Epinions review....

epinions.com

As I have mentioned, I use different outlets to "save" money. Some of these include ways to "make extra money" - I am not a stay at home mom, I work outside of the home, so these are not ideas for an income, just extra pocket change. I use mine for gifts around Holiday time, and its nice not to see a chunk out of my budget. 

Below I am giving you my review on Epinions.com - Some of you may have heard of it. Some may not. But hopefully this can put all the information in one place. Drop a line below if you use them, Maybe you have some good tips to add. 

I Joined around February 2012, and currently my earnings are at $9.63. Let me give you the run down on what it took (besides time) to get to that amount. 

So I joined this website, due to others stating that it was a legit site, which I have found nothing to the contrary, and was excited to get started. I had read the FAQ numerous times, and they stress NOT to plagiarize, even your own work. Which meant if you had a review somewhere else, you could use it, but would need to change/add something! Considering this, I had taken all of my Amazon.com reviews and TripAdvisor.com reviews and elaborated and changed a great deal of the content. That same night I posted about 12 reviews. Within 10 minutes people were commenting and "rating" my reviews. None of the comments or ratings were good. In fact, there was one women doing most of the comments and rating, and she would post my "plagiarized" posts in the comments telling me to stop stealing content. I responded back telling her that it was my own review and before long, other people followed her lead, giving me bad ratings and commenting nasty things. They even did it to the 4 or 5 reviews that were nowhere else, telling me I did not put enough "content" - Obviously discouraged, I read some other reviews, especially the ones of these people who were giving me bad ratings, and I learned what it takes to be a "good" reviewer. Some tips: LABEL. For example, If you are writing about a crib, Write : 'Assembly' - talk about assembly, then write "Durability" - Then "General" - You get the point right? That will result in usual good results as long as you also put things from the actual product information like Sizing, colors avail. and other general information. While it seems like a lot of work for (LITERAL) pennies....The good news is, you can basically review ANYTHING. and I mean anything, Bottled water, spices, M&Ms, the possibilities are endless. 

You can not cash out until you get to $10.00 which at the rate Im going, will be this month. The worst part is, you have no idea why or how you are paid. You are not paid by the review. You are paid by the rating, kind of, and how many people viewed it, kind of... Truth is, the website does not fully answer how they pay you either, and you will never be able to understand the system online. For example, one review I wrote tells me 17 members to epinions visited my review, 27 visits total, including outside sources. I earned a total of 4 cents for all this. But then, you look at my other review, 21 visits total, and NOTHING. I have not made a penny, but yet it is rated at very helpful - There does not seem to be rhyme or reason, but Once I got into it, I decided I wanted at least my $10.00 back. I have a total of 46 reviews out there and for 7 months, so I personally do NOT think this is a worth while website, but the good news is, once the review is there, There is really no reason not to keep your site and just earn on it. You do not get any credit or money for voting on the other reviews, but the positive of voting on others, is they will usually then come to your reviews - and the general idea is traffic to your reviews.

Another negative of Epinions is there is no referral program. I would usually offer you a link here, you would write reviews, we would both win, but not with epinions. There is a lot more they could do with this website, but they don't. I do not use epinions much any longer, but I write about 2 or 3 every month. I am not sure what the earning potential is here. I have many reviews that have lots of traffic, good ratings, and have earned zero. If I saw the potential I could probably write 2 or 3 a day! Truth be told, I will eventually stop using it for new reviews. I am in pursuit of a similar site with a better track record for actually earning money. But I have 46 reviews, and those will continue to earn. I might as well keep it an active account and earn the $10.00 every 6 months, because hey, who doesn't like FREE MONEY ?

Overall rating: (Highest is 10 lowest is 1) :    3, I only give it this high because I'm this far in already and I am making earnings, no matter how small. If you have not joined, I wouldn't waste your time.