Look out, look out, there's a churner about (ciao.co.uk)

Member Name: dave27

Product:	ciao.co.uk
Date:	23/04/01 (39 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good subjects, reasonable rewards, high membership, 20 most recent opinions

Disadvantages: Not as good a payment rate as Dooyoo

Dooyoo may be the best site around for expressing opinions on all manner of very interesting subjects, but it is not the only one. There are a number of rivals and the most obvious rival in the UK is Ciao, a similarly Europe wide program that allows users to earn money for writing opinions.

I am a member of both programs and find them both extremely enjoyable – in fact, too much so at times (Mrs D will tell you EXACTLY what she thinks...), because they can definitely become something of an obsession (see my op elsewhere on this site on Dooyoo as an addiction).

I kicked off with Ciao about nine months ago and heard so much there about Dooyoo that I had to check this one out as well. I've been extremely pleased with it since I got here and am over the moon with results so far.

Okay, let’s have a quick run down on the two programs as some form of comparison.

Ciao first. When I first started with Ciao, you got £1 for signing up when you’d written your first opinion, 30p for an opinion (which had to be at least 90 words long) and 5p every time one of your opinions got read. You also got about a third of the earnings of anyone who you referred in and that could significantly boost your earnings.

After a while, Ciao reviewed those rates and sign up is now 50p, an opinion gets you 10p and a read gets you 2p, but that’s still quite a good deal, I think – not as good as Ciao, but still a great reward for doing something you like.

Ciao also offer something called the premium fund where you can get additional payments for particularly good ops, although the way this is awarded is a closely guarded secret.

Another recent change has been the move to increase the minimum number of words from 90 to 120 in an attempt to stop the huge amount of ‘churning’ going on. Churning is a form of abuse where someone writes a lot of very short (i.e. the minimum number of words and v
ery few more) opinions in order to stack up a lot of 10p’s. High churn rates soon fill up the site with rubbish and get it a bad reputation and churners are the bane of any good member’s life as they can effectively push your reads well down the list of recent posts.

I belong to a Ciao mailing list and you should see what they say about people they consider scum. In a recent example, one particular member had about 14 different opinions out of the most recent 20 submitted, which is usually a clear indication of churning and I believe they got a certain amount of grief.

As far as Dooyoo is concerned, you don’t get a signing on fee, but you get the same 10p for an opinion, while each one read earns you 5p. Now when you get a lot of reads, as people usually do on Dooyoo, this can make a BIG DIFFERENCE and I know my earnings are significantly higher with Dooyoo than they are with Ciao. In addition Dooyoo pays you for the first 10 ops submitted by anyone you refer. The other notable advantage with Dooyoo is that if you get a crown for writing an opinion which is particularly strong, you earn £1 and usually get a lot of reads for such an op.

Payment on Ciao will be given when requested, but you have to have a minimum amount of £10 in your account. Payments go directly to a named bank account of your choice and are reliable. I know. I have received several.

As far as the rest of Ciao goes, there’s an excellent community centre which lets you check out things such as most read authors or most read opinions.

As with Dooyoo, you can set up a circle of trust on Ciao, which makes it quick to find any readers you particularly admire and want to regularly check out.

Again, similarly to Dooyoo, you are able to rate opinions you read and leave comments. The ratings can be any one of ‘Very helpful’, ‘Helpful’, ‘Fairly helpful’ and ‘Unhelpful’. There
is a lot of store placed by comments and ratings and a lot of damage can be done when one member thinks another one has unfairly rated one of their opinions. I have seen an awful lot of quite vicious infighting going on when something like this occurs.

Ciao has much the same set of subjects to write about as Dooyoo, although it doesn’t have a speaker’s corner section. The full list of subject areas is as follows:

Banking and Personal Finance
Cars and Motorbikes
Computers
Electronics and photography
Entertainment
Education and careers
Games
Health and beauty
House and family
Internet
Shopping
Sport
Telecommunications
Travel and city guide

If you want to change one of your opinions you can do so, but the opinion stays listed where it was originally written in your listing. With Dooyoo it is put to the top of your list when it is changed. I think Dooyoo has the better solution here, but one area where Ciao is at an advantage is that they have a page which lists the latest 20 opinions to be posted. With Dooyoo, you only get the most recent opinion shown. It means that your opinion will stay in a prominent position for a while, although when there’s a churner about, you can quickly fade from view.

The other main point to note about Ciao is the increasing amount of abuse. All opinions on Ciao, as with Dooyoo, are supposed to be original and the writer’s own work, but it’s easy to just copy from another website or magazine article. Such an act is strictly off limits and anyone found doing it is likely to get their account closed down, so be warned.

In recent weeks there seem to have been a few problems with the Ciao program and currently there is a lot of debate as to whether they are planning on rationalising and/or closing down through lack of funds. They have already pulled back a lot of functions to the centre in Germany.

All
in all, Ciao is an excellent program and site, although I much prefer Dooyoo. (Cries of girlie swot and teacher’s pet!)

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