If you’re anything like me, you live in a densely populated area, and are surrounded by people that are all tirelessly working to survive and get by. In New York City, anywhere you look, you can find a person with internal angst, worrying if their going to make their next month’s deadline for bills. Also, I don’t mean when you should ideally pay your phone bill, but the actual day when they are going to shut off your service, and effectively transport you back to a time when people didn’t date while sitting on the toilet. It’s a scary thought, I know.

Everyone needs more money (unless you are a part of the top 5% of income earners in this country, and you think you need more money, in which case, fuck you. This is why I, and probably you as well, try to make money anywhere you can. I try to boost my income so that I can support myself while I follow my dreams, to hopefully also become a 5 percenter, and perhaps get told to fuck myself in an online article one day. Every day of our lives in a capitalist society, we are blasted with advertisements for something new and shiny, and while they are nowhere near necessities, our primate brains still desire them.

Enter focus groups.

Focus groups are a form of marketing research, conducted by companies to gain consumer insights for their product or service. They generally require some form of confidentiality and agreement for you to be recorded. The best part is, companies will pay you an ungodly amount of money for your thoughts and opinions (shout out to Medium for trying to follow in their footsteps). I’ve been paid anywhere from $1–400 dollars for 1–2 hours of “work”. This isn’t necessarily life-saving amounts of money, but for some of us, it actually is.

This is how focus groups typically look. A long table with a bunch of people of different gender, age, and background with a moderator. The moderator leads the discussion and asks whatever questions they may have about their product/service to the group, while taking some notes to review later. There’s also typically a double-sided mirror behind the moderator where a few other people sit and take notes while watching the study take place. Then, they may ask for you to fill out some surveys about their product/service to rate some of the features or qualities they may have shown you so that they can quantify their data and have something to present to their bosses.

Its not a complicated process, and you may actually enjoy the discussion if you’re an open person who enjoys conversations. For me, it is a fairly easy thing to do and while I may not always agree with what others have to say about something, its interesting to hear and understand where people are coming from when they form their opinions. Perhaps if more people in this country did that, we would be a lot less divided than we are.

great video on focus groups by Ted-Ed

Imagine the money in your wallet now (sorry). Now imagine your wallet with an extra 200 bucks in it (not as depressing is it?). To me, I view focus groups as an opportunity for both the company and the person being surveyed. The consumer is the driver of all purchases so our opinions may as well be heard and taken into consideration.

I personally try to take the (tax-free) money taken from them and use it to better my situation. Taking a long-term approach with the extra few dollars will pay off far more than those buying 100 fidget spinners for every single person you know (despite how good a deal that guy on the street is offering you). If companies are getting wiser through these surveys, we as consumers also have to be more observant of our financial situation and expect more value when we purchase new products. At the end of the day, the purchasing power is in our hands (along with fidget spinners), and it is up to us in how we use it.