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Really need 'Review my product' subforum.

by Robert M Gouge
4 replies
Over the last week or so I've had some really horrible results with members in regards to people reviewing my product and in reviewing others' products.

I had a few people contact me to review my report, so I sent them a copy and obviously never heard back from them. Pretty clear they just wanted something for nothing.

Offered to review a product for a member and upon receiving his product URL, I assumed it was a special link for review members which required my email address. Signing in to his users area providing my email, I was presented with what appears to be nothing more than 4 squeeze/sales pages for his products. I'm not outing this member or product on the off chance that it is simply a mistake, but so far it looks like a simple scam to collect WF member emails through the 'review my product' method.

A sub-forum is desperately needed to improve situations like this. I can't imagine I'm the only one who has had an overwhelming bad experience on WF regarding 'review my product' type situations.
#product #review #subforum
  • Profile picture of the author AmandaT
    This is why I am a big fan of discounted review copies rather than free review copies.

    While I can see how a forum like that would be good, you would also see freebie seekers stalking that forum to get free stuff. The best you can do if you are trying to get some good reviews is offer discounted review copies, or only give review copies to people with a certain number of posts. Sure, you won't get 100% of them sending reviews, but you will get many more. You should also send them a PM and remind them in case they forget to post, I know I have a few time but once I get that PM I always go back and post.
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    • Profile picture of the author Robert M Gouge
      Originally Posted by AmandaT View Post

      This is why I am a big fan of discounted review copies rather than free review copies.

      While I can see how a forum like that would be good, you would also see freebie seekers stalking that forum to get free stuff. The best you can do if you are trying to get some good reviews is offer discounted review copies, or only give review copies to people with a certain number of posts. Sure, you won't get 100% of them sending reviews, but you will get many more. You should also send them a PM and remind them in case they forget to post, I know I have a few time but once I get that PM I always go back and post.
      One problem I see with 'pay to review my product' is you will have droves of people putting together utter-crap and charging WF members for their 'opinion'.

      Reviews are generally valuable feedback and testimonials for a product. Unless it is a high-end course or product, why would users want to spend money to give the creator something of high value (their feedback or testimonial)? The value of the review and feedback should be plenty. Once you put money into the equation I think the purpose and value of reviews and testimonies will become skewed greatly.

      Take, for example, the countless IM review sites and WSO review sites. Since most these sites are affiliates for the products they are reviewing, the reviews are almost always biased in favor of purchasing the product. Thus rendering the site and the review of the product close to useless.

      Also, threads like '100 Review copies available for $1' for unfinished or crap products would be rampant and the only way to get around this would be to charge members for a listing in this sub-forum, thus making it no different than the WSO forum.
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  • Profile picture of the author Kecia
    I agree with you Robert. I know that it will not completely alleviate new members not following directions and posting in the main forum anyway, but I think it would at least reduce the amount of threads posted in the wrong section.

    I also agree that free review copies are helpful to your product. It shows you are really interested in helping others, and you want their feedback so you can improve your product. Many people do not like to spend money before they hear if a product is worthy of their cash, so they wait for reviews.

    I know people have mentioned just offering review copies as soon as the WSO is launched, but I see why people would want feedback beforehand. If the WSO is live and there is a problem, you'd have to temporarily close and fix the issue, which could take days if you don't know what's wrong. This could be very embarrassing to someone trying to offer their product here. Having almost all of the issues (things can still happen, I know) out of the way will help the product owners as well as their customers.

    When I need to get testimonials for my products here on the WF, I will only be allowing those with high post counts that I feel confident will return the favor and post their review once I've given them a free copy.
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  • Profile picture of the author Robert M Gouge
    Yes, definitely a hard problem to solve. Like Amanda and other members have mentioned in other threads, this type of sub-forum would likely get too many freebie seekers and hurt the WSO forum itself as people would simply stalk for review copies.

    So, I'm not quite sure a sub-forum for this would be good without some type of regulations in place for member participation.

    I hadn't thought of this in my initial post due to being a little frustrated.

    EDIT:

    Just to add to my original thread, it did, in fact, turn out to be a technical error in receiving the review copy and I have received the review copy and I'm evaluating it (looks clean so far).

    This only goes to show the need for a sub-forum for this. If this person (who seems to have went to a lot of trouble in the creation of this product) was to launch this as a WSO and initial buyers were to encounter the same problems I did, it would have reflected very poorly in the comments left by buyers as their initial impression of the product, like mine was initially, would have been very negative.
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