I stumbled across
Ciao on a particularly productive day at work...I think I found it through a freebie site or something. I am very very broke at the moment as I have just moved to London, moving is always really expensive and London is even more expensive - especially because there are so many pubs/clubs/restaurants/gigs begging me to go to them!Ok, so Ciao is a consumer review website, that pays you to write reviews on various things.
You can write reviews on pretty much anything that you want - CD's, DVD's, Electrical Goods, even on what you do during a normal day (a challenge), some even submit their own poetry.How to start earning money:To start writing reviews and get paid some pennies you need to become a member, this is a really quick and easy process, you put in a couple of details and then are sent an email with a link to confirm that you really want to join - then done! Now you have become a member you are entitled to write reviews on what ever you want, you can tick a couple of boxes on your profile so that you can get sent email surveys (which also earn you money), have access to a guestbook so that other members can leave you messages/advice and you can even link your ebay auctions to Ciao so that other members can view them too.
Writing your first review:Once you have found something that you want to write about, you can begin writing a review. There is a list of links down the far right handside of the page, under the Community Section you will find a link saying write a review. I would definately reccomend reading other reviews to see how they scored, so you know what sort of quality the readers expect. The format is quite easy to follow, quick blurb on advantages, disadvantages, a title & then write away. At the bottom of the page there are a couple of drop down boxes asking you to rate whatever it is you are reviewing (normally from outstanding to pants (pants is my word not theirs!)).
Earning money for reviews:To earn any money for any of your reviews, other users will have to have rated your review in one of the top three categories (helpful, very helpful or exceptional). Each category of review gets given a certain amount, so helpful is 0.5p, very helpful is 1p and exceptional is 2p. Your earnings are calculated by multiplying the number of helpful's by the number of people who have voted them helpful so if you have 4 people who thought your review was helpful then you get 2p.
More ways of earning money:As I mentioned earlier you can take part in surveys, and earn more money. I have followed all the instructions, and checked all the right boxes and filled in my profile, but I still have not recieved a survey :(There is another link to earn money called "Ciao Plus Offers" and the page has links to other sites where you can enter surveys and earn money or do some form of online dating and earn money.Website in general:Overall the website is very nicely laid out, easy to use, clean and simple looking. The basic search functions seem to work well. There seem to be a couple of ways to search, you can do a specific search, using the "Product Search" bar or you can use the little tabs that run across the top of the page to take you to specific categories and then browse from there.The search functions seem to work pretty well and efficiently, you do have to scroll through a number of sponsored links before you get to the Ciao reviews, but this isn't a problem at all really.Along the top right hand corner of the page are the links that I find most useful, links to "My Ciao" from here you can view your personal information, view your account (see how much money you are making), create a personal homepage, view the reviews you have written and see how they are doing, statistics (view the number of ratings you have given, have been given), a list of your buddies (people who are in your circle of trust) your guestbook (where other members can leave you messages) and finally view your ebay auctions that you have listed via Ciao.
The "My Ciao" page is simple to use and arranged in tabs again (click the tab of the information that you want to view), and I found as a new user quite easy to navigate.As I used the site a bit more, I began to get a bit frustrated with it, it was quite difficult to find out how to do things, such as editing your review (a friendly member left me a message in my guestbook telling me how), which was a small link down the side of the page...I have found the site a little conveluted and all the important links seem to be in tiny writing down the side of my page, in general if you are searching for information it is quick and easy to use, but if you are a member trying to do things it is not that clear or easy to use.Other Members & Feeling of Site:I have found that most of the members are quite friendly and helpful and leave suggestions in the comments section of reviews to help you to improve your writing. Although I have found that a lot of the members are quite harsh in the messages that they leave so these really need to be taken with a pinch of salt. I have found it extreamly difficult to get any rating over a helpful on this site, even though the same review has been well recieved on DooYoo.
A lot of the members are really critical and a little too anal for my liking. Although there have been quite a few people who have been really nice & helpful (have noticed that they are members of DooYoo too) more often than not the other members are quite cutting with their comments and almost snobbish about it all - there is constructive critisism and just plain critisim. There are a lot of members (more so than DooYoo) so in theory you should be able to earn quite a bit just by the laws of maths - more people read your reviews, more people rate your reviews, therefore more money to you!
Parting Words:Although in theory a really good site, it works well, is efficient, all the reviews on the site are of a really high level (this is because of the tough paying out system), so this is a great site if you want a good review on a product.
If you want to try it out and see how much money you can make:
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