World Exclusive! £15.52 From My First Month With Ciao - But This Would Have Been £41.46 With Dooyoo (dooyoo vs other opinion websites)

Member Name: Sexy Kay

Product:	dooyoo vs other opinion websites
Date:	17/10/02 (169 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Make some cash

Disadvantages: Not enough cash

I've been on a spying mission and, at great risk, have infiltrated the Ciao community. I've mingled fearlessly with some of their top stars to see how they operate. It's time now to report back. I'm ready for debriefing, sweat laden and dirty, and I'll expose the true, uncensored, unabridged, never seen before facts, exclusively to Dooyoo members.

Mmmm, I must stop reading the Sun headlines and get out more!

Anyway, what do you want to know first? I know, let's talk money. It is after all why a lot of people join Dooyoo and Ciao, so let me give you some figures. Let's get it out all in the open for a change. (I am presuming that you know Ciao is Dooyoo's competitor and runs on similar lines).

In my first month (8/9/02 to 7/10/02) I managed to earn £15.52 with Ciao but, the interesting thing is, I could have made much more with Dooyoo - £41.46 in fact for the same period.

Let me show you how I arrive at these amounts.

•Ciao

a - £ 1.00 - for joining as a new member
b - £ 1.00 - for completing a survey
c - £ 6.02 - for members reading my opinions
d - £ 7.50 - payment from their Premium Fund
__________
t - £15.52 - Ciao total for month

Okay, let's go into a little more detail regarding the above.

a - Firstly everyone joining Ciao gets a gift of £1.00, so that doesn't take a lot of effort!

b - Ciao say they offer members the opportunity to complete surveys for money, as well as being paid for writing opinions. The one I completed was on chewing gum, took about ten minutes to complete, and I received £1.00 for doing so. This was the only survey I was offered during the month.

c - As with Dooyoo, members get paid when other members read their opinions. Snag 1: Ciao only give 1p per read (as you know Dooyoo pay 3p). Snag 2: Not all opinions qualify for payment. For example, 1082 people read my opinions
, during the month, but I only recieved 1p's for 602 of these.

Ciao seems to be concentrating on consumer products only. So when you write about books, travel, restaurants and lots of other stuff you receive nothing, no matter how many people read your opinion. To tell if an opinion qualifies to receive the 1p per read there is a yellow band through the category title. No yellow band, no payment. (Note: Only logged in members can see these yellow bands)

d - Ciao pay out £1100 every month, from what they call their Premium Fund, for the 'best' opinions, written in the style that they deem most acceptable. This is equivalent to Dooyoo crowns. Now why, or for what opinions, I received my £7.50 I have absolutely no idea. The amount was just added to my total and not detailed in any way. It's all a mystery and very secretive, other than they do list opinions that have qualified for their very top payments, which can be either £15 or £10 - there were 30 of these listed at the end of my Ciao month.

t - So that's how I made £15.52 with Ciao in my first month, but it was a lot of work! As we all know - at least I hope we all do - we only get a decent number of reads (and therefore payments) if we bother to read other members' opinions (this applies to Ciao and Dooyoo). During the month, therefore, I read (and rated) 1018 opinions and left 934 comments. I posted 14 opinions. This was the most I could possibly do in the time that I had available.

I'll expand on some of the above later, but let's now see what I 'could' have made with Dooyoo - with the same statistics (and effort).

•Dooyoo

e - £32.46 - for members reading my opinions.
f - £ 9.00 - for crowns
__________
t - £41.46 - Dooyoo total for month

I think the Dooyoo figures are straight forward, but just in case ...

e - 1082 members reading my opinions would give me 1082 x 3p, whic
h is £32.46

f - The opinions would have qualified me for 6 Crowns @ £1.50, which is £9.00

t - So with Dooyoo I could have made £41.46 - that is £25.94 more than with Ciao.

From all of the above my conclusion must therefore be that, for me personally, Dooyoo is more profitable than Ciao, as far as money making is concerned.

"Ah yes but ...", I'm sure someone is saying. And, of course there are always 'buts'.

"But ... you could have made more from the Ciao Premium Fund if you had written 'better' opinions, up to £15 for one opinion."

In theory, yes. I don't think my style of writing, however, is what they (Ciao) are looking for. They appear to want factual, reasonably serious stuff, in detail and, as I normally write for fun, I don't really want to write opinions like this. Some of you may want to, of course. Remember though that only 30 opinions a month receive either the £10 or £15 payments, and it does seem that certain established names have an 'advantage'.

"But ... you should have made sure that all of your opinions qualified for the 1p per read, as that would have given you more money, another £4.80 actually."

True! This would have increased my Ciao earnings, for the month, to £20.32. From a personal point of view this would have again been a little boring. You won't believe how many opinions are written on Ciao on things like Lush and Original Source products because they are worth the 1p a hit. Pages of them, and after a while they get soooo repetative to read - the same old thing over and over again. I only really want to write about things that 'I want to write about' - and not simply for the 1p.

"But ... you may not necessarily have had as many reads on Dooyoo as you did on Ciao."

Again that's true but, as I have already indicated, you only get out of Dooyoo and Ciao w
hat you put in. As I see it you have to do two things: (1) Write good quality opinions and (2) Read and rate other members opinions in abundance, and leave comments, until you simply just can't face any more. If you don't do both of these you won't make much money, if that is what you are hoping for - fact!

"But ..."

No more but's, I'm moving on. My firm opinion is that if you go about it right: you will make more money with Dooyoo than with Ciao - full stop - no arguments. I've proved this to my own satisfaction - and I can be quite forceful at times! I'd still like to know what you think though.

There is, well at least for me, more to writing opinions, and being a member Ciao or Dooyoo, than the money. I do it for fun, it's better that watching the idiot box, and I want to keep my hand in at writing.

Now what I did initially enjoy with Ciao was that it seemed so much more active than Dooyoo, with members leaving comments and writing messages in my Guest Book (each member has a GB) and there is a good community spirit. This was nice and welcoming. There's always, of course, one or two members who get up your nose, but that's life - a normal community in other words. There are a few long standing 'experts' who seem to like nit picking. "Oh, but you didn't mention if the product is suitable for a left handed, blue eyed, stick insect, so I can't give you a top rating" But I guess some people like to do this to boost their self esteem, it makes them feel good - so nothing to get upset about, just smile sweetly to yourself! Same with the 'revenge' raters, so what, it doesn't really matter. Generally though, Ciao people are okay people and, of course ...

There are a lot of familiar Dooyoo names on Ciao. This quite surprised me and also how many posted the same opinions on both sites at virtually the same time. Why not, I sup
pose - more money for writing each opinion. Some end up on the Big Rag site as well.

In contrast Dooyoo does seem less active at the present time. The energy and excitement is somehow missing compared to when I first joined. Perhaps it'll come back, I hope so - we shall have to see.

I also find the Dooyoo site is much slower than Ciao, sometimes painfully so. Ciao is easy to find your way around and much quicker to get to wherever you want to go.

The downside of Ciao is too many boring ops, on the same subjects, and only 20 of the latest opinions are listed - as opposed to Dooyoo's 75. Just recently with Ciao I have noticed a lot of new comers churning out opinions and so knocking opinions of the 'latest' lists very quickly. This can result in less reads, unless you are prepared to graft and rate lots of opinions yourself, to ensure you are noticed - sorry, to keep labouring this point!

There is much more I could write but I don't want to go on too long, my main focus has been on the money angle. One advantage of Ciao is that you can claim amounts over £5.00, and this is paid direct into your bank account. This is much more user friendly than having to wait until you get to £55 or £100 with Dooyoo (if you are wanting the cash).

Personally I'd like to see Dooyoo buzzing again, a lot of damage was done recently when the site was 'updated'. Up until the 8th of October I completely ignored Ciao as I was happy just concentrating on Dooyoo, but now I'm not so sure. At the moment my opinion is that it might well be advisable to have a foot in both camps.

Whatever you do: Dooyoo, Ciao or both - enjoy!

Smile and don't take it all too seriously.

- Kay

P.S. Oh and don't forget ... nag, nag, nag ... read and rate lots of other members ops (while you smile)... nag, nag, nag ... and leave comments ...

... Smile a while and while you
smile another smiles and soon there's miles and miles of smiles and life's worth living because you smiled ... Sorry, it's just something my dear old Pops used to say.

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