Wonder

Research Outline

Prepared for Amir E. | Delivered March 9, 2020

TAM For Online Research Sans Markets and Patents

Goals

To determine the total addressable market (TAM) for online research, excluding market/competitive research and patent research, to provide case studies of successful online research companies, and to provide any additional insights about the online research industry.

Early Findings

We find no instances of online research companies which explicitly do not do market, competitive, or patent research; in fact, market research seems to be an ubiquitous selling point and lists of top research companies seemingly always refer to them as "marketing research companies."
The market research segment is fairly robust and diversified, with the top 25 companies having $22.5 billion of the whole industry's $47.3 billion in annual revenues.
Our initial research did not locate a market report for online research as an industry, nor any estimates of its size apart from market research; we therefore infer that non-market research has a very small TAM, comparatively speaking. However, that is not to say that it is non-existent.
There are several articles written by work-from-home online researchers (many of which mention Wonder) which acknowledge it as a good side-hustle that can potentially turn into a steady main source of income. 
Within individual companies, not all research is market-related; IT-Boss Research, for example, offers court research for their clients. 
However, these non-market / patent research companies tend to sell themselves on securing researchers with specialized knowledge of a given industry.
Those who speak of making a career out of doing online research often freelance as individuals rather than launching new companies. 