get paid £1.40 for every 150 word review you write! Amazing new site

niknakb

Just tried to join and it sayd they have stopped payments due to spammers.

jemima2k8

Posted by CBUser on 1/9/2009

In order to control spam we have implemented a new member role system which imposes review limits on new members.

As you no doubt already know we have grown at a tremendous rate in the past month. In fact, in a little over two weeks ComparedBy.Us went from less than 200 members to over 3,000 members. In that same period of time we received 29,000 posted reviews and 290,000 review ratings.
Those are great numbers. They certainly exceeded our expectations and put some major stress on both our available manpower and our servers. Unfortunately, what also exceeded our expectations was the level of effort that people would put into trying to scam the system. So far we have deleted more than 5,000 reviews and suspended 132 members for outright plagiarism and other methods of generating false reviews for a quick profit. We were also forced to cancel the Review Rating portion of the Incentive Plan after we found it impossible to separate the genuine review ratings from the spam.
ComparedBy.Us is a young website and we are in the initial stages of trying to build a community of reviewers that are rewarded for their work. The avalanche of attempts to take advantage of our system to earn a quick buck surprised us. Frankly, we are struggling to deal with the influx of content and we simply cannot afford to pay even one scammer. If just one person that is trying to scam the system gets paid what we have gone through in the last 3 weeks will look like a snowflake in comparison to the avalanche that will follow.
From a workload perspective we cannot afford to risk that. From a financial perspective it would ruin us. Like any fledgling business we have financial constraints. As a start up our revenues are still growing and we have to manage our costs so that they do not outstrip our ability to pay them. Even the legitimate review submissions have been greater than what we expected. If ComparedBy.Us is going to succeed we need to immediately place some controls within our system to limit the damage that the spammers and scammers can do to us and we need to implement some means of controlling our costs for legitimate reviews.
As a result we have decided to implement a new Review Submission Policy. All members will be ranked on three roles, Rookie, Beginner and Reviewer. Review posting limits will be set for each level at 10, 25, and 60 reviews per month respectively. Rather quickly we will introduce additional roles that will carry greater freedom to post reviews and earn money on ComparedBy.Us. Each role will be limited to posting reviews up to their limit in each pay period (the next pay period is February 16th to March 15th 2009). By implementing these controls we can limit the amount of spam we have to deal with in the near future. It also allows us to control our costs over the next few months so that we can ensure that we are around for a long time. This has the added benefit of allowing our contributing members to earn money long into the future.
This current pay period will be affected by these limits starting tomorrow January 10th, 2009. However, the limits will NOT affect any reviews you have already submitted. If you have submitted 50 reviews already this month they will not count against the appropriate limit for your assigned role. It will take us a week or so to incorporate roles into your member profile so that every member can easily know their assigned role. Until then, we will be sending emails to all in the Beginner or Reviewer roles. All other members will begin in the Rookie role.
Rookie – limit 10 reviews per month:
All new member accounts will automatically start as rookies. This is also the default role for any member that does not qualify for a higher role. The limit of ten reviews ensures that a member doesn’t waste their time posting reviews that will not meet our editorial guidelines.
Beginner – limit 25 reviews per month:
Only Members who have been editorially reviewed will qualify for this role. Beginner members have obviously shown a willingness to contribute to the community but the content that they submitted is not quite at the level that we require. The Beginner role is meant to be a learning role where members can hone their writing and review abilities with the help of our editorial staff before they move on to a higher role.
Reviewer – limit 60 reviews per month:
Members who have been editorially reviewed and approved by our editorial team will qualify for this role. These are members that ComparedBy.Us trusts to submit well written, concise and helpful reviews. Eventually this role will encompass the core of ComparedBy.Us members.
In the near future we will be rolling out additional roles which will offer our members the chance to take a more leading role in helping ComparedBy.Us continue to grow and be successful. These roles will also expand or remove entirely the new review posting limits.
By implementing these limits on review submission we hope to accomplish two goals. We must cut down on the amount of spam that our already overworked team needs to deal with on a monthly basis. We also need to control our costs so that we can continue to offer our members a way to profit from their work.
That being said, we fully expect to be able to process every single outstanding payment request for this month’s pay period. We have already processed the majority of requests and members are currently receiving the results of their editorial reviews. Every member who has written unique, well written, concise and helpful reviews for ComparedBy.Us will have their payments processed on January 20th. If you are one of the members that put some honest effort to write reviews for us, you will get paid.
If anyone has any questions or concerns please do not hesitate to drop me a line at [EMAIL="editor@comparedby.us"]editor@comparedby.us[/EMAIL].

mattygroves_3

I'm impressed by the swift, polite and hopefully effective response from comparedby.us. They have acknowledged the problem, attempted to give thought to a solution, and clearly, quickly and politely explained both the problem and the solution to its membership.

Some posts and therefore no doubt some people's behaviour have contributed to this problem. As the message from comparedby.us points out, the number of even legitimate reviews has swamped the editorial staff and their bank accounts. Posting huge number of reviews to try to scrounge as much money as possible is counter productive.

And on the subject of review writing, remember, a review doesn't have to be abusive to be rubbish and not useful. Accurate, opinion-based and proofread reviews are far more useful than a summary of the product leaflet typed badly.

It's an uncomfortable truth, I know, but a truth nevertheless. In the longer term, you'll make more money and get more satisfaction from these sites if you abide by the spirit and not just the written law of them.

VeLoCiTY

mattygroves wrote: »

I'm impressed by the swift, polite and hopefully effective response from comparedby.us. They have acknowledged the problem, attempted to give thought to a solution, and clearly, quickly and politely explained both the problem and the solution to its membership.

Some posts and therefore no doubt some people's behaviour have contributed to this problem. As the message from comparedby.us points out, the number of even legitimate reviews has swamped the editorial staff and their bank accounts. Posting huge number of reviews to try to scrounge as much money as possible is counter productive.

And on the subject of review writing, remember, a review doesn't have to be abusive to be rubbish and not useful. Accurate, opinion-based and proofread reviews are far more useful than a summary of the product leaflet typed badly.

It's an uncomfortable truth, I know, but a truth nevertheless. In the longer term, you'll make more money and get more satisfaction from these sites if you abide by the spirit and not just the written law of them.

I'm afraid I am taking the lazy route on this one, and I am hereby seconding your comment Matty- as my intellegence appears to be over-shadowed by yours at this time of night (although I fear this would be the case at any time of day :rotfl:) and I cannot think of anything more to contribute at this moment in time, as my thoughts on this topic appear to echo those of yours.

sarahs999

I'm interested to see how long it takes to move from one rank to another. And what rank you get started at - I only joined a few days ago, but I wonder if they will look at the quality of the reviews I've already submitted or just class me as a rookie?

Aurelia_2

jemima2k8 wrote: »

...

This current pay period will be affected by these limits starting tomorrow January 10th, 2009. However, the limits will NOT affect any reviews you have already submitted. If you have submitted 50 reviews already this month they will not count against the appropriate limit for your assigned role. It will take us a week or so to incorporate roles into your member profile so that every member can easily know their assigned role.

...

I'm not sure if I'm reading that part correctly but from what I can tell they're saying that the new posting levels come into effect today meaning that if you're a rookie and have posted 50 reviews already, you still have 10 reviews remaining for this month. Is that the way everyone else has read it? Also, does it mean it will be a week or so before we can post new reviews again while they add the levels to the profiles?

sarahs999 wrote: »

I'm interested to see how long it takes to move from one rank to another. And what rank you get started at - I only joined a few days ago, but I wonder if they will look at the quality of the reviews I've already submitted or just class me as a rookie?

Yes I'm interested in that too - I haven't had any contact from their staff since I joined, so I'm not really sure if they will wait for a few weeks or a month before giving an editorial review to members?

Camp_Freddy

jemima2k8 wrote: »

Posted by CBUser on 1/9/2009

In order to control spam we have implemented a new member role system which imposes review limits on new members.

As you no doubt already know we have grown at a tremendous rate in the past month. In fact, in a little over two weeks ComparedBy.Us went from less than 200 members to over 3,000 members. In that same period of time we received 29,000 posted reviews and 290,000 review ratings.
Those are great numbers. They certainly exceeded our expectations and put some major stress on both our available manpower and our servers. Unfortunately, what also exceeded our expectations was the level of effort that people would put into trying to scam the system. So far we have deleted more than 5,000 reviews and suspended 132 members for outright plagiarism and other methods of generating false reviews for a quick profit. We were also forced to cancel the Review Rating portion of the Incentive Plan after we found it impossible to separate the genuine review ratings from the spam.
ComparedBy.Us is a young website and we are in the initial stages of trying to build a community of reviewers that are rewarded for their work. The avalanche of attempts to take advantage of our system to earn a quick buck surprised us. Frankly, we are struggling to deal with the influx of content and we simply cannot afford to pay even one scammer. If just one person that is trying to scam the system gets paid what we have gone through in the last 3 weeks will look like a snowflake in comparison to the avalanche that will follow.
From a workload perspective we cannot afford to risk that. From a financial perspective it would ruin us. Like any fledgling business we have financial constraints. As a start up our revenues are still growing and we have to manage our costs so that they do not outstrip our ability to pay them. Even the legitimate review submissions have been greater than what we expected. If ComparedBy.Us is going to succeed we need to immediately place some controls within our system to limit the damage that the spammers and scammers can do to us and we need to implement some means of controlling our costs for legitimate reviews.
As a result we have decided to implement a new Review Submission Policy. All members will be ranked on three roles, Rookie, Beginner and Reviewer. Review posting limits will be set for each level at 10, 25, and 60 reviews per month respectively. Rather quickly we will introduce additional roles that will carry greater freedom to post reviews and earn money on ComparedBy.Us. Each role will be limited to posting reviews up to their limit in each pay period (the next pay period is February 16th to March 15th 2009). By implementing these controls we can limit the amount of spam we have to deal with in the near future. It also allows us to control our costs over the next few months so that we can ensure that we are around for a long time. This has the added benefit of allowing our contributing members to earn money long into the future.
This current pay period will be affected by these limits starting tomorrow January 10th, 2009. However, the limits will NOT affect any reviews you have already submitted. If you have submitted 50 reviews already this month they will not count against the appropriate limit for your assigned role. It will take us a week or so to incorporate roles into your member profile so that every member can easily know their assigned role. Until then, we will be sending emails to all in the Beginner or Reviewer roles. All other members will begin in the Rookie role.
Rookie – limit 10 reviews per month:
All new member accounts will automatically start as rookies. This is also the default role for any member that does not qualify for a higher role. The limit of ten reviews ensures that a member doesn’t waste their time posting reviews that will not meet our editorial guidelines.
Beginner – limit 25 reviews per month:
Only Members who have been editorially reviewed will qualify for this role. Beginner members have obviously shown a willingness to contribute to the community but the content that they submitted is not quite at the level that we require. The Beginner role is meant to be a learning role where members can hone their writing and review abilities with the help of our editorial staff before they move on to a higher role.
Reviewer – limit 60 reviews per month:
Members who have been editorially reviewed and approved by our editorial team will qualify for this role. These are members that ComparedBy.Us trusts to submit well written, concise and helpful reviews. Eventually this role will encompass the core of ComparedBy.Us members.
In the near future we will be rolling out additional roles which will offer our members the chance to take a more leading role in helping ComparedBy.Us continue to grow and be successful. These roles will also expand or remove entirely the new review posting limits.
By implementing these limits on review submission we hope to accomplish two goals. We must cut down on the amount of spam that our already overworked team needs to deal with on a monthly basis. We also need to control our costs so that we can continue to offer our members a way to profit from their work.
That being said, we fully expect to be able to process every single outstanding payment request for this month’s pay period. We have already processed the majority of requests and members are currently receiving the results of their editorial reviews. Every member who has written unique, well written, concise and helpful reviews for ComparedBy.Us will have their payments processed on January 20th. If you are one of the members that put some honest effort to write reviews for us, you will get paid.
If anyone has any questions or concerns please do not hesitate to drop me a line at [EMAIL="editor@comparedby.us"]editor@comparedby.us[/EMAIL].

Camp_Freddy wrote: »

Do you reckon the editor will be pleased when he sees that MSE members are plotting to bleed his site dry

I don't usually like saying "I told you all so", but in this instance, I'm more than happy to say it this time. Posting hundreds of reviews per day...

VeLoCiTY

Camp_Freddy wrote: »

I don't usually like saying "I told you all so", but in this instance, I'm more than happy to say it this time. Posting hundreds of reviews per day...

You're right Camp Freddy :beer:

We didn't need Mystic Megs services to see that one coming :rolleyes:

Aurelia_2

It is a shame for those people who weren't doing hundreds per day but could write at least one a day (ie: 30 a month) though. Hopefully they'll get through all the newbies (like me) quickly so we can be up to the next rank of 25 reviews per month instead

mattygroves_3

hayleyco wrote: »

$5 in a hour is superb!! Im looking to try something like this for myself all year saving it all !! Has anyone had any payments from the review site?

Hay x

Wow. Five bucks an hour - around £3.00 an hour. My 17 year old daughter gets more than that in her Saturday bakery job. The minimum wage for 16-17 year olds is more than that.

C'mon guys, get some perspective. You can earn three quid an hour taking advantage of loopholes in a site, forcing them to stop paying for a while, and rethink the way the site works, or you can earn £6.00 doing an actual job. Hmmmmm.

For the vast majority of people on the vast majority of these sites, the earnings will never amount to more than pennies - pocket money. For most people on most of these sites, if you're getting much more than that, you're cheating the system, and will eventually either get found out, or force the site to stop or suspend payments. Everybody loses that way.

Yes, there are exceptions to the above. On Epinions, if you are a category lead and are willing to spend hours and hours a day on there, you can earn real money. For the rest of us, earning even pennies is impossible. As a side note, every single site, without exception, has over time reduced its payment rates. This is inevitable as more people join legimately, and more people attempt to scam the system.

I have been writing on and off on various opinion sites since 2001. I have earned a few hundred pounds in that time. In eight years, I have earned a few hundred pounds from opinion sites - I have earned many, many, many times that in my 'real' jobs. My daughter has earned more than that in the year that she's been doing her part time jobs (the bakery, baby-sitting and tutoring).

If you want to significantly supplement your income, there are many, many ways to do that - my daughter's discovered just three. If you want an enjoyable hobby that can improve your writing skills, invite you to be part of an interesting community, possibly lead to opportunities to write on a more professional basis (I have had one article published in a real offline magazine - an ariticle which started life on Ciao.co.uk), and, incidently pay you a few pennies, then the opinion sites are for you. It's nice to have a hobby that pays you a bit, rather than one you have to pay to participate in.