A New Trend?

Then go to the War Room and offer your product for free for feedback. Do you know how much companies pay for beta testing and focus groups? $20 is nothing.

I only paid $5 in the Warriors Wanted section - picked and chose who to send my review copies to (I set some parameters - like post count - real name - war room member, etc.) and received a ton of response so far.

Was I in the wrong section? I hope not - lots of threads in there asking for Reviews....

If you want feedback in advance - not reviews - perhaps ask some contacts that you know personally for help.

Hope that helps.

(Pay for a post - priceless)

I agree Mike. I got banned once when pre selling a WSO (on mistake, I just joined the forum). And never did that again, now it seems that the moderators are either too lazy to monitor the forum or don't have the time to do it.

There shouldn't be any need for reviews.
If what you are selling is any good, good reviews will occour naturely.
It seems to me the people that whine the most about
getting reviews, are the ones selling the most junk.
That's a review in itself.

Indeed, great products attract great reviews.

Besides, if you want people to review your work from grammar/spelling, why don't you ask a friend, or partner you've found on this forums. I doubt you don't have anyone at all to do this for you...

Just read through the entire thread, and I do have to agree with the other fellow warriors, you are looking for someone to test-proof your WSO (product or ebook or whatever) so you should be ready to pay for someones time or to get a listing fee to find those "volunteers" to do help you identify and fix your errors/bugs/mistakes or even more give you suggestions.

I do believe you have received this notice of the fees in the wrong way and you are looking at it from a completely different point of view. However me, and many others that I did read in this thread, do not see it the same way as you do, you need help from someone, you need to access some people, so it is fair to pay a small fee to get listed in order to access those things.

Cleared that you are not after reviews, I do however believe that this "new" way to fix an ongoing problem is done the wrong way. One thing I do like in another forum, that I won't mention, is that every "sales" thread that it gets started before it even gets approved from the admin(s)/moderator(s) it gets reviewed from the same to ensure that their visitors are getting from the seller what he/she has promised. But from the other side...I also do understand that that requires staff, organization and people to read all those WSOs (and no offense to anyone, many of them are just rehashed information's so it would be weird for a mod to approve a rehashed WSO - but would save lots of other visitors from spending money).

Just my 2 cents..that might not even count at all

Cheers,
Astrit

Here's a novel idea!

• Create your WSO product

• Pay for your WSO

• Let reviews come naturally from your customers.

Seriously guys many of use are just making to big a deal out of this whole thing. Stop worrying that your WSO won't be as successful if you don't have insta-reviews when it goes live.

If you want to offer review copies and your to cheap to pay 5 bucks create an optin form that requires the WF user name and stipulate any requirements you want and put a link to the form in your signature.

More importantly concentrate on creating an AWESOME product and deliver it to the marketplace.

i dont look at reviews much anyway. i know that most of them are incentivized (not sure thats a word, but if not, it should be) in some way. either by receiving a free product or a discount.

I also know that most of the people sending in these raving reviews are not using the techniques taught in the WSO to make money. In many cases the reviers are not making much if any money online themselves, so their credibility to offer a review of a MMO product is suspect at best in my mind.

and i know their are real reviews, but they are overshadowed by the masses of "great product this guy knows his stuff". i often PM a few of those reviewers just to talk business only to find out they have no clue about IM.

as a side note, i maybe in the minority, but i would be in favor of raising the price of a WSO 10x to cut out some of the bs products being sold just to get people onto 30 different lists.

Write the review yourself, put a bogus name, this way its free

What trend?

He only says that product reviews can't be mentioned in the "Internet Marketing Products & Reviews" section, and it should always have been that way...

Review copies should go into the person's sales thread themselves, and that is either in the Warriors' special offer section, or Warrior Members for Hire section and its subsections.. what is so difficult about giving 3-5 review or discounted copies in the first post of your sales thread.. he didn't say that was not allowed.

What is not allowed is giving out review copies OUTSIDE of your own sales thread

I just can't get it... I never understood all these discussions about "reviews" and "testimonials" and "check-spelling-requests" etc.

Not being a native English-speaker once I urgently needed someone to proof-read my text (because my usual "editor" wasn't around). Posted a request: XX number of pages to be read and give feedback on language, grammar, spelling; PM me AND give me a quote. No mentioning of title or the product.
In minutes I got several PMs, offering help for $15 or for free.

Just for the record: at that time we didn't have the "Wanted... " section.

Then, as it was suggested by a few people above, I gave a few copies to persons that I already had some kind of relationship with. Some just said "thankyou"... others wrote me back with a few suggestions how to improve it. BTW, I was asking feedback, private feedback, not reviews or testimonials! A few told me they liked it and to let them know when the thing would go alive because they wanted to post (voluntarily!) a positive review.

Finally, when the WSO sales went live, happy customers that I never heard of before, posted their fine feedback (aka testimonials in the thread).

It is as simple as it can get.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This ... exactly.

If you need proofreaders or editors, I'm sure you could muster one up for a fee. If you need reviews, you could do what some of us do ... launch your product and wait to hear what your customers have to say.

Mike,

First off, it's in the "Members looking to hire you" section, which is $5, not $20.

Secondly, I posted a thread on the reasoning for the change in this section of the forum asking for feedback before I posted the rules change in the affected sub-forums. It answered, among other things the reasoning for doing it this way and not through a dedicated reviews section. How very kind of you, Mike. How wonderfully benevolent.

Clue Time: There is a difference between paying for space to ask for reviews which are likely to be more focused and honest and paying for testimonials. Separating this function from the actual sales thread reinforces that distinction in the minds of potential reviewers. Honestly, that's so obvious I don't think I even felt the need to mention it in the original thread on the change.

You've just inspired what may be my next product. A physical product, bringing new meaning to the term "Thud Factor."

A collection of finely crafted sections of dimensional lumber, varying in length with the intensity of the need. The labels will all read similarly:

Clue-by-Four: Apply directly to forehead!

Kurt, [chuckle] Not by a very long drive. We've had some good knock-down-drag-outs over the years.

But then, you don't whine about how you're being mistreated when someone makes their points in a logical fashion. You think before you argue, and you think about what the other person says in response. Disagreeing with you is always an educational experience, rather than a pointless waste of perfectly good electrons.

That's not true of everyone, here or elsewhere...


Paul

Then how about building your reviews the old fashioned way? Offer a service at rock bottom pricing and then over deliver on it. You'd be amazed at the number of reviews you can build if you roll up your sleeves and put some elbow grease into it.

I think you will find it far more productive than the approach you have taken by posting this thread.

Sounds like you aren't so much looking for reviews as looking for a "beta" or free editor/proofreader as was mentioned above.

In the fanfiction writing world online there are communities where writers ask a "beta" to read/edit/proofread thier work. Relationships between betas and writers are beneficial because the beta gets to read the material they are interested in for free and the writer gets a free edit/proofread of thier work.

I know of beta/writer relationships that have gone on for YEARS.

I think OP is missing the point a bit of what it means to run a wso. Every vendor who starts a new wso thread takes the chance that Warriors will not like it and turn their noses up against it. It's called boloing. It happens all the time even to the best of us.

You can't take the risk out of running a business. It takes money to get into the game. In this case less than $50 if you pay the $40 for the initial bump and the $5 to post your review requests.

So part with the green and lose it. Or part with it and change your lifestyle around for the better. There are no government entitlement programs to be had that says you can start up a business without risk.

I was trying to post this message, but the WF crashed twice and this is my third try to get across my message.

Basically, there are established warriors with big names. Also, there is a new crop. These young bloods do not have the resources. They also lack the exposure. Still, they want to be warriors.

If we keep adding more fees and hurdles for them to jump over. Well, we could kill the goose that lays golden eggs. Please keep it simple and do not kill the goose.

Lonnie, I'm amazed that this thinking keeps showing up in a marketing forum.

Sadly, the quality of the product has little to do with initial sales. That's all about the marketing. Choice of topic, presentation, and sales copy are what determine the early sales numbers. If people review a product quickly, a group of bad reviews that are specific enough can slow sales, but at first? The product has almost nothing to do with it.

Seobro, A number of people have pointed out that this sort of change is occasionally needed to keep things from getting out of control here. What I haven't noticed being brought up is why.

Some folks talk about the old days, and what things were like here way back when. Yes, a lot of rules were looser, or even non-existent. It was easier to keep some semblance of order when there were only a few thousand members.

There was a time when a single moderator could read every post and keep out all the spam.

The WSO section was a place for active members only. By active, I mean, "People who regularly posted and who were known to contribute in meaningful ways to the group discussions." We didn't have hundreds of people telling the entire world that the way to make quick money was to cobble together a few pages of info and run a WSO.

Almost all the rules that have been put in place in the past 7 or 8 years were made necessary by the growth of the forum. As we've added hundreds of thousands of members and visitors, the temptation to tap that market has grown. That attracts people who are more interested in selling than discussing. That isn't good or bad, mind you. It's just the way it is. Predictable.

You probably wouldn't want to go back to the old rules anyway. The vast majority of offers folks want to run here would simply never see the light of day. Back then, you had to use a real name, and if we (meaning Allen or I) didn't know you from your postings and believe you deserved the exposure, you didn't get the space.

Back then, you couldn't just buy space for $40. You had to earn it.

We tried a free approach to letting people get product reviews for months. It just created abuses that Ken and Pearson had to clean up after. As if handling the IM reviews section wasn't a big enough headache, what with the prima donnas and the shills and the malicious personal attacks they have to watch for every day.

We told people "Put them in the reviews section." So, people put them in JVs or the "Make money online" section. And not just new folks who didn't know. Established members who had been told repeatedly where those requests should be placed.

The need for a change was obvious.

Y'all seem to forget that this forum is only a tiny place in the grand scheme of the Internet. Limits here are not limits on your world. They're just things done to maintain order here, and keep the place useful and productive for the members.

We keep telling people not to base their businesses solely on this forum. If you don't listen and changes end that profit stream, you have only yourself to blame.


Paul