The Results of the TaskRunners Survey! (text version)

THANK YOU very much to everyone who took the time to respond to our very first survey! 

It’s daunting starting a new business idea and we thought we’d better get as much information from people as possible. Considering we’re all about helping you as much as we can it really really helps us plan for the future.

If you're a visual person, we'll be posting the infographic in our next post.

Now, to the results! 

1) Which of the following best describes you? (select all that apply)

A whopping 45.3% of respondents are drowning from the weight of the domestic burden and would really like some help around the home. We totally understand! There are so many more important things to do than fold washing, constantly battling it out with household mess and chasing your tail in a never-ending cycle of demanding household tasks!

We’re obviously a pretty busy and applied bunch! Over a third of you are also juggling community and creative projects and would love some help with those too. And 28% are looking to use your skills to earn some extra income.

For our time-strapped small business owners, time to breathe a sign of relief. With almost a fifth of businesses weighed under with work, it’s nice to know 24.5% of our respondents are freelancers or sole operators looking for paid work.

Oh, and interestingly just a shade under 42% of you would be happy to swap help as opposed to cold hard cash to get your tasks done. Vive la barter we say!

2) Does the idea of sharing tasks appeal to you?

We’ve got 85% of survey respondents rearing to go on the sharing the tasks stakes and even the majority of the no’s were more in line with “it depends on the circumstances” and “time poor” to the point where they’d prefer to just simply pay straight up for someone to do things for them. All of which we can help you with.

What we can say from this result is an overwhelming majority of you are up for getting some help through TaskRunners. How awesome is that!

3) Why does the idea of sharing tasks with other people appeal to you? (select all that apply)

We’ve heard a lot about how important supporting local economies and so forth are in the news and it is definitely a major concern for 63% of the respondents who would much rather use a local option to get the help you need than a big, faceless corporation. Also, sustainability plays a huge role with 59% citing the pooling of resources and helping the planet as a major point of persuasion. Finally, you’re all a helpful little bunch who just wants to share your knowledge with other people (54%) and get together with your community to share the load (52%).

So you want to support local, be as green as you can and connect up to help and create community. What an awesome bunch of people you are!

4) Would you rather pay someone to do a task for you or swap getting your task done for helping someone do theirs?

It truly is a case-by-case basis for most of you with 58% coming back saying it depends. 24% appear so time poor they’d just rather pay to have the help they need and 18% would prefer a swap of their task for yours if the option is available.

Whatever the case, we will definitely be making room for all of you, you can bank on that!

5) What kinds of things would you like to have more time for? (select all that apply) 

Cue the Madonna and pack the Hawaiian shirts- more than anything else, you want a short break or a holiday with 68% of you pining for a load lightening service to enjoy a little getaway! This is closely followed by 64% wanting to turn that flab into fab through more time to exercise.

Finally, 52% of you want to spend more time with friends and/or family or get more time with your creative and side projects.

We hear you!

6) What kinds of things would you be happy to help people with? Either for a fee or to swap. (select all that apply) 

The freelancers are in like Flynn with the top total of 42%! You can totally dump your admin and light office work too with 36% of people putting their hands up to help with that too! Looks like those small business owners and overworked full timers have someone willing to pick up the slack!    

And it truly won’t be a jungle out there anymore if 34% of you are to be believed with gardening and yard work taking out the bronze medal in the “I can help you with that!” stakes.

7) What kinds of things would you be happy to have other people in your community do for you? (select all that apply)

Despite the continued population of lifestyle TV shows telling us otherwise, 64% of you would prefer someone else did your DIY and fix-it projects around the home.

Gardening and yard work gets a green thumbs down with 42% of respondents preferring someone else hit the snail trail, tying with the always unpopular general and spring cleaning around the home.

The laundry also leaves us cold with 34% of us happy to shout “let someone else do it!” along with admin and light office work which also came in at 34%.

So basically what you are telling us is you have better things to do than be tied to house repairs, the lawn mower, a mop and bucket, the ironing board and fiddly bits of demanding white paper. We hear ya!

8) What kinds of things would you consider paying for if they were offered? (select all that apply)

Sharpen the pencils and flatten down those cowlicks- 68% of you would consider taking a workshop or face to face course if given the opportunity. This far outstripped the next option of workbooks of advice on 38%.

Just to clarify a little confusion around this question too- we’re committed to making TaskRunners a sustainable, community orientated business and as such need to know what our options may be for future planning in terms of supplementing our income as simple percentages on the paid for transactions won’t pay wages.

So the question was intended to find out what you would pay for- not whether you would pay for the service.

9) Have you used any of the following businesses? (select all that apply)

Measuring just how in the know you are about collaborative consumption and the whole sharing ideal saw 78% of you stating you’ve used or know of eBay and 72% are seasoned Gumtree users! Yay!

20% of you are also found snuffling out re-use and recycle treats at Reverse Garbage, Freecycle and are even partial for a little bit of Craigslist.  

We’re proud to say the collaborative consumption movement is growing in Australia and that there are heaps of wonderful things you can share via this A to Z of Collaborative Consumption – nifty huh! 

10) How did you first hear about this survey?

Friends are where it’s at with 56% of our TaskMasters’ Cheryl and Cornelius mates raising a happy hand to offer some input- thank you!

Facebook and Twitter are also get the tongues a-wagging with about 10% of you happy scamps popping by via social media.

You can continue to keep up with our happenings via all our deliciously fun social media in future and bring your friends. We’d love that!

11) Where do you think we should advertise, blog and promote ourselves?

So much advice and so much to cover! Wow- thanks ever so much. We’re just tickled to see so much helpful and enthusiastic information coming through.

Social media like Twitter and Facebook were definitely popular suggestions- good thing we have a vibe going already! Feel free to pop by and say hi.

Local papers are also something you enjoy taking a squiz at and it seems you’re mixing it up with blogs, markets, meet ups and generally reaching out to the community.

We love the ideas about reaching out locally, to women and to families so stay tuned- you could be seeing us in a place near you soon!

12) What suburb/town do you live in?

From Rockhampton to Rowville and from city to the bush and even travelling in Asia we found our survey respondents. Sydney represented in high numbers, especially in the beachside suburbs. But whether you’re from the Gold Coast or Gosford, Brisbane to Bexley, we are really happy to hear our little TaskRunners beacon has been sounding!

We intend to make TaskRunners a service for all Australians to use. However to ensure we can make sure your first experiences of TaskRunners are positive, we will be rolling out in specific suburbs first, monitoring how things go and expanding the fun. Part of this is choosing places where people are super keen- so to help TaskRunners reach your area quicker, register your interest here.

13) What Gender are you?

64% of our respondents were female. So we can see there are a lot of women out there who are either in need of help, really keen to offer help or both!

14) What Age Group do you fit into?

Admittedly being a startup we often hear a lot of stories about how winning the hearts and minds of the early adopters (usually hip young cats living in inner city suburbs) is the way to go. So where you live and your age was really important for us to find out if these is indeed true.

Romping it home with a tiny titch below 44% are the 30 to 34 year old group. The next closest group was 35 to 39 making up 19% followed by 15% with the 40 to 44 year olds.

Coupling this with the strong presence of more family orientated areas and beachside suburbs coming through in our survey means we probably won’t be marching into super cool Hipster-ville any time soon!

This confirms our theory that from the 30’s onwards, we’re all a little overwhelmed with things to do and that we’d happily explore new ways to help each other out so we can regain time for our relationships, kids, creative projects, community and ourselves. 

15) What social media channels do you use or follow? (select all that apply)

Facebook is still King of the Castle with 97.9% of you who do use social media. Twitter grabs 48.7% of you who are social media savvy, and Pinterest and Google + making friends with roughly a quarter. So looks like social media is the super hot tamale in TaskRunner town! 

We will also be looking at blogs too, so if you have any specific suggestions, please pop them on the blog below. Any suggestions on places you read on a regular basis in the blogosphere would be welcome so we can contact them!

Phew! We’d better step to it then.

Well, that’s all for our first ever survey! Thank you again to each and every one of you who participated. You’ve racked up a pretty impressive store of karma points for that. Your input and enthusiasm for TaskRunners at this early stage is so encouraging and keeps us our little legs moving!

The exciting news is we're only a few weeks from launching - so if you popped through your email to us during the survey, we’ll be leaving you an email soon! Keep coming to play on the blog, Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest- it really makes us happy to see comments, retweets, questions and new faces join!

So were the results surprising or expected? Leave us your comments. 

Keep in tasking!

Team TaskRunners