BE SMART AND GRAB A FIVER AN OPINION...... (smartstudents.co.uk)

Member Name: broksababe

Product:	smartstudents.co.uk
Date:	05/02/02 (108 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Earn £5 for every review they accept, no reading or rating required, anyone can join.

Disadvantages: Can't see it lasting, no community.

www.smartstudents.co.uk is a site basically designed for and aimed at students, however underneath its University mask lies an added attraction, there are numerous categories available and once into these you will find reviews, reviews submitted by people like you and me, nothing out of the ordinary you cry, well the difference here is that smartstudents is not for only students but anyone can join and the £5 per opinion accepted is enough to tempt anyone, interested yet? Well let’s take a tour of the site before you make your mind up.

THE HOME PAGE
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Avery busy and bright home page indeed with a bold yellow and pink colour scheme that runs throughout the site, on the left hand side you will see all the various categories available, all clearly listed but in order to proceed you will firstly need to register.
All you need to do is to choose a unique username and password, fill in your personal details, as you will see the online form asks you which university you are at, but rest assured there is also an option for anyone not at University, so anyone from any age group can join. Now lets look at the various categories.

UNIVERSITIES
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An extremely comprehensive listing of all the Universities smartstudents cover, a map clearly shows the location then by clicking on one you are given a full review of what they have to offer, all the courses, term times, qualifications needed and lots more.
This would be very useful indeed for any perspective student thinking of applying to join.

NEWS, TV, WEATHER
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The latest headlines from around the globe, plus breaking UK new stories, here also is a weather map from the Met office, so you can get your local weather for the next 3 days at the click of your mouse.

TOP CD’S
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This weeks top 10 singles and albums, at a glance you will see some are in
bold blue writing and some are in black, the black means that these are still awaiting a review, so you could be the first person to submit one on any of these.
Also above you will see “Music Reviews”, these are all under tabs listed from A-Z, simply click on a letter and it will display all artists beginning with that letter, no pictures each is displayed on a CD case, select the artist of your choice and there you will see all submitted reviews for them.
Of course if your favourite isn’t listed, simply write a review and send it in to be added.

TOP MOVIES
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Again similar to the above, here are the listings for the top 15 films in the cinema this week, currently at number one is Vanilla Sky, again all are available to be reviewed.
Plus the top 20 Video and DVD rentals and sales, again the alphabetical tab lets you peruse back through the archives, just about every film ever released is here and a lot are review- less, each is displayed on its own click able film clipboard.

TOP MUSICALS
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Fancy reviewing a musical, comedy or play, well here’s your chance, the newest being displayed on the main page and the rest as before alphabetically.


TOP BOOKS
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This one should tickle the taste buds of any avid bookworm, it lists the current top 10 hardback, paperback and fiction and hardly any of these have been reviewed, so a nice little potential earner if this is your chosen field, even looking in the A-Z reveals the reviews are very thin on the ground.

COMPETITIONS
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At the moment there are 6 available for members, these range from captions to funniest pets, the only thing that is rather off-putting is that it does not actually list the prizes, so not much incentive here then.

GAMES
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Fun time and you will not be disappointed here, a whole page of
very playable games from Tetris to snake (for the Nokia addicts amongst you), checkers and a very good version of space invaders for a retro blast, these are all excellent and very addictive.


TRAVEL
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Got a travel story to tell? These can be either on a particular destination, holiday, firms, holiday disasters and anything remotely relevant to travel, so lots of scope in this section.

FUN HOUSE
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A selection of funnies from jokes to web sites, even a month by month archive of funnies, not a bad section but then again nothing stunning here, alright if you have nothing better to do but otherwise give it a miss..

FUNK OR PHONE
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Another lets not bother, this is merely the usual mobile logo’s, none of them free in fact £3 each, nothing new even here, next..


EMAIL
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Once registered you automatically have an email account, this of course is only accessible on this site when you are logged in, but is very useful for sending your opinions in, not a bad email service, the account is your smart students username and contains the standard inbox, folders, preferences and address book.


GAME REVIEWS
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Reviews here for the PS2, Playstation, Game boy, PC, N64 and Dreamcast, no A-z tab but each console links to a full alphabetical listing of the games already reviewed, so just as good in terms of navigation.


MORE INFO AND THE VERDICT
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So now you have all seen what exactly smart students have to offer, interested yet?? , Well once registered you are now ready to earn some cash, I find the best way to send my opinions as I said is via the email account you get with them located on the home page, simply paste it into an email or add as an attachment and tell them the title you want and that’s it, you do not even hav
e to say where you want it, they will home it for you.

You will always receive a reply from Shashana who seems to run the site, telling you whether or not your review has been accepted, the key factor here is before you send it in, look and see how many if any reviews are already in on your topic, if there are more than 3 then not much chance unless it is really outstanding, 0-1 reviews already on site almost guarantees yours being published.

I could not actually believe the quality of some published, say 120 words and very basic, surely they must be nuts accepting these poor offererings.
They also accept opinions on other subjects, shopping, web sites, electricals, magazines and anything really, I have sent quite a few that do not fit into the main categories and had them all accepted, however I have yet to ever see them on the site itself!!

Payments are made monthly by cheque and the good news for anyone who is now really tempted to give it a go is that YES they do pay, I must admit I was very sceptical at first but they do in fact give you £5 for each published and I have had 3 cheques off them so far so it is indeed a genuine earner.
How long they will be able to keep this up is the next question, they do have various advertisements on the home page from CD Wow for example, but surely they can’t keep it up.

There is also a incentive to sign up other members and for this you will receive £1 for each joining, however you can also email Shashana and ask for some goodies to give out to promote the site, I received 20 mousemats, pens and a polo shirt, plus hundreds of cards to give out, and all I can say is these are super quality, the polo shirt was lovely!!
Shashana is always glad to help and will email you back promptly with any queries and seems very friendly.

The other plus is there is no other work involved as this site does not have ratings or reads, you do not have to do a thing, simply se
nd your opinions and sit back and wait for your cheque in the post, what more could you want, of course it has no real community to it but it’s certainly a nice little earner whilst it lasts.
© Ana 2002

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