Okay, here’s my take on sharing my “guerrilla b.v.” practice, blog-style.
Alright, so today I wanna talk about something I messed around with called “guerrilla b.v.” It’s not as intense as it sounds, promise. Basically, I was trying to figure out a way to collect data for a small project I was tinkering with, without breaking the bank.
First off, I stumbled upon Gorilla. I was looking for something that wouldn’t cost me an arm and a leg just to get started. The thing that caught my eye about Gorilla was their “pay per participant” model. Meaning, signing up and designing my little survey was free, which was a huge win. Only paying when people actually took the survey? Perfect! This was exactly what I wanted.
So, I jumped in. Started fiddling around with their experiment builder. Dragged and dropped some questions, tweaked the layout a bit. Nothing too fancy, just a basic questionnaire. I tell you that initial setup was easy peasy.
Then, the real challenge began: figuring out how the token thing actually worked. Gorilla uses these “participant tokens,” and each experiment costs one token per participant. I got the basic idea that each token represented the data you could download. It was all a little bit confusing at first, especially the part about “start and finish nodes” reserving tokens.
I did some digging and saw that when a participant starts my experiment, the Start Node grabs a token for them. If that same participant makes it all the way through and hits the Finish Node, boom, I can download their data. If they bail halfway through? Well, I guess I don’t get charged a token. So It sounds like you only pay if people completed everything.
After I understood this, I started to test it. I ran the survey myself a bunch of times, making sure everything was working. Then I sent it out to some friends and family. The beauty of this was I was only paying for real, complete responses. I didn’t have to worry about paying for partially completed surveys or people who just clicked through without reading anything.
Here’s the thing I learned: Plan carefully! Think about how many responses you really need. Don’t just blast it out to everyone you know if you only need, like, 20 solid responses.
And here’s another tip: Make your survey engaging! The more people complete it, the more data you get, and the more worthwhile your tokens are.
What’s next? Well, this guerrilla approach has given me some valuable insights for my project. I’m thinking of using this method for some A/B testing in the near future. The fact that I only pay for completed data makes it super appealing.
So, that’s my “guerrilla b.v.” adventure so far. Not exactly earth-shattering, but it’s a practical way to gather data without emptying your wallet. I will keep you guys updated with progress.
