of their product/s, they bomb BIG time!

I have seen clients spend 10s of THOUSANDS of dollars on this fools game, only to end up at the other end of the journey broke & devastated that it didn’t work. In all cases, they blamed the website or Google or something else, but in all cases I know for sure that it was because THEY failed to provide what the market really wanted.

I always encourage new clients to run a small Google AdWords campaign, just to test the market place & see what happens. After all, why not spend a few hundred dollars in testing BEFORE you waste $10,000 & 6-12 months of time, just to find out if you are wasting your time or not.
On the other hand, a small adwords test can sometimes show up where the holes in their idea are, and you can then move to fill the gaps and create a success after all.

It all depends on your mindset & willingness to be wrong AND whether your ego is getting in the road!

So, after you’ve read Jim’s article, why not set up your own customer survey. Find out where they’re at and what they do & don’t want, and then take things from there. You can use a survey tool such as this to achieve this, and drive some traffic with adwords.

If you want some help with setting up a basic adwords survey and using the survey tool I recommended, check my Adwords Management offering out and send me an email to discuss the details. I can put together something for as little as $220 + your adwords costs.