Research Design Is Hard Don't Let It Stop You

Be Authentic

Make it personal, put your best photo, do not put your company logo for god’s sake...

Be direct and honest in your personal mission section. No marketing buzzwords. No disrupting startup, no bringing innovation. If your family member suffered, say it. We know it's personal, but speaking from your heart is the best way to speak to the people.

First sentence is key, no one reads beyond first sentence if the first sentence was not huge.

Say why this research is important to you, and why it should be important to others.

If your research is for shit and giggles say so, not every research is saving humanity, but explain it. Explain why your curiosity led you to this idea, and why you think potential findings may be interesting or why they may be funny.

Marketing is 80% of your work here

The hardest part is not research, but getting participants. Scientists tend to not think about marketing, but this is 80% of your work here. Consider Title which will be with your picture in a thumbnail when you share it around. It has to be something people click. If they don't click, whatever you've put in research description doesn't matter.

It should have potential to become viral or at least get responses. Before publishing your research put it in waitlist mode. This allows you to test how people react to it, get feedback on tiers, run different campaigns, without committing to what have you put there yet towards participants.

Build Community

Build your community outside CrowdWise. Do not assume you put your research on CrowdWise and that's it. We will be building more and more marketing tools for you to do your own marketing, but it's on you do it! Have Substack, X, Instagram, Youtube Channel or whatever is the place your community of interest is active on.

Communicate to people your regular progress. You are not build a dataset. You are building releationships. Those will make your dataset the best in the world forever. Community which is invested in you will keep updating your data whenever you are missing something. They will not be a one of data point. They will be a continues data flow.

Assume it will take time

Public data sets seem easier, but actually this is easier.

Getting public datasets or big institution access seems like a better approach, but it's rarely is, and that's why you probably ended up here in first place.

This may sound daunting to a scientist who never had a blog/substack, not to mention youtube channel, but building a community will guarantee you access to not only data, but also participants in future studies, potential first clients for whatever your research may lead to, and much more.

Spending few months building a community, may save you years of working with static datasets which will never change, as there is no humans who care enough to do the most basic test behind them.

Tiers

Feel free to set up consultation to figure out good tier matching your research needs!

Tiers are to help you with setting up right incentive for participants. Revenue share we allow in our contracts is the strongest incentive you can combine with tiers, but we don't recommend it to every research project. Projects done for fun, which will never lead to commercial outputs, should not try to fit this benefit as it won't be effective.

If you are planning to use revenue share with tiers, and plan to commercialize your project, be aware, that future investors won't invest in your project if you overpromised too high of a percentage.

We recommend to keep it under 3% in total, anything higher than this, would probably make it harder for you to ever raise money or sell your IP for further development. You also have to plan how do you want to give this to participants. It should be given depending on how much they help you to move your research forward.

If you are U.S. person or U.S. company we don't allow you to promise it, as you would be breaking SEC rules. Feel free to still read those guidelines, as they explain general thinking behind it. This still applies to any other benefits you plan to promise, and should still promise non-revenue share benefits for your american participants who won't be able to get revenue share anyway.

Tier 1 Example

We suggest Tier 1 to be very low effort, but also very low reward. It all depends on your research, but example of Tier 1 would be expecting to provide 23andme or ancestory.com genomic data, with medical history and filling one short survey with 10 questions.

This probably won't provide much value for most research, but treat Tier 1 like a funnel for other Tiers. You are building wide community who now is already invested into you and your research. We do not give you access to emails or identities of participants if we absolutely don't have to, but we allow you to send email to those who are part of your research.

Suggested reward for Tier 1 would be a personal health report after final research results. If you want to give revenue share for Tier 1 we suggest rather low value around 0.01% to 0.20%. Remember this value is for the whole cohort of a Tier. If there is thousands of participants at Tier 1, individual gets very little. You can set up max participants limit for tier and reward. As well as minimum amount of people to participate in tier in order to activate reward.

Max limit probably doesn't sound that great for your research, but it provides higher revenue share to each individual, which may be good incentive. Minimum is also a good way to not be stuck on a huge revenue share commitment, if you did not manage to collect enough people to start study.

Be aware we may decline you accessing data, if you have not reach minimum you declared yourself in order to not provide participants data, you don't want to give anything back for. You will be able to change terms for benefit of participants after study is live, so you can always lower minimum threshold later on.

Tier 2 Example

Tier 2 should still be low effort, but already provide some research value. This is the tier we would introduce revenue share or better benefits then health report at the end of the study.

For example expecting whole genome sequencing rather then 23andme would be good for Tier 2. Expecting regular survey every 2 months, recent blood test, and providing one every year is also a bit of an effort, but reasonable. We recommend providing 0.30% up to 0.90% for this tier, depending on how much effort you are expecting, and what's the maximum of participants for a Tier.

Non-revenue share rewards could include discounts for services and products you provide, or plan to provide thanks to this research results. If you expect whole genome sequence we also suggest partial subsidy of it, by providing 10$-30$ to anyone who did it. This still won't cover the whole cost, but if enough research on platform provide it, it may actually cover whole genome sequencing for participants engaged in multiple studies. Be mindful to have enough cash to pay for it, and set correct maximum to not be in situation where thousands of people signed up.

Tier 3 Example

Tier 3 should assume medium effort from participants, already providing real research value, with solid rewards.

For example expecting more specialized tests, which can be more invasive would fit here. Regular survey every month or even more often, would also fit here. We recommend providing 0.90% up to 2.50% for this tier.

Non-revenue share rewards should include covering full or most of the costs of those more specialised or invasive tests as a base. Tier should have very high discounts, or even free services. Priority in access or clinical trial enrollment for participants or their family members etc.

Tier 4 Example

Tier 4 should assume high effort from participants, providing much research value, with veyr high rewards.

Expecting regular tests being carried, or being part of a full volunteer or safety study could be Tier 4. We recommend covering costs of all activities, financial gratification, priority in any services or products, as well as providing 1.50% up to 3.00% for this tier.

More Tiers? Leaving yourself breathing room.

You can split it into more Tiers than presented in above examples, there is no limit really.

You probably are a bit overwhelmed and struggle to plan your study and Tiers. We suggest to launch study with only one Tier initially. The worst thing you can do is think about study design and tiers for months, without launching.

Remember what's the hardest part here? Getting participants. This may take months, you should not waste it. Just launch Tier 1. You can add more Tiers to an existing study. You won't be able to change Tier 1 conditions, but if you went with assumption of low effort and low benefits for Tier 1, then it should not cause any problems for you. Just be transparent you will add more Tiers based on initial data and feedback.

Custom Consents and Waitlist

When participant accepts Terms of Research Contract at the bottom of your page, they also get a popup with Research Consent presented. We provide generic template of a consent to participate in your research. You can use provided template, modify it slightly or put your own custom consent.

If you are an academic, planning to publish your results, most high impact journals expect providing certificate of ethics committee or oversight board which can require specific consents. As this may take time, we suggest publishing your research in a waitlist first. You can send your wailisted research link for a review to any entity, you can also see participants joining wailist and get initial feedback on Tiers, and is your research page clear in its communication.

You can also launch your research without being in wailist, but it's good to at least send it, to few people and collect feedback, as you won't be able to change terms promised to participants once they join.