Ready to Launch - Installment 7

  Ok, this blog is moving along at a snails pace. That’s about to change. Look for shorter and more frequent installments

  Time to pick up the timeline and get on with the progression of events that will eventually bring us up to the present day. Installment 5 of this blog, finished without answering the efficacy of profitability question, and the funding of a website question. The answer to both questions was and is -- YES and Kind of.

  Numerous people were consulted in the last 2 week period of June 2009. Friends, family, and acquaintances. As for the possibility and probability of an endeavor having the ability to be profitable was a relatively easy question to answer. As always the “Devil is in the Details”, the marketing/research industry is attributed to be a 40 - 80 Billion USD industry depending on what sources you want to use. Our idea could tap into a niche that I thought was not being served. After giving my inner circle a vague synopsis of my business plan, enough positive feedback was obtained to consider the plan viable and that it would eventually be profitable.

  As for answering the affordability of the website to run the endeavor, the answer was - - kind of. We could have designed our own for relative peanuts, or we could acquire outside help and pay for design and website training. We choose outside help and are glad we did, as we needed the exposure that people trained in IT/web matters can bring to an endeavor. Although we didn’t have the resources to fund everything we wanted a website to do, we did conclude that we could get started and build along the way.

 Time to finish this installment, before I use the word endeavor again. Until next time, best wishes to everyone.
　
Rebwithacause

The Blogosphere - Installment 6

  Ok, its still a work in progress, but it is ready for viewing. In the last blog installment, I laid out the groundwork for another blog , one that would key on terminology and best practices of the polling/marketing research industries.

  As I wanted to be able to detail the considerations and the nuances that are used within the polling and marketing industry, I realized, after a friend advised me, that not everyone had a statistical background or would be familiar with the terms I was using. Rather than take time to explain, I decided to publish a glossary/dictionary/gist of commonly used terms and their uncommon meanings when applied to statistics. That blog is now live and called Pollogistics and can be located at : http://pollogistics.blogspot.com

   P O L L O G I S T I C S - not a real word yet. So far its only the name of a Blog. What is it? A combination of three words that I thought expressed what I wanted to define, and redefine. 3 words = Polls, Gists, and Statistics; slice and dice them a little, and viola --- POLLOGISTICS.
  Pollogistics is a blog that has definitions of terms, concepts, and organizations as they relate to the study of polls and marketing.
      http://pollogistics.blogspot.com is the place to go to have a pollogistic experience. As it is a work in progress , please go easy on critiquing it. We eventually will have somewhere between 300-500 terms. Any suggestions or comments can be directed to wade@thepollitbureau.com

Thanks, and enjoy.


Rebwithacause

The Domain - Installment 5

The Domain ---- Installment 5
Ok, its time to self-evaluate this blog and get to the retelling of the development of The Pollit Bureau. As for grading the blog I would give the performance so far a C+, as for The Pollit Bureau a solid D would be in order. The first 2 installments of this blog were better thought out and hopefully entertaining, while the last 2 have been arguably dry and lacked direction. In the last blog installment, I laid out the groundwork for another blog , one that would key on terminology and best practices of the polling/marketing research industries. That is starting to come along well and the 1^st post should be done by the 24^th of September 2010.
Time now for the documenting of the initial thought processes and developments that transpired that steered the beginning phases of The Pollit Bureau (TPB).
Looking back, with 20/20 hindsight , I should have tested the waters a little more before thinking I knew how to swim. I had decided that a polling company would satisfy my requirements of being gainfully employed in some line of work I considered intriguing, fulfilling, and might have a impact on America. I had already formed some opinions of polling companies and had the vague idea of a plan that would be somewhat unique. At this point in time it was early June 2009. I decided it was time to spend the next few weeks doing research. What I needed to know was the answer to the following 3 questions before I continued with the endeavor :
Question 1 - Is Anybody doing what we wanted to do already?
Question 2 - Would enough people be interested to make the endeavor profitable ?
Question 3 - Could an affordable web site that could handle the initial volume be developed within our budget constraints.
　
Answers to Question 1 - As I started my research, it also became apparent that I would have to finalize my vision for what the endeavor known as The Pollit Bureau would become. By finalize, I mean to detail the overall operation and work out the major areas of concern. Although, I didn’t know it at the time, It was soon apparent that not to many entities would be similar to our endeavor. We wanted to be a company that was transparent, relied on no funding that could possibly be seen as a conflict of interest, wanted to have the research we conducted be applicable to current issues and events . We also wanted our data to be used by decision makers without any charge. We wanted a way that people of a unique profession could congregate and give their views on issues within their community.
Visits to several nearby libraries soon confirmed my suspicions that although there were ample books on statistics and marketing, there were in fact very, very, few on polls/surveys. As we had decided that we would run an online company, what better way to research whether anybody was doing a similar project or what the competition is or was, then to ask the internet. Ask the Internet I did. Started with some simple searches, or so I thought, which yielded some mind-boggling numbers. I did some key word Google searches that I thought would be appropriate and ended up with the following:
(Note- # of results were obtained from search on 9/23/2010 but are very reflective of similar searches in June 2009)
Searched Word or Phrase and the Number of results follow:
Polls 110+ million results
Surveys 256+ million results
Online Polls 160+ million
Political Polls 65+ million
Opinion Polls 58+ million
Issues and polls 95+ million
Scientific Polls 7+ million
CNN Polls 4.6 + million
I had expected some large numbers but was not ready for numbers this big. One number that didn’t logically make sense is that there was more results for the search “online polls” than there was for “ polls”.
I hope I haven’t stumbled on an anomaly within Google’s algorithm. The searches were interesting and educational, and after reviewing what seems to have been thousands and thousands of results, we were able to form a few conclusions. We had decided on what our domain name and the name of our enterprise would be (The Pollit Bureau) , and additionally we concluded that we could be in a niche that was being neglected. Although some companies were doing some of the things we wanted to do, nobody seemed to be offering a place to put everything together. We also were amazed to see the number of survey for pay sites. Seemed like a million.
Also, many of the companies were focused on predicting elections. Most of the established “name brand polling companies” seemed to slam online polling or surveys as being unscientific. The majority of these firms do the majority of their research/data gathering over the phone. We see this as an opening for our type of raw data gathering online polling endeavor. Much like signal flags were eventually replaced by radio, we believe that most of telephone like communications are going to be replaced by the internet. We see our company as a way for analysts from anywhere to come and use our data. It is our contention that the next generation pollsters will rely heavily on the internet and mobile communications. Currently it is unlawful to attempt to call individuals on their cell phones as a marketing or polling endeavor without that individuals prior consent. This makes it unacceptable for “scientific” polls and a legal dilemna. We believe that in the future the polling industry will more and more have to rely on the internet. We want to be one of the first to totally embrace it in an unscientific/scientific way.
The other 2 aforementioned questions will be discussed in the next installment. Thanks for reading.

Rebwithacause

Should have been the beginnings continued, but, - Installment 4

Ok, rather than start giving explanations of terms that are associated with the polling industry , I decided to expand on the goals of Rebwithacause (The Pollit Bureau) and to ramble on about a few other things.
When I started this blog, it was my intention to create new posts at a minimum of at least one per week. I put together a listing of about 30+ topics and had a mental idea of how I was going to present the information. This is blog installment #4 , and I can now see that I want to take a little detour from the road I had planned on taking. Rather than clutter this blog up with 100’s of pages of mundane definitions, I have decided to start another blog to explain polls and terms. This new blog endeavor will debut in the next week and there will be a link to it from this blog
    653 Days left. Adsense revenue generated today $00.53. Added several more pages of content to the planned assault. What do the last 18 words and numbers mean? They all have something to do with the goal I had mentioned in an earlier installment. That goal was 2-fold. Give this enterprise called The Pollit Bureau a 3 year chance and to make a million dollars. We are getting closer to the end of the 3 year test, with just 653 days left, however, we are still very far away from the million dollars earned. Still shy by a little over $999,000 dollars. Guess you have to build it right before the proverbial “they” will come. Although some people would consider this endeavor to be a borderline failure at this point, I choose to give it a more optimistic assessment, and consider it just needing that fine tweaking to get to the next level.
Back in June 2009, I had envisioned a company that could gather raw data and not put a spin on it. I wanted there to be no appearance of bias or polls being run with a question related bias because a corporation or entity was paying to have the poll conducted. We made a decision as to not run any polls that we didn’t control and therefore decided to not have any polling clients. How were we going to make our money? We were going to use a combination approach of ad generated revenue streams (mainly Google Adsense at first) and donations. We also decided that we would offer companies a way to advertise on our pages. Additionally, we would market the results of our polls with no analysis to select entities after we had acquired at least 18 months of data.
Now to really ramble. Earlier, this week, I came across a completely useless fact, while searching the internet for some info. That useless fact is= There are 523 golf courses in the state of Georgia. Don’t you agree, that is a pretty useless fact.
Next installment in 5-7 days.
Rebwithacause

The First Steps - - Installment 3

Ok, it’s time to get to the meat and potatoes of this blog. June 2009 arrived and I had only the basic rough draft of my plan to start my new endeavor. I knew it was not going to be anything that took off quickly as my technical skills had to be brought up to speed. It was time to get started, and begin the launching of the website. The would-a, could-a, should- a train, was ready to leave the station.



Several key decisions were made in June. The two largest being, the nature of the online polling company and the other being that I would need to contract the building of the website out to a web design company. A discussion of the actual website and the details of the learning curve to use it will be the topic(s) for future installments of this blog.

It had been apparent to me for several years that most all news, print media, and politicians seemed to confirm their stance on an issue by citing a poll of one type or another. It had been my observation that polls were being conducted by just about anyone; from think tanks, to universities, to news organizations, marketing companies, research companies, and Government organizations. As I researched more , there seemed to be a two- tiered level of acceptance of the accuracy of the polls. The acceptance seems to be based on the whether it can be considered “Scientific” or not. The rest of this installment will detail some of my conclusions and concerns with the way results of polls are conveyed to the public and the elusive description of what is a “Scientific Poll“. “Although I am neither a mathematician or a statistician, there seemed to be some ambiguity as to what scientific approach is acceptable to be considered “Scientific.”



Polls have always intrigued me, whether they were opinion polls or election related polls. I had always gravitated to research that “figured the odds”. When conducting a poll or survey, there is a lot of terminology/jargon used that has become common place, but seems to be so misunderstood. Future Installments to this blog will detail and explore the following terms associated with polls:



Sampling Error

Margin of Error

Selection Bias

Types of Polls (Tracking, Straw, Election, etc.)

Response Bias

Bradley or Wilder effect

Social desirability Bias



More terms will also be covered, but an overview of the abovementioned terms will need to be discussed first. Next Installment 3-7 days.

The Beginnings -- -- -- Installment 2

Ok, just so you can stay informed, I plan on starting each blog installment with the word Okay in an abbreviated form, OK. In this installment, I want to bring everybody up to speed on the decision to launch The Pollit Bureau. So that this has some logical order to you and me, I feel it is necessary to detail the timeline. Here’s the 5 major highlights :


Highlight #1. - - - - The Past
Spent over 50 years of my life figuring out what to do. During that time, I had spent almost 11 years on active duty with the US Army, owned numerous businesses , raised 2 children with the help of my beautiful wife of 30 years, had seen success and failure., amassed a net worth of close to a million USD and able to somehow reduce that to a negative net worth. Like many I have had my share of up’s and down’s.

Highlight #2. - - - - The Event
Was working in the family owned business ( a janitorial company), vacuuming carpet, late one night at the end of April 2009, when it hit me. Not an idea, but a massive pain in my left shoulder and arm and other areas. Being the stubborn fool , I tried to see if this might just go away with a little rest. 24 hours later, I made it to the emergency room, with what the doctor’s said was about ten minutes to spare. After being morphined up, they took me to the cath operating room and proceded to put a stent in one of the arteries to my heart. I did see a bright white light, not the one that is mystic, well that’s for another post in probably a different blog. Sixty hours later, and another 60K in debt, I was released.

Highlight # 3 ----The Decision
The doctor advised me not to do much of anything for 2 weeks and that unless I had serious issues my first visit with the cardiologists was for 6 weeks from the date of being released. 100’s of thoughts and ideas raced through my cranium. Would I recover? Would I be back 100%? What type of work could I do? How hard did I want to push myself physically? So many questions and no real answers.
The answers started to come within a few weeks. Even though I was resting , I felt tired and had trouble breathing (COPD). I was starting to realize that physical labor of any length of time could no longer be part of my work schedule. I had been performing duties as the General Manager of the family cleaning business , which was a hands on position that required part janitor, part salesman, and part bookkeeper, and part deliveryman all rolled into one. A decision had to be made and I knew it would affect everybody in my circle of friends, family, and employees. I would step out of the family business ( except for some minor paperwork related duties) and pursue something that was more in line with my reduced physical capabilities.

Highlight #4 - - - - The Forest
Started to get stir crazy after 2 weeks, I knew I wanted to still be productive and bring meaning to my life through working at something I could truly love with a passion. I also knew I could work for nobody else. It was at this junction of my recovery that I started to formulate a concept of an endeavor that could be rewarding and not require a huge financial outlay. Although I didn’t have a large amount of free capital to work with , I rearranged some finances and billings and was able to free up about 500 USD a month to invest in the enterprise. Although , I hadn’t worked out the particulars, I wanted to some way have a positive and meaningful influence on America. I was determined to stick with anything I started for at least 3 years. That gave me until June 2012. I had always been intrigued by how public opinion was being formulated in the U.S. The news cycle seemed to be always having this poll or that poll as justification for whichever slant they seemed to want to put on a story. Although I had no formal schooling in statistics or marketing, common sense told me that some of the polls seemed to be quite questionable. I decided why not start a research company that was behooving to no one and see if raw data could be used to reinforce and steer public policy. It was at this point that I determined that a online company versus a brick and mortar enterprise is the way I wanted to go. I had a lot to learn. I had let myself become technologically ignorant. Heck, I couldn’t even program my cell phone. I could however sometimes remember how to cut and paste properly.

Highlight 5 --- -- The Goals

Any enterprise should have goals. I thought carefully and determined that I would not look for intermediate or easily obtainable goals, I would set one goal and let it ride. The Goal - have this enterprise make one million dollars within 3 years. This is the blog that will document that journey. It’s at this venture that I would like to explain my handle- rebwithacause. When I served in the U.S. Army, I was in an organization called the Army Security Agency. We were the Army’s NSA, kind of. Many of us had operational signs(op sign) as well as nicknames. My op sign was Reb1, it was a combination of the first letters of my nickname/alias (Rocky) and my actual name. Now that I had a new cause or purpose in my life, It was logical to me to reinstitute the opsign with a civilian twist. I was going to write again, not as Reb1 but as rebwithacause. More to follow….. In about 3-5 days.