Another Week, another 12 Trusters...
Apr 05 '01
The Bottom Line It's the people you trust and those who trust you that determine your Fate here at Epinions, so take heed!
When it comes to doing these little "Epinions advice" editorials, it's kind of hard to confine yourself to any one given category. Choosing a title, writing quality reviews, building a WOT, earning and redeeming Eroyalties, rating, and so on. The many aspects of Epinions form a chain reaction of one thing leads to another, and so to elaborate on the relevance of any one given aspect could be tough without elaborating on the others as well.
I won't sit here and brag in your face about the week that the number of people who trusted me went up by a dozen, because I think that was just a lucky week. But what I can do is offer a few things I have learned along the way about what might have contributed to the profound leap.
Just In, baby.
Anyone will tell you, the time you spend in the Just In section is where you will meet the majority of the new or fairly new writers on the site. Instead of waiting for them to find you, you have to go out and find them, leave your name and number and in most cases, they will surely get back to you. And if you're lucky, you may have just gained a truster.
But who am I to sit here and imply that the gaining of a truster is all about luck? Luck has relatively little to do with the whole process of pushing up that magical number beside your next paycheck.
"Give me one reason to trust you and I'll turn right back around..."
If Tracy Chapman were here, she'd be whacking me over the head with that guitar, I can see it now. But it is the truth, if you want people to trust you, you have to give them a reason to trust you. Being that different people trust for different reasons, you might try asking yourself one question.
Would I trust myself?
If you can answer a resounding YES to that question, you're well on your way. Try to read your reviews from the perspective of a complete stranger, or imagine that your own review is one written by a complete stranger upon which you just so happened to stumble. Then ask yourself if you feel like this "person" is someone you would trust. Keep in mind that although you may find yourself trustworthy, it doesn't mean that every Joe Blow that comes across you is going to think the same thing.
Some people trust others who share common interests, some trust their real life co-Epinionators, some just trust the first 800 people they come by and then leave, others trust because they find the author to be a fascinating person. But the bottom line is, the bigger that number is, the higher your reviews are charted, the more visible you are to non-members, the greater the Income Share.
Even if you do hit the milestone of being trusted by a three-digit number of people, this doesn't guarantee that you are going to dominate the charts from the non-member standpoint. I have come to realize lately, that there are a lot of members around here who are trusted by four and five hundred people; some I haven't even heard of are still out there, no doubt. This is why choosing a review title is integral to getting people's attention, so that even if your review is 9th or 10th on the list, your title is all the bait you have to get the hits hook, line and sinker. Whether it's a line from a famous movie, or just a regular common sellout phrase with a twist of lemon. Try and think of a title that would make you want to click on your own review, then sit back and bask in the glory of your newfangled popularity among the Just In surfers and the non-members.
Watch who YOU Trust as well.
This is really what this category is supposed to be about. A lot of the more experienced Epinionators will tell you, you have to watch who you Trust as well. The people whose opinions you trust can reveal a lot about you as a person, and what your interests are. But you also have to keep an eye on them, because they can be misleading.
I remember putting a person on my Web of Trust because they wrote some video game reviews that, while not all of them were VH-material, he seemed to have the same attitude about what to look for in a video game and his standards were very similar to mine. After the massive revamping of the site, I spent a little time away, and a few months later, I was going through the people I trusted, saw his name, and clicked. Only to discover that his last four reviews had been rated as "Somewhat Helpful" or "Not Helpful". When I went to take a look at them, there was much less in the way of actual information, and a profound increase in sentences with all caps and profanity.
At first, it struck me as odd, and I removed him from my WOT, but it occurred to me later that I had had this person on my WOT all this time, and anyone who was curious as to who I was recommending to the community by my WOT could have looked and seen that person and thought, "Wow, flamepillar trusts that guy? I don't know if I can trust flamepillar then if he's supporting someone who does that." So watch who you trust, it makes a statement about how important the community is to you!
Another situation I'm sure many of you, like myself, may have found yourself in is this. You have a friend in real life who joins Epinions. Right away, they track you down, put you on their WOT, and expect you to do the same in return. After all, you've known each other since 3rd grade, why shouldn't you? Only problem is, they didn't pay attention in English as well as you did, and the majority of reviews they write are 100 words, all lowercase, and "somewhat helpful". Now you have to do one of three things:
1. Become their English teacher and risk them holding it against you when you explain to them how they could improve, let alone that their SH ratings are justified.
2. Trust them in return, rate their opinions higher than the masses, and risk losing trust among the Epinions community for helping them out.
3. Try to explain to them why you can't trust them, and risk losing their friendship altogether.
Not a real pretty situation. In my case, I just ignored it and she hasn't been around since then to see that I still haven't trusted her. Most of the ones who are even halfway serious about Epinions anyway are more likely to leave when they see that the masses don't "embrace" them with VH's, or that they have only made 15 cents in their first week. But in my case, hey, I'm up by one and always will be. Even if I don't get her clicks, I got one more on my list. Situations like this, I think, explain a lot of the reason why you can go to the profile of someone who is trusted by 800 or 900 people, and look at their month old reviews to see only 100 to 150 ratings.
So how about the reviews themselves? You want people to trust you, the reviews are the way to do it. Just as your title draws in the non-members, it's what's inside that counts, and that draws in the members.
The Human Thought Process
Got a tape recorder? Do you like to talk to yourself? If so then you're in luck. If not, you might want to try it. A lot of times, when I'm writing a review, I will stop and walk away from the keyboard, and out of the blue, suddenly the thoughts hit me like a ton of bricks. I go "Yeah, I can say that." Or "Ohh, that would sound awesome." By the time I get back to the keyboard, the thoughts have become a muddled deluge of confusion, and I'm left to sort out what to type, where and when to type it, and hope that what comes out in the end sounds somewhat organized and thought out.
That's because most of us can talk three times faster than we can type. We think even faster than that. Our minds are naturally accustomed to processing thoughts at that speed, so when you sit down to type a review and you expect the thoughts to flow as smoothly as they did when you were writing the review in your head while driving home, it's just not going to happen! You'll get an idea, you'll start typing it down, but your mind is going through the motions so fast that your fingers just can't keep up. Eventually you stop, with the ideas cluttered in your mind, try to rearrange them, get them back in order, but sometimes it's just too late.
That's why I'm saying that if you want to write a really smooth review, with all the tone of a person speaking straight to you, try speaking it with your mouth, and recording it. Make believe that someone is sitting next to you, and you're telling them all about whatever it is that you're reviewing. I haven't done that with this review because truth be told, I have no idea where my recorder is. To be completely honest, I have never actually done this before, but I know it would help me a lot if I did.
While some people can speak with more heart than they can write, others write with more heart than they can speak. Just go with whatever your heart finds the easier.
When you write a review that you are so proud of, you dread having to scroll it down your list of opinions by writing another one, you've definitely taken a step into a larger world. Not to condone pride in excess, but if you get a review that seems to be bringing in a lot of trusters for you, don't hesitate to leave it there at the top of your list for a while, because it's the first one that your "return clicks" are going to read, and nothing beats a good first impression, except maybe another one :)
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Epinions.com ID:
flamepillar
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 - Top 50 |
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Member: Timothy Bishop
Location: Neenah, WI
Reviews written: 663
Trusted by: 762 members
About Me:
Mind if I have some of your tasty beverage to wash this down with?
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