It’s been awhile since I’ve posted some updates on Feedback Army. After the Deadline has taken up a lot of my time lately. Don’t worry though. This wait was well worth it.
Here is the latest:
1. Your results are now private by default! Each request generates a code that is required in the results URL. If you want to make your results public, simply pass out the URL. It’s as simple as that.
2. You now have the ability to reject responses and request a new one in their place. Feedback Army responses are automatically approved after 48 hours. Until that happens there will be a link below the response letting you reject it. This is an experiment and we’ll see how it goes. I think it’ll be ok. Because I expect to spend less time QCing responses, I’ve given a raise to the workers to help cover the abuse they might suffer from trigger happy customers. (Don’t be a trigger happy customer!) 
3. And finally… this one I’m most excited about. I’ve embedded After the Deadline into the Feedback Army response form. Now workers have the ability to check their spelling, style, and grammar before submitting a response. I expect this will raise the quality of writing on the site (it better, it’s the sales pitch of my main product!) In any case this is an example of Feedback Army innovating on the back end as well as the front end.
There may be a few bugs. I’ll address them as they come up.
Enjoy the updates!
Feedback Army
Today, UX Booth announced the winners of their Feedback Army review contest. I’d like to say congratulations to the winners and invite you to contact me directly if you have any questions about Feedback Army or redeeming your code for the free reviews.
Feedback Army
It looks like today’s problems were a result of the reboot after all. My virtual server clock was out of sync causing Amazon to reject all API requests from my server. A sync to a NTP server fixed the issue. Feedback Army is back online and your responses are available again. Thanks for your patience.
Feedback Army
Dear Feedback Army User,
If you’re seeing a message like this today:
“It appears a request does not exist for this web address. If this is an error or if you can’t recall the specific site address, please contact me and I will look into it. It is a quick process to locate your results if something did go wrong.”
Don’t despair! You didn’t do anything wrong. Today Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service is throwing request expired exceptions every time I post something. I’m working with Amazon to figure out what happened. It could be them or it could be me (server went down last night).
I expect to have this resolved today.
Feedback Army
I know its been awhile since I’ve wrote. I moved from NY to MI (great economy here!) and I’m hacking on After the Deadline like you wouldn’t believe. Still, I have something to report:
The friendly folks over at UXBooth.com have posted a review of Feedback Army and with it they’re giving away three Feedback Army review packages. You have to visit the review for more details.
If you’re finding this blog after coming from UXBooth.com then welcome! To get the best results, pose specific tasks as Matthew suggested and most importantly: ask open ended questions! You’ll be surprised by the answers you get.
Feedback Army
Just noticed a Feedback Army review at the Gardner-Madras | Strategic Creative (hereafter GMSC) blog. GMSC is an internet consulting firm for non-profits and progressive businesses. Here is what they had to say:
The results are, as you might expect for that sort of money, a mixed bag from a wide generic set of users. … I would see this as useful for organizations doing a redesign to try out a couple of different directions or make a specific design choice (red or orange for that donate button?).
… I have to say, man, is it fast – less than a day turnaround time to collect 10.
… Overall I found the feedback to be helpful in my test case and will probably use this again when I need an “outside perspective” on design decisions.”
Naturally my synopsis captures the best parts. Go read the entire review for yourself.
Feedback Army
Google Alerts delivered this blog entry from the folks behind CarSurvey.org. If you’ve never been there, CarSurvey.org is a site where you can read what people have to say about the car they own. I read it before I bought my Jetta and I found the reviews were spot on. Unfortunately, the reviews said my model was a money pit but fun to drive. I ignored them at my peril.
Anyways CarSurvey.org is also a Feedback Army customer and here is what they had to say:
No More Tabs on Carsurvey.org
Following a recent experiment with FeedbackArmy, I’ve removed the tabs on Carsurvey.org. They seemed like a good idea when I introduced them, but ultimately they were just confusing and a waste of space.
As a consequence, the links to the other CSDO Media sites have been moved into the page footer, and the search box has moved from the top left of the page to the top right.
I’m glad to hear the folks at CarSurvey.org took some action on their feedback and hope it works out the best for them.
Feedback Army
Part of the Feedback Army service is quality control. I do what I can to check the responses but it seems someone has decided to try and game the system. Within the past few days, someone has started posting duplicate responses to try and collect more money.
I believe this abuse is new.
Today I added code to Feedback Army to ban worker IDs I believe abusive. If I catch someone gaming the system I now have the power to flag their account as suspect and make sure they never work on Feedback Army reviews again.
For the affected customers, I caught most of the duplicates and extended your request to receive the correct number of responses. If I missed duplicates on your request, please contact me.
Feedback Army
As I stated last week, I’m raising the prices @ Feedback Army. The current margin doesn’t match well with the overhead of running the site. That said, word of mouth is working out and I’m grateful to the bloggers who have tried the service and written about it.
The old cost of Feedback Army is $0.66 – $0.70 per response. If you ask 3-6 questions this comes out to $0.11 to $0.23 per answer. Throw in the fact that the answers are open ended and full sentences (depending on the quality of the question) and it’s a killer deal overall.
I understand value is part of the Feedback Army equation. As such, I’m raising the cost per response to $0.80 – $1.00 per response or $0.13 to $0.33 per answer. Which isn’t a drastic difference.
The new pricing is as follows:
- 10 responses for $10 ($1.00/resp)
- 25 responses for $23 ($0.92/resp)
- 50 responses for $40 ($0.80/resp)
Feedback Army
Chris at Indie Startups has posted a review of Feedback Army. Check it out here.
Feedback Army
