With this month’s AB Report, I asked members to fill in a survey on what they want to see in 2009 (the rest of it, of course).

In the past, setting up a survey would not be trivial – either you send a text file people fill and reply (and then you have to tabulate), or you use some scripting program that is unnecessarily complicated for such a rare event.

Enter SurveyMonkey. This service allows you to create simple surveys you can then share with a link. Surveys can be complicated, simple (my member’s survey is basically one entry!), and anywhere in between. It also manages multiple surveys, and tabulating results (a real time saver).

The advantage of using someone else’s system for surveys is obvious. If you rarely do them, hosting the software – and managing it – is not worth your time (and of course, if you regularly do surveys, then you probably already have a system set up).

The free version is limited to 100 responses, which might seem too low. However, it’s been my experience that if you get 5% response from your members (or anyone else) you’re doing fantastic – that means 2,000 people can be asked, and you’ll still stay under the limit. And of course, even if you do hit the 100 limit, that’s still a fair amount of data to crunch – plenty to get an overall view of things.