Ciao-Ciao! Bye Bye! (ciao.co.uk)

Member Name: annallon

Product:	ciao.co.uk
Date:	13/07/09 (154 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good review layouts

Disadvantages: A LOT! Very poor earnings, cold and empty community

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This review does mainly focus on Ciao.co.uk but also compares it to dooyoo to get an idea what it is like. And I've just realised it is for the wrong section, I apologise! I will get it moved, thank for for pointing it out.
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I have been with Ciao over over 9 months and I have only just started earning money today! So I thought it was a momentuous moment that I ought to write a review on this almost-infamous review website.

To clarify for those who are new to review sites, ciao.co.uk is one of the main review sites where you can review anything, like dooyoo. Unlike dooyoo, Ciao do not have the system where you get paid for per review you submit; but by the number of people who read your reviews. On dooyoo, you do get paid for a specifically 500 dooyoo miles per review and 15 dooyoo miles per read. I think this is a lot more generous than ciao.co.uk at the moment! The amount of money you generate per rating depends on the number of £ signs that is on the product summary page. It will be either 0.5p, 1p or 2p or for some reviews, you will not be paid at all!

£ = 0.5p
££= 1p
£££= 2p
My gripe with this is that the pound signs itself is actually quite hard to find if you don't know where to look for; it is transparent and the outline of the £ is very faint black. It obviously has been done to make sure more people review the lower pound signs so they don't have to pay more money than necessary.

When reviewing reviews, I do feel that Dooyoo review system is quite limited and with some adjustments, the review layout could be a lot more better; with pictures and editing of the fonts. Ciao has picture capability and provides guides on how to edit the font to improve the layout of review, which I think is so much better than what Dooyoo is providing, with its mono-font, one can't create pleasing headlines to separate the review into even chunks to make it easier to read. However, on the other hand, I find that Ciao's default font is awful to read. It squashes the reviews into big blocks which makes it harder to read. Dooyoo reviews are a treat to read as the letters are generously spaced in between.
However, I find Ciao.co.uk a notoriously difficult website to navigate around! You have to look very hard to get what you want- if you want to view who has rated your reviews, it is normally tucked in the tiny corner on the right. But if I look at it from reading reviews point of view; the reviews are appropriately advertised on the front of the Ciao page, different reviews for different sections so it is good to get attention to areas where not many people may read. But I don't like the Featured Members section where it shows all the prominent members of Ciao.co.uk, bringing even more attention to the great writers but also dragging away attention from other areas. It has its pros and cons.


In order to get reads on your reviews, you will inevitably have to go to other people's profiles to read their reviews; in order to encourage them to read your reviews. But it isn't as easy as it is on Dooyoo, where you can track down who has rated your reviews, it shows their images on your profile. But on Ciao, you have to look pretty hard to find who has rated on your reviews; and thus has lead to a lot of people commenting on your reviews in order to get attention from you. So I end up with a lot of comments on my reviews; most with no significant value and always say the same things ' Good Review!' or 'Nicely Reviewed!'. I like to think that I add more content to my comments that I make on dooyoo but on Ciao, it does seem to feel forced, I think. When rating the reviews, I read rather quick compared to most people, I don't like how Ciao makes the assumption that I haven't read the page yet and thus refuses to allow me to make a rating! It's tolerable once in a blue moon but it does this in almost EVERY REVIEW I READ! ! ! ! It gets rather infuriating if I plan to read a lot of reviews; I eventually give up by the 8/9th review. When rating a review exceptional, I have to write a comment to explain why it is exceptional. I don't like being forced to make comments!

One thing I have noticed is that on Ciao, they don't review films, they review DVDs so if you have seen a film at the cinema, you can't quite review it on the site until the DVD has come out! Which I find frankly quite ridiculous! A person who is researching in a particular film may very well want to read reviews before putting his DVD on order or before putting it on wish-list. I think it is quite limiting in this respect.

So far, after writing about 23/24 reviews, I have made a grand total of £1.15! I don't think this is the site where you can generate a reasonable amount of income unlike on Dooyoo. So to conclude- even with its cons, I always will prefer Dooyoo due to its ease of navigation, wide range of goods on the site itself and has a large and vibrant community which isn't based on attention-seeking and of course, the generous money given for each review is very nice too! Ciao is now a dated, tired website with very poor navigation and needs to re-think its approach to reviews. To survive in the future, I would suggest a complete refurbishing of the site to get it up-to-date, more generous earnings and perhaps they may be a good competitor of Dooyoo.

Summary: So, this one is to avoid but if you want to make pennies, go for it.