Paid Posting Survey

I don't? Do explain how my poor uneducated unsuccessful unknown self is so ignorantly wrong in the ways of understanding business.

No, restaurant critics are well known by the places they review. Movie critics get lots of perks too. Look at the guy who runs AICN.

No one ever said $1000. I want to review mid level post packages from different companies. I chose mid level because I think basic packages are too easy and I felt that top packages might be too much for the companies to afford. Forumbulge's mid level package is 500 posts for $60-$70. I want to test the poster's skills on two different topics, one is easy to post on, one is hard, so thats 2 500 posting packages, which is where the 1000 number comes from. The total cost to Forumbulge would probably be only $50-$100 depending on his profit margins.

I make enough profit in a single day to pay for every single package I requested for free. Its just not the way things work. If one company offers a package for free why should I pay other companies for it and mention them all in the same review? A company should be willing to provide good or services for free in order to be mentioned in a review.

Also, this is a good way to weed out the "posers" so to speak. In my initial research I found many people bad mouthing forum posting services as run by 13 year olds and their friends, new ones popping up every day, low quality work, etc. Instead of me choosing which ones I want to review and then paying and possibly ending up with the bad ones. It was logical to assume that the larger, more efficiently run companies would be the ones to recognize the value in what I offered and thus agree.

Obviously I understand the volume issue and how most of these companies are small and might not be able to handle more than a few clients at a time, no matter how well they're run. But some of the companies are simply run by amateurs looking to make a buck and they'll likely close down within a few weeks.

For instance PaidPosts. For the 4 days or so in which I was finding companies their site was down, I could find nothing about them elsewhere than this forum, and in fact I think I had to contact them either by looking up whois info or through this forum. I don't mean to be insulting but that in my mind put them in the category of amateur and I wasn't suprised that they passed.

 

The reason I said the review would be more subjective than objective is because when a poster takes or is assigned a task by the different posting services, his only incentive is his pay. In this case, any smart posting service will stress the fact that they are being reviewed and ask for the highest quality possible. I don’t see how you can expect the quality of the work done during the review to be reflective of the usual work done in the day by day operation

I had no problem with assuming the cost; I considered it as an advertising expense. However, I don't feel that me passing your offer, for the reasons I already stated to you, automatically qualifies us as an un-organized or small service, for that matter, ran by a 13 year old. Perhaps, you should consider running a private survey with forums that actually used those services to get a further appreciation of the different posting services out there.

 

Sure. But I'm not reviewing one service, I'm comparing and contrasting different services. Since all services know they're being reviewed, its a moot point in that regard. All the services have the same advantage and I'm not going to be comparing the services to a base line, only to each other.

I don't believe for a second you're unorganized or a 13 year old. You seemed to have a very good grasp of the situation in our email conversations. You are small though, maybe not small compared to the other businesses (since they all seem to be small) but still small. Your basic reason for passing was a small workforce being stretched too thin.

 

Ok, I can agree with that as I guess it's relative. We are small, in the sense that there is a limit to the number of forums we can work on at the same time, but in comparaison to other services, we do have a considerable workforce.

 

You're the one conducting the review aspen?
I assume one of the Sitepoint owners directed you here to defend them in this thread, which is fine.

I didn't mean to start world war 3 here, I simply stated that I personally felt it unfair, not because of the money, but because the time taken to fulfill the posting request for the review would take time away from posting on my customer's forums.

Are we at full capacity like you said? No, we're not. We can handle growth just fine, however spending 20 hours posting for nothing is not really what I consider business growth..
As someone said, reviews for products are different for reviews for services.
If I wanted to do a review of 10 different dog grooming services, I would not expect them to do it for free. I would act as a normal customer, and they would be completely oblivious to the fact it was a review.
I believe that's the only way to get a true, unbiased point of view of a business.

Don't get me wrong, I thought a positive review on Sitepoint would be just what I need to get the business growing even more, so I was initially very very excited about it, but then I did the calculations and figured out that we just did not have sufficient time nor desire to complete what you are asking.

So I resigned myself to knowing I will get a bad review on Sitepoint, despite the fact that the very reason my particular business performed badly on the review was due to our high customer service standards to existing customers.. kind of ironic isn't it?

This has blown rather out of proportion. It's not like this review is going to make or break any of us, we still have DP which is where I believe the true reviews come out, just look at the individual threads of each service for true customer comments.

I look forward to seeing the final review when it is up at Sitepoint, however I dont expect to see any realistic viewpoints on any of the major service providers from this site anyway, as judging from others comments here we are all in the same boat and it looks like the ones who are putting 100% effort into the review forums will come out on top, despite the fact this does not likely refect their real life performance.

Anyway, back to work... I don't usually take the time out to write long posts like this

P.s - aspen, I might just add that I dont think any of us providing this service here at DP are 13 years old.. add 10 to that and you get my age.

 

But they are watching the same movie. They are not watching a special movie.

I have explained to you why you are ignorant in this matter. I have explained to you why exposed service reviews are completely worthless.

I saw several people mention 1000 posts. If you reviewed 10 different providers the total cost is close to $1000.

If you wanted to do it legitimately then you would have just ponied up. If you want some suggestions on how you might still do it legitimately, send me a personal message. I have some thoughts on how you can potentially do it.

I don't even know what you are talking about. Who is offering forum posting for free? You should have NEVER asked to get free postings to begin with. At least not in the manner you did it.

I don't disagree with your intent. I completely disagree with your methodolgy. Asking for people to just give you several hundred free posts is worthless. What you will receive is no way indictive of the service that is likely to be offered to the regular clients. So any comparison will be completely invalid.

Morgan can certainly speak for himself. He has talked about the problems he has had with his site and other related issues. As far as I know they do a lot of posting jobs.

Again, I don't begrudge your goal. I think it is a good idea, but your methodolgy is entirely flawed and the results will be worthless. Feel free to go through with it.. but I would not recommend any forum posting company participate unless they can dedicate an extravagent amount of time and energy perfecting these particular posting jobs.

Again, I have some thoughts on you might be able to do this.. but it will take a minor amount of risk on your part, but I think it would give you material for an adequate and equitable comparison and would not cost you much if anything to do.

 

That is a worthless consumer review though. It is of no benefit. It is like reviewing a new movie but getting a special directors cut with 40 extra minutes of footage and then telling people to go see the movie you never saw. It would be ridiculous.

 

If you honestly think you were getting nothing in return then your business is doomed unless you find someone else to run it for you.

If you think my goal is to write a review on the major "DigitalPoint" providers you're sadly mistaken. I don't care two bits about who is who on this forum or any other crap that that.

I think forum posting services are a great idea. I am going to 100% recommend to everyone that this is a great way to get a forum started. I knew this from the beginning, before I even contacted any companies. All I was trying to do was find the most professional company offering the service... which is certainly not here.

Every major newspaper in the country employs a food critic that is known to the restaurants he or she reviews and people aren't all up in arms about it. If you think you're so much better and more knowledgable than me then I look forward to your own review.

Otherwise I think you shouldn't walk into someone else's kitchen and tell them how to cook. I didn't get where I am by being an idiot, I know what I'm doing. You're the one who cannot seem to grasp the different between comparing two things against each other and rating two things individually on an arbitrary scale.

I'll try one last time If everyone knows they're being reviewed, everyone is on equal footing, and I'll still be able to compare their qualities against each other.

 

ForumBulge is out of the review. I wanted to review professionals. I can't ethically lie to my readers, and I'm not in the business of writing bad things about companies. So, since I can't think of anything good I'd say, I'm not going to include them.

As far as I can tell Forumbulge posters posted a total of about 40 posts. Thats a value of about $2.80 by their published rates. I'd be more than willing to pay that just so no one accuses me of stealing.

 

I dont want any money off you aspen

I posted my comments here professionally and ethically I believe. I dont mind if Im out of the review, however where in my post did I say I would "get nothing in return" from your review?
My posted stated it would be a great way to get exposure.. you twisted my words.

Ah well, I consider myself very professional but I won't be fazed that one person doesn't see it that way.

 

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showpost.php?p=451235&postcount=25

The 4th sentence.

 

That's all from me, this is getting silly now.
I don't tolerate elitist attitudes, you may have 12,000 posts on the Sitepoint forums but that means nothing to me nor anyone else here.
People can read my customer testimonials page to see that I do what I do well, regardless of what one person says.

YOU are the one who lacks any sense of the word professional here, not me.

Thanks for your time.

 

So when did I say that I was professional because I have 12,000 posts at some forum?

 

sounds like a total scam. why not 100 posts for him to review? 1000? 1000 is totally scamish and everyone should boycott his stupid review.

or how about this, a forum is setup for all the people being reviewed to post at. it will be a general forum with general topics. after EVRYONE has posted their 1000 review posts, the forum will be sold on DP and the proceeeds will be split amungst all the entries. the forum would have upwards of 20,000 posts and sell for a few grand. THEN, its not a scam. otherwise this is a joke.

 

i demand a dance off

 

I wanted a mid level package, ForumBulge's is 500 posts, thats their choice. I also needed to test the subject range of the posters, so I wanted it on two forums. Other places had 250 of 300 posts for the same price as forumbulge.

Besides, 100 posts on any topic is too easy for an adequate test. An hour's worth of research is all you'd need.

Also 100 posts is relatively worthless from a forum owner standpoint. Someone hires one of these services to jumpstart their forum and in my opinion you need atleast 500-1000 posts for that. In my review I'm going to actually recommend people buy the high end packages as the lower ones do not do enough.

All that taken together, my review would be worthless if I reviewed only the low end packages. How could I review the low end packages but then recommend the high end ones? I actually started out asking for the high end package, but then I decided a better test would be two different forums and so I switched to the medium package because I thought it'd be easier for the companies to handle.

You post that and call me stupid?

General topics are worthless and easy. Who wants to pay for forum posting services and end up with a 10 page "person above me" thread.

Your little naive idea also still results in the #1 complaint from the geniuses here, which is that the posters would know they were being reviewed.

Finally, no one who hasn't been dropped on their head would pay a few grand for a 20k post forum on general topics.

 

Aspen,

You must have absolutely no respect for whomever you think is going to read your review. Unless you are dishonest about it and don't reveal your methodolgy, most people will disregard your opinions and reviews because they are Bogus. Bogus. Bogus.

Why can't you accept that fact that your testing methodolgy is completely flawed ?

How can anyone take you seriously at this point?

 

hey, go F yourself.
P.S. forums always sell for insane prices, i see it on a weekly basis. Youre just pissed because nobody cares about your stupid little review and gives it zero credibility. good luck Asshole.

 

Why can't you do simple algebra?

Something is not uneven if both sides of the equation is balanced.

If both companies know I am reviewing them they they are both going to be on their best behavior, and thus their knowledge cancels out. Lets say knowledge is "+5"

x+5 = y+5

You can simply remove the +5 from both sides of the equation, its meaningless.

Like I've said what? half a dozen times now. Restaurant reviewers do this every week. They go into a restaurant, get free wine, the chef is told to do his best, the owner or manager brings their food out, and yet they're able to write a review.

Show me one forum that only has general topic posts and only has 20k posts that sold for atleast $2,000. The last forum I bought had 250k posts on niche topics and I only paid $1500 for it.

Thats funny actually. As far as website publishing goes I'm just about a celebrity. People almost embrassingly follow my advice. Even Shawn here invited me to be one of the first 6 members of the coop ad network to test it out. I've had ad networks contact me me trying to get on my good side so I write about them.

So quite frankly I haven't been concerned over my credibility.

Thats something I always planned to do of course, so you can stop bothering me about it.

 

Problem is the point of review services is to provide a balanced and accurate view at a product or service as the visitor/reader might experience it. By doing it in the way you plan on doing it you ASSURE the product you are reviewing is NOT the one the customer is getting.

"Hello Mr. Lawncare man. I am writing reviews of lawncare services in the area. I will be publishing it on my blog. I am a very important person! Come cut my lawn today and I will review your work. next week I will call someone else and do the same!"

Yeah but best behaivior service reviews are worthless to the consumer. So what is the point?

Okay that is it. You are just being dumb.

Well everyone makes a mistake. I don't know how anyone could take your advice. You clearly have extremely poor logic skills. This is not a complicated premise to get your head around. I have given you numerous chances to understand why you reasoning is completely flawed and you have failed time and time again.

As for ad networks contacting you, why shouldn't, they, you are clearly easily manipulated when it comes to reviewing things. I think you should be more concerned with your long-term credibility with your readers. If you provide stellar criteria like the one out-lined here for providing reviews, I don't understand why anyone would listen to you. Your reasonng is ridiculous.



Please go ahead with your little review. I can't wait until you release the results.

To go back to your algebra analogy... Here is the problem.

You are telling your audience that x=5 and y=5. Yet when they go and look at the product they see x=2 and y=3. No way around you just being completely wrong in your review. You might as well review grapefruit and change the names to different forum posting services.