The function of price and viral marketing (Reviews Sites in general)

Member Name: freediveheaven

Product:	Reviews Sites in general
Date:	18/12/08 (390 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Make money

Disadvantages: Content is variable

My experience of review writing sites is a fairly typical one, I started on Ciao, no real recollection how, I imagine I read something about sites that you can earn money on for writing, probably while researching a travel destination , saw the chance to make money, realised I was deluding myself, but stuck around anyway to make a few pence. Then I discovered Dooyoo where I could earn more for the same bit of writing and even though in my early days it was a rubbish platform when combined with a dial up internet connection. I stuck with it and now it is my go to review site. I have also dabbled in Helium a bit last summer and made good money for a reasonable amount of effort (read my review to learn how) and have checked out a few pretenders to the throne in the past few years but all have failed to deliver.

Over time I guess I have made a half decent amount of pocket money that has been spent on presents for myself or the ankle biters (I have always referred to them as ankle biters even though my oldest is now taller than me) and this year I accumulated enough to buy most of the Christmas presents for the family plus a rucksack for me.

Review sites can be broadly split into two groups, those that pay for content and those that do not. Amazon, lonely planet or tripadvisor would both be examples of the latter, people contribute for a number of reasons and as such certainly in the case of tripadvisor I find the information more reliable and useful however eve the reviews on that site I treat with some caution because it is not unknown for a hotel owner to post reviews on their own premises to gain publicity without declaring their connection.

Sites that pay for content like Dooyoo, Ciao and Helium are far more interesting to look at especially as an economist as they provide an insight into what is known as the function of price. In the economy price is said to fulfil three functions, rationing, incentive and signalling functions It rations scarce resources, sends a signal to produces that there is either excess demand or supply and provides the incentive to producers and consumers to either produce or purchase goods. You can see the price function in operation in the way that members on Dooyoo responded when the site changed the reward structure it pays on its reviews. When Dooyoo switched from paying 3p a member read to 1.5p per member read and a flat 50p payment for posting a premium review it certainly changed the way that members behaved on the site.

The initial signal received by many was that quality was no longer the main driver for Dooyoo, the business itself relies on click through from members of the public, priority positions in products search engines and advertising revenue from business customers. As such the focus was to increase the membership and increase their output. The result has been a significant increase in the volume of reviews posted on the site and also an increase in the number of members who write a significant number of reviews in a relatively short period.

The quality of this increase has been variable, one of the aims of Dooyoo is to increase the number of products being reviewed, therefore there is a small price incentive, one penny, to suggest a new product for the catalogue, this will then generate a review and increase the catalogue size. One outcome of the flat rate payment though is a significant increase in the reviewing of the same products, without looking I'm pretty sure both Mars Bars and Twix have been reviewed hundreds of times and each time now Dooyoo will pay more than the cost of these items in payment to the writer.

To ensure quality Dooyoo combine payment with regulation, they set the minimum review length at one hundred and fifty words and they also pay £1.50 to any review that is crowned each week, in addition they have monthly competitions that can earn additional reward. The quality incentive works for some writers and not for others, some writers do not see the reward as being attainable and opt to post lots of short reviews to maximise their earnings that way while others write reviews that they think will attract member nominations and thus the chance of a crown.

This increase in reviews written is not the only consequence of the payment structure there are a few others that work against the sites best interests. The first from my own point of view is that I'm less trusting of the content on the site these days. There are a group of writers I trust implicitly particularly in the travel, book and movie category however there are also many writers I do not. When I was car guide I would often read reviews from members who claimed to own a set of cars to rival J.K. from Jamiroqui, or as a fellow former guide put it recently, "to have seen every new film release within a day of launch even though they appear to be on this site 24/7". Multiple owners of every Nokia phone or camera from Nikon are also common on the site as well.

Plagiarism has always been an issue on review sites however it is definitely on the increase, scanning the guide forum there is a daily list of those members caught plagiarising from other sites and these are mostly removed by Dooyoo but you may be surprised to hear not always. Some are so lazy they copy from other members of review sites or just go to Amazon or Wikipedia, these are easy to spot, others are more devious using only fragments of copied material or varying the sites they use, taking a bit from the Daily Mail, adding something from the BNP site and then finishing off with the Guardian, for these the devil is always in the detail when it comes to spotting them, or you get those members who take a review in a foreign language and run it through a translator and you end up with a load of waffle.

The price function works differently on Ciao.co.uk to drive behaviours. On Ciao payment is based on member rates and as such it is almost run on a reciprocal arrangement, the more you read rate and comment the more you are visible on the site and hence the more those members read your work in return and boost your earnings. The incentive or reward to ensure your quality is maintained is less clear as it is through a monthly bonus scheme however the same rule seems to apply, the more popular and visible you are the more top ratings you can attract and the greater your potential reward. This payment system promotes far more attention on the ratings given, members have been known to get rather aggressive over ratings given and the vitriol spills over into the guest books of members, then again you also get the members who spend all their time sending cuddly messages or morning salutations to others, a sort of viral marketing for the review writing scene. One of the sister sites Ciao.com has recently dropped from paying $1 per review to 25c and from reports received suffers from similar problems that blight Dooyoo but on Ciao.com there is an even greater incentive to over rate your friends' reviews.

The incentive function of price on Helium is rather more blurred, here you have a system of payment that does not rely on volume of reads but on some strange system that seems to link reward to the number of clicks from search engines your material creates, earnings per review are poor unless you are active at a time where hey are paying a flat rate for posting in certain categories, that is the time, often called a Rewardathon, when you can make money on the site.

Anyway I have truly rambled on long enough, easy to spot the teacher about to start his long Xmas holiday as I'm still talking about the function of price and even a bit of viral marketing.

Thanks for reading and rating my review.

Summary: Me rambling on really.