Comments on: Shoppero Comes To America: Money For Writing Reviews

By: This week’s interesting tech news at Incessant Expressions

This week’s interesting tech news at Incessant Expressions — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 04:50:18 +0000

[...] Shoperro and Viewpoints set to square off against Epinions and each other for user-generated reviews. It seems both are going to be rolling out for-pay revenue models but unless something has changed in the last 4-5 years, this may not last long since Epinion removed this feature long ago. [...]

By: Nico Lumma

Nico Lumma — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 00:13:21 +0000

@mathew: wew, that shouldn’t happen. Well fix it or start calling it a multilangual feature.

By: mathew

mathew — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 21:23:14 +0000

I went to en.shoppero.com, entered a search, and the page that came back was the German site. You might want to look at fixing that, Nico.

(Yes, I have my browser configured to have English as my preferred language.)

By: Anand

Anand — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 13:47:40 +0000

Is it American version or English version of the German site. I presume non-American English writers can participate too!

By: Nico Lumma

Nico Lumma — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 13:13:26 +0000

Philip/Randy, thanks for your comments. I think people will always try to game the system, but we rely on our users to look for spam and spammers, in addition to our algorithms that persistently look for intersting developments where suddenly peaks evolve, etc.

That issue really concerns us and I think this will be an ongoing process for us.

By: Philip Wilkinson

Philip Wilkinson — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 09:08:17 +0000

Completely agree with Randy here (comment 14), as people will always find a way to game the system when the reward is public. If you also offer higher fees then you end up with a business in which the top contributors are those who are making the most money (and it’s not a lot) by doing whatever they can to influence the system.

By: Durk Price

Durk Price — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 17:19:24 +0000

Shoppero could be a way to build a loyalty site with the review being the mechanism to create the loyalty. Even though it is a paid loyalty the product is the review which is highly valuable to the advertiser.

By: website copywriter

website copywriter — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 17:13:21 +0000

Looks very promising — thanks for the clarification, Nico.

By: dhario

dhario — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 16:17:01 +0000

@nico lumma

so is it shared advertising revenue or compensation for the review? if its just shared advertising you’ve got an issues w/ habitual commentors submitting bogus comments - or folks w/ a lot of free time.

if its for the quality of the review - i think that is somewhat more interesting but you would have difficulty preventing product influencers/haters skewing positive/negative ratings on products and getting rewarded for the review.

i think this becomes even more complicated when you have company focused blogs (i.e. tuaw) and the like that are focused on products coming from those companies/vendors.

i agree compensating for opinions or UGC has to happen — great start — lets see what other models appear.

By: Randy Stewart

Randy Stewart — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 16:14:29 +0000

So, Epinions did try this and still do today. And as a former product manager of Epinions, I can tell you that paying for reviews is sustainable, however not at the rates Epinions was originally paying.

These days payment for most reviews is a bit like poker money. It’s a way to keep track of who is doing best, rather than making a living off of it.

Additionally, the system for payment is a bit of a black box to cut down on gaming the system. It’s still surprising to me the efforts people will go through to make a few bucks.

I suspect that Shoppero will eventually lower their rates or introduce some level of randomness to their payment mechanisms.

Cheers,
Randy Stewart
randy@boxbe.com

By: Jerome Paradis

Jerome Paradis — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 14:07:34 +0000

@Thierry:
I don’t know about Shoppero, but you’re dreaming if you think cheap hosting and agile development is all that’s needed to reach profitability.

There’s much more to an online business like Shoppero. Making sure a system is scalable is not cheap, good management of the transactional aspects (and fees you incur), customer service, marketing and much, much more.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 13:50:54 +0000

Didn’t epinions try this years ago? Seemed to be a pretty miserable failure…

By: Concrete Stain

Concrete Stain — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 13:24:00 +0000

If they write dont buy this product; I promise - it will still make them less than if they wrote buy this one for sure…

with 1 review per 1 product there is not wisdom of the crowd …

- and if their is more than 1 review per product; you probably sort them by how much ROI they make - therefore …

- until you solve these problems; your site is broke.

By: Vinod

Vinod — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 09:58:41 +0000

Wondering how can I write a review there.

By: Thierry Schellenbach

Thierry Schellenbach — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 08:29:04 +0000

Social Review, payed. Interesting concept.

Regarding profitability, honestly how much costs do you incur nowadays with cheap hosting and agile development possibilities by using symfony or ror

By: Glock

Glock — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 07:03:26 +0000

gr8 post, i’ll try it now

By: Murray

Murray — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 06:59:15 +0000

Epinions was the first social review site

For the first couple of years Epinions gave reviewers a significant share of revenue from people who clicked through and bought a product after they read their review. However in order to become profitable they gradually scaled back the reward until they got rid of it all together.

The business model didn’t work then I wonder if it will work now.

By: topbusinessopportunities

topbusinessopportunities — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 05:48:44 +0000

looks like you only make money by recommending it.

By: Nico Lumma

Nico Lumma — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 05:31:21 +0000

@Helen: that is a very good point. we rely on a combination of advertising plus affiliate links to assure that people get money even if they write “don’t buy this product”. We don’t want tainted content and we want the users to freely express their opinions about products.

[disclaimer: I am the founder and CEO of shoppero.com]

By: SAY-HO! » Blog Archive » shoppero gets “techcrunched”

SAY-HO! » Blog Archive » shoppero gets “techcrunched” — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 05:27:35 +0000

[...] Arrington hat auf Techcrunch über shoppero berichtet und kommt zu einem vorläufig guten Ergebnis: “The site is an interesting crossover [...]

By: Joe Gaylor

Joe Gaylor — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 05:22:34 +0000

Seems like a great concept…

By: juneauhousing

juneauhousing — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 05:10:40 +0000

Google ad overload… feel like I’m on blogspot.

By: Helen Fang

Helen Fang — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 05:06:31 +0000

I wonder how genuine these reviews are since the writer’s profits probably correlates with the positivity of his/her recommendation.

Helen

By: Mark Williamson

Mark Williamson — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 05:02:10 +0000

Great concept. Its too bad a site like epinions didn’t launch something like this.