Potential Wasted... (ciao.co.uk)

Member Name: D1A1

Product:	ciao.co.uk
Date:	08/11/00 (59 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Money making 'potential'

Disadvantages: Read the text - there's too much!

I used to be at UK.Ciao.com and I was incredibly addicted to it for about 2 months. In this time I managed to make £448.54 to be precise and I have to say that I was all set looking forward to a nice Christmas bonus in the form of this extra money. Great! £448.54! How did I make this much? Well, basically Ciao is the same sort of thing as dooyoo.co.uk where you can write opinions and get paid for it and also read other people's opinions in order to get a better knowledge of certain products - products that you might be interested in purchasing within the near future.

I personally fell into a complete addiction/brain insanity period where I just could not stop writing opinions! I was getting paid 30p per opinion and 5p every time somebody read my opinion! In around two months I had made a fair amount of cash from 360+ opinions. But there was another incentive: the dreaded referral scheme! Well that's a little harsh, because there wasn't anything dreadful about it really; just recommend as many friends or family as you like and as a reward you get 30% of their earnings as commission! I actually 'made' £200 from this referral scheme, but I didn't actually make this money because my account was deleted. Nice.

Now, at first I was completely shocked, and hadn't a clue why I had all my money removed! and I still do not know fully why this has happened, but I would firmly like to leave Ciao in the past because it is in my view an ailing company that will undoubtedly go out of business in the near future. They cannot be making much money (maybe this is why my account got-------?) because they 'paid out' so much to people and were/are only getting money from banners etc. Now I don't know how Dooyoo.co.uk make money, but then that is not for me to know.

The annoying part of Ciao is that the site is not at all user friendly, not like Dooyoo.co.uk is. The colours and overall presentation don't exactly l
eap up at you with radiance and brightness: it's a far more 'dreary' tone and atmosphere here.

Ciao are currently in their 'bonus period' 3 where you can earn only a third of the amount of Bonus period 2, and I'm sure this has resulted in a serious decrease in opinions being written on the site. They pay now only 10p per review and 2p every time someone reads your opinion. This isn't good pay, but to be honest I never really enjoyed writing opinions at Ciao because there was a distinct lack of belonging, and the community spirit that Dooyoo.co.uk has, was not and is not there. For example, you cannot comment on people's opinions. You cannot change your opinion in order to improve it or amend any errors in the opinion. And the worst part is that the work force is almost non-existent. But there you go, you may well think it's a good site and you might like Ciao (you might even work for them (eek!)) and then you may feel exactly like me.

I have been told by someone who is still a member that when he emailed Ciao asking for when He would be paid for Bonus period 2 they replied and stated that they are still only half way through paying out for their bonus period 1. Make of this what you will, but apparently BP1 (bonus period 1) should have been paid out by September 6th.

I feel that at Ciao when I was writing opinions the only incentive was the money: there wasn't such a need to make quality opinions because it seemed everyone was doing the minimum of 90 words or thereabout. But why would anyone bother doing this for any other reason? Hardly anybody ever read your opinion (and I did write some fantastic opinions as well as standard ones) and I can see why. Everybody (there are bound to be a few exceptions0 who joined up with ciao didn't join up to learn more about other products and services - like we do here at Dooyoo.co.uk but for the sole purpose of earning money. I was foolish to get dr
agged in to writing so much at Ciao as they never paid me a penny. Here at Dooyoo.co.uk though I have actually received payment, and I'll continue to write the best opinions that I can.

I'm not 'sucking up' to dooyoo.co.uk but I truly believe that Ciao is a far less pleasant place to write opinions. Dooyoo.co.uk is a great place.

I hope this has helped you, and I'd be very interested to hear any comments that you might have. For instance - have you been paid? Have you had a similar experience? Maybe I was unlucky and this was just a one off: maybe Ciao is a better place than I ever knew. If it were, then I sure would have preferred to go there instead. (I'm having a great time writing opinions here at dooyoo.co.uk and it's helping my typing skills no end)

Summary: