Quixapp is a great tool for outsourced research

Like many people I do a lot of research online for fun and profit, things like: -

Finding potential blogs to approach for guest posts
Finding possible targets to approach for link buys
Analysing the link profile of competitors for reports and proposals

That all sounds like a lot of work doesn’t it?
That doesn’t really fit with my plan to move down to a 4 day week does it?

OK so this is the sort of task I would normally outsource to one of my team on oDesk but due to the time it would take and the need to have someone who knows what to do this can get expensive.

Now instead of using a host of toolbars and procedures and training to get the team up to speed on the data gathering side of the task I have swapped out to use the excellent and brilliantly simple Quix by the man with the free but increasingly valuable cartoon, Yoast.

In basic terms Quix is a simple bookmarklet that you drag onto your Firefox toolbar that when clicked allows you to enter simple commands that bring back great results.

With Quix you can do things like: -

Check the whois for the current page
Check Yahoo Site explorer for the links to the current site
Do a simple SEO check across the site

Now currently this is all in procedures and screencasts for each type of task and requires the outsourcer to go get toolbars etc to make things quick.

With Quix I have got the procedures document down to one page for simple research and any new members of the team can get started in minutes rather than hours.

At $2 an hour for this type of research and Quix being free its a great combo.

Watch the video and get started!

An introduction to Quix from Joost de Valk on Vimeo.