New to this? Or just curious?
Dec 26 '00
Hi there, for those of you reading this, I have decided to put together a guide to help you get the most out of your reviews. You don't need to use it of course, and I understand that we all have different ways......
Oh it's no good. I'll come out with the truth.
This is a guide written from my perspective. As you can see from my profile, I'm not a brilliant writer, but not a terrible one. In fact I'm an average kind of guy; and I know for sure that there's many like me out there.
If you click on the 'Featured Members' bit on the Epinions homepage, no doubt that they will have had tens of thousands of views and are trusted by a couple of a hundred people while the rest of us are like 'how on earth do they do that?'
If you're one of those people, then I'm completely in awe of you guys. In fact, email me and tell me how you did it, because I want to get there one day!
However if you're an average Epinonator (!) just like myself, then read on, as I'll show you my attitude to the way I write an article.
Before we start though, it's tempting to think that, on joining Epinions, that large amounts of money are possible. After my first couple of reviews, and after referring a couple of people, I found that I got up to $10 pretty quickly. I thought 'Wow!, this is better than all the other make money on the Net schemes, I'm actually earning money.
And on the face of it, that's completely true, and that aspect is very enjoyable, along with the fact that you're dispensing advice to listening ears. But don't get carried away with the money issue. It is very hard work, but then that's what separates the successful people from the not-so successful people - and that's true for every person in life irrespective of age, gender, religion. Hard work always gets you results. But if you're just starting out on Epinions, or even if you're thinking of starting, here is my views, starting in the order in which I formed them.
THE MONEY ISSUE: DON'T OVER OR UNDER-ESTIMATE IT
Yes, money is good, and it's good to get it, but for those of you early on in your Epinion careers (like me), you have got to learn to get not too disheartened when your balance is not moving anywhere fast, and similarly not to get too overexcited when it does move. I noticed that at the ends of the month, when Income Share (explained later) hits your account you'll be thinking - 'yes, I can really take this somewhere' - don't!
I read an opinion in the Members Forum where one guy reckoned he was getting around $1-2.00 for every hour he put in. This is about right, but remember this figure will rise as your popularity increases.
Another point: don't rely on Epinions to give you money every month for important things such as bills. What I do is that I keep all my money in Epinions until I've reached a certain target - mine is a Playstation 2, yours could be something similar. Therefore when you do get it, it's like getting it for free!
WRITING EPINIONS: THE QUEST FOR HR
This is what you get paid for, and at the start, I thought it was best to get loads of articles down quickly so everyone could see how good I was. This is not the case. In fact it's better to write one superb piece than have fifty rubbish ones, for these reasons:
-People recognise quality, not quantity
-You'll get more people of your Web of Trust
-It looks better on your member profile
-You'll get more hits from member and non-members
-You get paid more!
Unfortunately, I found this out the hard way. A lot of my early efforts were only getting twenty hits or so, but my best one so far has got almost eight hundred!
Don't worry if you've got a load of average reviews. There’s never a better time to start producing quality, and you'll find that the community are very forgiving.
The subject matter is very important as well. You may think it's hard to come up of something to review, but it's not. Think about what you did today, what services you used, what music you listened to - something will come up.
That said, you will find yourself drifting towards a certain topic. I own a small mail order business selling camcorders, hi-fi and audio equipment, so I often get into the Electronics category. Don't be too bothered if this happens to you. After all, it's views that earn you money, not the number of subjects you cover.
But sometimes it is good to get to review other things because:
-It gives you a more fuller view of things
-A greater chance of hits (especially for newcomers)
-Get in contact with more of the community (important)
-Expand your horizons! Find somewhere new to go to on holiday.
Writing reviews is also important. I'm not going to tell you how to do it in detail because you are not stupid, and also, you could take up ten thousand words alone on it, but here are the main points:
Express yourself: The main selling point of a good review is a good dialogue between you and the reader. People don't want just information; they want detail. Perhaps the best advice I can give you is to let your personality come through. Don't write your review down on a piece of paper then type it up. Instead, just type. Being a journalist previously, I can testify to this. It will also save you valuable time.
Make sure you keep it as a review: One of the most common mistakes made is that people fail to realise the purpose of a review: to inform others on your experiences. Therefore a mix of information and opinion are required. Both are useless without each other. So keep that in mind when writing.
How much to write? Official guidelines say 100 words, but I think a lot more than that should be required, after all if you know a product, you can talk about it with ease. So aim for 200-300 words. If you look at some reviews, there are many cases of a well-written 100-word piece getting a Recommended, yet a worse-written 300 word piece getting the HR.
Life's a bit like that though - just how did Michael Douglas get Catherine-Zeta Jones - it's how much you've got!
Keep it tidy Just one little tip; make sure you try to use the formatting for bold and italic. It makes your work look at lot tidier, and it will give you a better chance of getting higher ratings. Why? Spaced out articles are easier on the eye. People will lose concentration if they see a load of bunched-up text.
Consider the subject It's also good to consider what you are going to be writing about. While you might think it is good to write the 400th review about Britney Spears' new album - think 'where will I get more views?' It's often best to provide the first or second review about something, even if the item is obscure. In that way, you'll be broadening the Epinions community and attracting more people to the web-site.
RATING OTHER EPINIONS: WHY YOU SHOULD DO IT
Another important part of Epinions is rating other people's work. It's important for several reasons:
-It's what they wrote it for
-You get a better chance of views
-It helps you make friends
-You get more information
It's often hard to read others Epinions, but you must do it. After all, why would people read yours? I try to rate everything that I read, but it's not easy because of time constraints. But make sure that if someone shows an interest on you, then show an interest back! Also checking the latest reviews, and rating them is a good idea. This gives you an insight to how others are doing, and you know that they are online. If you time it right and leave a comment, you never know, you might make a friend.
It's completely up to you how you rate, and I'm not here to dictate to you how you should rate. But do watch out; there are a lot of scammers out there, who write blatant rubbish. Lets all give them the NR and get them out of here. I believe that Epinions is a good earner for honest, hardworking people.
There's also a lot of debate on why people sometimes decide against showing their Epinions ID when they rate. In my view, this feature should be disabled. For a start if you anonymously HR an opinion, you're only denying yourself the chance for some page views from the person's review that you just rated. I can understand that some people choose to do it for NR-ing a review, but if you've written good, honest reviews, you've got nothing to worry about. Even if they do come back and NR your reviews, they are going to be a tiny percentage.
THE WEB OF TRUST AND IT'S IMPORTANCE
The Web Of Trust is very important, and you will be looking to get as many people in here as possible. I have only got 13 in mine at the moment so some more would be very welcome!
The advantages of getting a large WOT are many:
-Greater communication between members
-People alerted when you write new reviews (sometimes)
-More page views
-Greater status
It's a good idea to trust people that you like, as they will often trust you back, provided that you are honest. But the best way to get people in your WOT is to be friendly. Write food reviews, post messages, even email people. The results can be good.
When enough people trust you, you will find that your reviews will be read more and more.
Similarly, it's important to use your WOD (Distrust) in order to get rid of the scammers - the sooner the better. I haven't used mine as yet, but will do in the future.
But for all you beginners and people looking to get better - write better reviews, and you'll get more people into your WOT.
A good way to start getting people in is to customise your profile page. That way you’ll look more interesting, and people will be more likely to read your reviews. There’s a lot of good guides to the HTML involved, but it’s not difficult. For example;
(b) then (/b) gives you bold text
(i) then (/I) gives you italic text
(hr) gives you a line across the page
(marquee) text (/marquee) gives you scrolling text
(a href=link)name of link(/a) gives you a link and it’s title.
Note that here you’ve got to replace ( with < and ) with >. I just couldn’t use them here or else they would have worked….too well!
VIEWS: HOW NON-MEMBER VIEWS ACTUALLY DO PAY
Your views are divided into two sections: members and non-members. You do get paid for the member views at the rate determined by what product you reviewed. But non-member views do count too.
At the end of the month, Income Share, which is the money Epinions earn, is divided between the most popular reviews, irrespective of the member/non member ratio. One of my reviews has earned over $20, despite getting just 14 member views. This is because of the large number of outsiders who read it.
So, you've got to remember to cater for those reading it. All sorts of people use Epinions, and it's good to get those views.
ARE YOU ENJOYING IT?
If you’re unsure about furthering your Epinions career, this is the main question to ask yourself. For enjoyment is probably the main factor which is keeping us all going. It’s nothing to do with money - after all, I don’t want to get paid $1 an hour for typing stuff onto a web-site. I want to be able to offer advice to people, and help them in purchasing products so they are happy, and one day if I’m lucky, become an Epinions Advisor.
And that’s really the main selling point of Epinions - a community there to help it’s members. If you’re not enjoying it, perhaps it’s not for you. But if you are - let’s keep on reading, writing and rating!
I hope you guys have found this of some help (although I know there’s plenty others out there). Feel free to leave me some comments on how I can improve this review, and my own Epinions personality.
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Epinions.com ID:
ccn158
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Member: Simon Liau
Location: London, UK
Reviews written: 41
Trusted by: 87 members
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