CaptainD’s Guide to epinions for New Members - Third Edition
Jan 09 '04 (Updated Mar 06 '08)
The Bottom Line If you're new, what you want to ask is contained here. I know this is true as it's based on all the questions new members have been asking me...
CaptainD’s Guide to epinions for New Members - Third Edition
Changes from Second Edition - some formatting changes, some slightly updated info, new links, some new info added on Writers Corner, the Message Board, and a few other bits and bobs.
Quite a few new members have emailed me asking various questions about epinions, and since I have little time to answer every email these days (though I do try to!), I shall attempt to answer them all here. (BTW – if I haven’t covered a question you want answered, leave a comment about it and I’ll update this review when I can! And don’t be afraid to email me anyway – just don’t necessarily expect a reply straight away!)
One of the most common ones is “Just how do I write a Very Helpful review?”
Writing Style
Basically use your own writing style, but there are a few things that really bug other members. Even if the content of your review is really good, some members may rate you lower if you fall foul of some of these surprisingly common mistakes. These are:
Consistently poor spelling / grammar / lower case personal pronouns / WRITING IN ALL CAPS - there’s really no excuse for this. Epinions has its own spellchecker (though being reliant on American English, it doesn’t sit right with us Brits – when I preview this review, for instance, the words “colour”, “through”, and “favour” will be highlighted as possible spelling mistakes… grr… .but anyway, I have always found that the best way is to write your reviews in Word or some other Word Processor and do a spelling and grammar check with that. It’s also good to give it a quick read through even after this to make sure everything looks right to you.
The use of “i” instead of the correct “I” as a personal pronoun is very common and, to myself and others, extremely annoying!! (I personally would not rate your review lower for that alone, although I would leave you a comment requesting you desist!) And the number of people who just seem to have no concept of how to construct a sentence or use punctuation is alarmingly high. However, it gives the definite impression of just not making any effort, so if you do have a real problem with grammar try to get someone to help you.
WRITING IN CAPS ALL THE TIME IS REALLY ANNOYING AND LAZINESS IS THE ONLY POSSIBLE REASON I CAN THINK OF FOR PEOPLE DOING IT!! I KNOW FOR A FACT THAT MANY MEMBERS WILL RATE YOU LOWER SIMPLY FOR DOING THIS! SO DON'T!!!
As for the style of the writing itself, I feel that it’s good to inject a little humour into your reviews, as long as it doesn’t detract from the review itself. But if you look at the top epinions writers, some are very funny and some are very serious, some very personal and some extremely objective – so it’s really about finding a style that you’re comfortable.
What a review should contain
Brief details about the product should be included i.e. specifications if a computer, plot if a book or movie, etc. But a summary of the product that you could get from the “Product Details” page or even an exhaustive list of features does not in itself constitute a good review – or even a review at all, for that matter. So what should be included?
Personal experience / opinion – after all, if you don’t say what you liked / disliked about the product, then whose review is it? Don’t be worried about reviewing something with one star when everyone else has given it 5 stars – as long as you can explain why you’ve rated it as you have.
How it compares to similar products you’ve used in terms of performance, price, etc – this should only be there to supplement your views on the product itself, and if you haven’t used anything to compare it to, then that’s not a problem. But if you can compare, say, one movie to another movie of the same genre and say why it’s better or worse, that will add value to the review.
Whether you were glad you purchased the product, would you recommend it but advise waiting for it in a sale, is it only recommended for a certain group of people, etc.
What could have made the product significantly better.
A breakdown of the different features and how well they worked.
I know there’s some repetition there – I’m sorry, but it’s because I’m trying to cover every possible type of product review when I’ve only actually written in a few of them!!
After a while you will get a “feel” for what a good review should contain (and some people seem to have an instinctive grasp of it right from the start!). Reading the highly rated reviews in the area you write in will also help you to see what people expect from the top writers on the site (this doesn't only include the "Top Reviewers" of course...)
If someone leaves you with a comment, even if it’s negative (obviously if it’s abusive that’s a completely different matter), take it as a compliment, look at your review again, and see if you agree with what they’ve said. If you update a review that’s not rated “Very Helpful”, don’t feel shy about emailing those who haven’t rated you highly and asking them to re-read and re-rate. Most people are very happy to do this, but remember to put the URL (link) of the updated review - it’s unlikely that many people will actually bother to search out the review to re-rate. In case you weren’t sure, you can get email addresses from the members’ profile page.
And if you get "Somewhat Helpful" ratings on your first few reviews, don't be discouraged - most of us start off that way, and people who've only ever got "Very Helpful" ratings right from the start are smart asses who no-one likes... only kidding...
Oh and one other thing. Once you get the hang of things update your old "SH" reviews and email people to let them know so they can re-rate - it's worth it, believe me. And if you don't, once you've pased 100 VH reviews and see those "Helpful" or "Somewhat Helpful" reviews lurking there, they can really bug you.
Using HTML in your reviews
This is another thing that I’ve been asked about several times. It really is quite easy once you know how.
HTML (HyperText Mark-up Language) uses “tags” to achieve various results. You can do some quite clever things on your profile page with it, but in reviews itself you can only use three HTML commands - Bold, Italics, and Hyperlinks.
Tags are encapsulated in < and > brackets. I will explain the tags below, but in place of < and >, I will use ( and ) – otherwise it will perform the command rather than show you what it is! (Does that make sense?)
To put text in Bold - <b>TEXT YOU WANT IN BOLD</b>
For italics - <i>TEXT YOU WANT IN ITALICS</i>
To hyperlink (you can only link to other pages on epinions, btw) you use:
<a href="http://www.epinions.com/user-captaind">CaptainD's Profile Page</a>
This will link to my profile page. Of course you could juse put http://www.epinions.com/user-captaind - the URL is already hyperlinked – this is because if you use a URL of an epinions page it will automatically hyperlink. The benefit of using the <a href> </a> tags is to give it the title you want.
Income Share
A surprising thing (to me, anyway) is that many people start writing for epinions not knowing that you can earn money from it. And those that do know are often unsure about exactly how this works.
Well, it works through a thing called Income Share – that is, when a product is sold through the epinions’ site via one of their trade partners, a share of the profits from the commission is given to people who have reviewed that product. This is not split equally – the higher the rating a review has, the higher percentage it has of the Income Share. Only reviews with “Helpful” or “Very Helpful” ratings can earn any of this – so if you have old reviews with lots of “Somewhat Helpful” ratings, it would be a good idea to update it and email the raters so they can come back and update their rating. Supposedly people with Top Reviewer hats have the same chance as anyone else – but in my experience they get a totally disproportionate amount of the IS, even given that they might have more and higher ratings. I’m not yet sure if the total number of page views your review has for a product or if the “buy click” comes from your review makes any difference, though I’m pretty sure the former one does.
You won’t get rich, that’s for sure. If you’re in the USA, you can redeem your earnings (get sent a cheque) when you have $10 or more. For we poor Brits and anyone else outside the US, $100 has to be earned before we can ask for our cheque. (I had previously stated - inaccurately - that in Canada the redemption amount was $10 too - it's not, you have to wait till you get $100 like the rest of us...)
All of which means it’s worth spending time to make your reviews as good as possible, and update them if possible. You’re more likely to make a bit of cash with ten well thought-out, well-written, highly-rated reviews than a hundred mediocre reviews with a few mediocre ratings.
You can only earn IS on “Proper” reviews - or, if you exceptionally fortunate or popular, in the Writers' Corner area. Officially epinions states that you can't earn money from these but you can, it's just very unusual - but it does happen. As I write this I have yet to do so myself but as one of my Writers' Corner pieces has over 700 page views it might just happen...
(Writers Corner - an area of the site where you can post stories, essays, poems, even songs. You can find it here. I have some posts in WC that have gone past the 10,000 page view mark now [09.11.07], but nothing that's earned more than a dollar!!)
All of which leads me to my next subject…
Express Reviews (Express Opinions)
If you write a review under 200 words in length it will be posted as an “Express Review”. These have many disadvantages besides their inability to earn you money – the page views don’t get tracked, you’re very unlikely to get anyone add you to their WOT (Web Of Trust) through them, you get fewer comments (and thus the advice that as a new member you’ll need), lower placement (so few people are ever likely to see it), less ratings… still want to write one?
Placement
You may have noticed that certain names keep appearing at the top of the list of reviews for various books / movies / whatever. The exact nature of the placement system is not public domain, but certain principles hold true and are common knowledge:
The Top Reviewers and Leads get higher placement, even when the review’s rating may be lower than a “normal” member.
The more “Very Helpful” ratings you have, the higher your placement is likely to be.
The more members who Trust you, the higher your placement is likely to be.
If someone trusts you, you are much more likely to have a higher placement when that member views the list of reviews.
I've been told that it's the Advisors who get the really big bucks on epinions through their mysterious "bonus" system... I've also been told that it is a public secret that the Income Share formula involves some monkeys and a voodoo doll - which sounds quite plausible to me...
Web Of Trust (or "Trust List, if you prefer)
Who will trust you?
Generally, members who have read at least a few of your reviews and have found you to be a consistently good writer. Some people like to see how a member writes over a long period of time, so you likely won’t build your WOT up quickly at first. Also if you are not an active reader / rater, if you leave abusive or unkind comments on peoples’ reviews, or if you engage in any of the “dodgy” practices in epinions (I’ll explain these below), many members will not consider putting you on their WOT. On the other hand, if you leave kind, helpful comments for people etc, some members will be more likely to add you to their WOT. (NB – it’s not all about your reviews!)
Who should you trust?
Er… well, the same as above but with the roles reversed.
Dodgy Practices…
There are a couple of terms you may have seen that I will explain here – “Revenge Rating” and “Trust Slut”. These are both actually pretty self-explanatory.
“Revenge Rating” – someone has given you a low rating on your review. Whether or not it’s deserved or not, you’re not happy. So you go and rate all of that member’s reviews “Not Helpful”. Yes, there really are some people around here that are that immature. Even if you choose the “hide” option for low ratings (and I don’t see any reason why anyone should), people can find out who you are if you do this. Don’t be afraid to rate dross “Not Helpful” or “Off Topic”, though – that’s a completely different thing. Usually though, if I do rate something very badly, I leave a comment explaining why, partly as a courtesy and partly to help that member improve their writing if they were really trying. (They usually aren’t – it’s actually pretty hard to get a “genuine” Not Helpful rating – I only view them as genuine if the member has not tried to hide their identity, anyway.
“Trust Slut” – there are some people who trust Everybody. They do this (usually to new members) hoping that the other member will add them to their WOT in return. They might gain a large WOT but very little respect.
“Troll” – these strange creatures hang around the Message Board and comments sections. If you see extremely long comments sections on a review (or, more frequently, a Writers Corner piece), chances are that one or more trolls are incumbent in the thread. You can recognise them for their amazing ability to offend almost everyone on the site, seemingly without trying.
(In case you haven't noticed it yet, there's a link to the Message Board at the bottom of every Epinions webpage - or you can click here.)
Hats
There are 3 hats – Category Lead, Advisor, and Top Reviewer. These aren't really very important to new members but they are briefly summarised here just to give you a bit more of an idea why some people have tags next to their names...
Category Lead - well, few of us are ever likely to be made into one of these, I think everyone who is one of these has been a member for years and spends hours each day on epinions.
Advisor - if you want to be one of these you need to spend lots of time reading and rating reviews in your selected category (or categories), and also leave many helpful comments on them.
Top Reviewer - your reviews need to be excellent, you need a large WOT, and you need to either meet the “automatic” criteria and / or be selected by one or more Leads in the category.
These don’t get picked very often (the timing changes occasionally, you can find more information in the Member Centre), but there are several advantages to holding one of these positions. However, you need a lot of time to be able to gain / keep any of them.
How can I get more reads / ratings?
The more active you are reading / rating / commenting on other members’ reviews, the more reads etc you are going to get. This is partly a case of “scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”, but also simply of getting your name known. But don’t rate everyone “Very Helpful” if they’re not – the members you’re going to want to be rating you very highly are the ones who get loads of VH ratings anyway, and are also the ones who are unlikely to rate yours VH unless they really are. So be honest with your ratings and comments. Any member who gets overly upset by a genuine rating or comment isn’t worth the effort and probably won’t last the distance anyway.
For more terms and their meanings, check out MobiProf's Unofficial epidictionary
Well, I think that’s about it for now! If you’re a new member, I really hope you found this useful. If there’s anything else you want to know, just leave a comment!
Thanks to everyone whose questions / comments have helped form this article and keep it accurate!
Official Epinions FAQ Page
Thanks for reading,
CaptainD
See also:
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How to build a WOT
My guides to writing Very Helpful reviews in:
Movies
Books
Games
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