Things I wish someone had told me back in February
Dec 17 '00
I joined Epinions from some link in a Delphi forum about making money over the internet. I joined only for sole purpose of earning cash. This happened back during a time when I was spending 5 or 6 hours a day online just to earn a quarter and hoping by the end of the month I had reached a check limit in some program I was using. I had been bitten by the "surf to earn" bug, and it was infecting my whole being.
Several months have passed now, 9 to be exact, and I guess you could say my cash-bug infection is gone. One at a time the cash earning programs I had joined have passed away, and a few are still hanging in there but I do not bother to use them much anymore. Epinions has evolved for me from a money-making scheme to something more, something oddly resembling an addiction. Yes, I am human and I can admit that the money is nice. Ultimately it is what keeps me going on. But if there had been someone there in the beginning to tell me a few things about this Epinions stuff, I could have been so much more satisfied with my first 5 or 6 months at Epinions than I am. I will share those pieces of advice with you now.
100 words will not get you far at Epinions.
About two months ago I was in a lull and nothing inspired me to write a new Epinion. So I began looking back through my first few reviews, and I realized they were all garbage. Maybe that is a little harsh, but the one paragraph, barely over 100 words "reviews" I had put together resembled the work of a 12 year old, and I can write so much better than that. At the time I thought it was more important to write a lot of reviews than to write a few quality reviews. I was wrong.
Build a good, clean web of trust.
I began trusting anyone who wrote one good review that made me laugh at some point. I never bothered to go through and read any of the other reviews that person may have written. I assumed if they wrote one good one, everything that person has written is probably great and off to my WOT they would go. So many months later I had to take an entire afternoon to go through my WOT and find out who really needed to be there and who did not. Now I read through at least 10 reviews of someone before adding them to my WOT.
Join an eGroup or Delphi forum! Meet other Epinionators!
I had no idea such groups existed for the majority of my time here at Epinions. But in fact there are over 100 eGroups at eGroups.com designed specifically for Epinions. Some are just to meet other Epinions people, but most allow review posting. It is a great way to have a group that are always there to read your stuff, and you can read theres in return. I have had the opportunity to read some great people that I probably never would have found on my own at Epinions. The Epinionator forum at Delphi is great as well, and I wish I had found them all sooner.
Comments do help- if you have something to say, say it.
I admit, I am not a big comment-leaver. I feel the urge on occasion, but generally I tend to overlook leaving a comment. This is still a struggle I have, but it is not because I do not know any better, I just never think about it. However, I do take notice when someone leaves a comment on my reviews, whether good or bad, and I almost get excited when I find new comments on my reviews.
I feel like a completely different person at Epinions than when I first joined in February of 2000. My goals have changed for the site, and although the extra money is great, I now realize that you earn what you put in to the site, and if you are not willing to work hard then you won't earn to your full potential.
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Epinions.com ID:
bkaysimon
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Location: Killeen, Texas, USA
Reviews written: 99
Trusted by: 40 members
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