Review sites using your content?

150.........

How did I know....

We never got one complaint as far as I know

Exactly!

I'd venture to say that affiliates on PPS type payouts are not privy to that data. They'd only know if on RevShare. There's no real way for them to know.

Unless a programs contacts you telling your retention sucks I am putting you on revshare ;))

That is what worries me most, Steve. You complain about what you consider to be poor business practices by review sites and yet you have a problem with a clear, unbiased article on what every program owner should have front-and-center inside their members? area.

That certainly isn?t Lightspeed taking the high road, IMO.

I already agreed that the way online porn review sites monetize themselves is unorthodox. But it is a near semantic difference, since "traditional" media earn their money by selling advertising space to many of those they review and/or their competitors. Both business models depend for their income upon the industry upon which they comment.


There we part company entirely. Not only are you grossly exaggerating the impact of review sites, but doing a King Canute is never a very productive exercise. I seriously doubt anyone will ever tailor their sites for good reviews - they will simply enjoy the good ones and regret the bad - but if they did, logically the consequence would be to raise standards, not seem them "slide into some pit of competing for the lowest common denominator".

It's really very simple. When I first started writing about cars, I went along to a US car importer and explained I wanted to borrow one to test. He asked me what I was going to write and I answered that I would have no idea until after I had driven the car. He then asked why he should loan me a car if perhaps I would write negatively about it. I replied that I was going to test the car anyway. I could get one from a rental agency and find out the technical information from other sources. I told him that he could not influence what I wrote, but he could make sure I had my facts straight and provide me a car which was set up properly and would give me the best impression possible.

The specific details are obviously different in our business, but the basic principle still applies. Even though a site is not guaranteed a good review, it is much better to work with reviewers rather than attempt to shut them out.

You have a point. The only problem is that other forms of traffic don't convert as well as an honest, detailed review.

I'll never understand why people have a problem with others profiting - isn't that the point of an affiliate program - both sides get a little something.

If I write a post of new programs that opened this week, it's called helpful information. If I write a post with new programs and I link to my affiliate code it's called Spam.

Why is that?

jayeff, I always like reading your 'scales of logic & experience' - you weigh the good/the bad and give points about your findings.

I personally like to read the reviews + read the surfer/member feedback too. It tends to give me an idea on what they (the reviewers, potential and the returning members) felt is good or what needs improvement. I take notes, discuss with affiliates and see what we can do to make things better.

The other thing is that paysite owners can't please everyone either. Everyone has something to say about everything - the main deciding factor is their bottom dollar. So if they know your suggestions have a good potential for more traffic, more sales, more money and there's room for improvement, paysites listen.

I fail to see the benefit of shutting Review Sites out. It's highly targetted traffic that is not easily 'found' elsewhere. The surfer only reaches your page if he's clicked and only after he's been seriously pitched and conditioned to take out that card and do the right thing.

Disallowing them does not guarantee you will take over their listings and it does not guarantee that the next guy taking that top listing on SEs is going to send to you. There are people just waiting to get those listings - doesn't mean it's going to put cash in your pocket.

Steve sent you an ICQ with something interesting

and the War rages on...

Steve, I believe your thread has (unintentionally) accomplished the opposite end-result you're looking for. Instead of "exposing" the "review sites" and their wicked ways, you've only "highlighted" the amazing & lucrative business model that many webmasters will be rushing to duplicate. Though many of us have known it for a while, I can hear the stampede heading right this way.





.

You lost me here jayeff, what is a King Canute?

I believe the point that we disagree is that "the basic principle still applies".

Adult sites are a disposable product, almost any other consumer product that gets reviewed is not. Those that are (trash bags etc) tend to be purchased on a somewhat regular basis despite being disposable; adult sites usually do not fit that criteria either. At best well under 50% of those customers purchasing from ANY major traffic source can be expected to rebill a second month, most come no where close to that level. A very small percentage may purchase year long memberships or longer and these are the true "educated consumers" and connoisseurs however that segment of the market is so small it's almost not worth discussing.

Sponsors in this industry are in a very rare position to have very tight control over where and how their products are marketed. This can be used very effectively, especially given that word-of-mouth consumer reviews are and will always have almost no impact on a site's success; people will tell their friends that their new car is a lemon if it falls into that status, nobody shows up at the office to tell their co-workers that they feel unsatisfied with a membership to chickswithdicks.com (or any other site no matter how mild and softcore).

Given that unbiased non-commercial reviews are likely to always be negligible in this industry that leaves only affiliate retailers posting advertising text in the form of "reviews" to be dealt with and it would benefit most sponsors to have some control over how the sites are promoted by these affiliates. I would never consider saying something negative about a site in comparison to a competing site. A simple change in sponsor's TOS is all that is required to remedy this situation.

The day that Consumer Reports and other mainstream publications begin reviewing porn sites I'll agree with you that the basic principle carries over, until then I say that this is a self-contained market and sponsors would benefit from controlling how their products are advertised.

I think that's the point of review sites if you ask me ... it sucks but that's life. It's to the surfers to find out about the best ones. If they don't have a top site, then how the hell is the surfer supposed to go to the best one ?

The fact that it's flawed is what is making the whole thing sucks... but if it was 100 % legitimate I'm sure you wouldn't mind as much would you ?

It's almost like telling a tgp he can't advertise other sites... the guys make money by telling the surfers wich sites are the best buy (according to them or the money they make).

I'm guessing that statement has nothing to do with the fact that your sites have a shitty rating with them lol.

Ironically Steve has HPA's for these same "Top 15" sites in his members area... Nice revshare program...

heh, what?

Agreed


Do you work for free?...is LSC charity? didn't thougth so...

9 outa 10 of these reviewsites are crap, they put salestexts there that just dont sell. If you wanna make a decent buck get someone to write your texts, someone that KNOWS how to make a selling site. And NO other links next to the sites offcourse, thats horrible.

I saw a decent lookin reviewsite last week, they reviewed a wellknown site, it got a 6.0 because vids were JUST in HD and not wmv. It had 30k pics. Signup was like 19.95. I mean WTF.

Threads like this can actualy do more damage than good...I know of plenty of cases of review site owners being bullied because some programs didn't liked to hear the truth...(not saying its the case here tho)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reviews

You seem to confuse reviews with feature list...not really the samething

I'll be the first to say it's tempting to have my editors rate a site higher based on the program payouts. The reality though is users would figure out a pattern eventually, and we'd lose more money that way in the long run. If my logic is right, it's far more profitable to earn the users trust and earn that business for life.

Some think we focus our reviews primarily on "price/value". It does become a factor, of course. But the reality is the same site at $40/mo vs. $15/mo will only change the score by about 3-4 pts total. It can definitely be signficant in the rankings, but it's still a very small part of the overall score.

One of our top sites "Explicite" charges almost $40/mo (although recurs at $30), and they're our #11 site: http://www.thebestporn.com/reviews_top.html

Ok lets say the site is crap.

Then why do a review? What mutual gain is there? A crappy review of a crappy site. Siteowner mad, reviewsite owner doesnt make a single buck.

If the site isnt that great, focus on other stuff, unique features, but dont put a crap review there because the truth needs to be out there. Noones gonna be happy with that. Its not some kinda policital issue, its a game where both parties have to gain.

I don't feel like reading 4 pages of this. You don't want your content to be included in review sites? Don't allow it. End of story. Nothing to see here. If you allow that, then expect to get a review. It can be good or bad. Always subjective. Which leads us to the same: don't like the game? don't play. Period.

they dont its in the first post TOS

Steve has his program set up where the affiliate would get credit if the member signed up off of one of those.

He was a Viking king of England around 1000-and-change, who got p*ssed about being constantly flattered. When one of his courtiers told him that he could even command the sea, he had his throne set at the waters edge to prove the man wrong.

I write reviews for someone who has previously posted in this thread and I think your dead on the money with this. I have seen niche sites I have been involved with hammered by someone who simply just did not like the type of content.
having been on the receiving end so when i write a review for something i just don't get into, i say that right up front in the review and the rest of the review is kind of a Joe Friday, just the facts ma'am review.
objectivity is important..
but I have grilled other sites for what I considered to be extremely valid reasons.


spaz

Yo Jayeff... Long time

My comments are based on a UK Indian model who has had a lot of publicity for being one of the few Muslim porn stars beinbg called Latina for a start!

The reviews got the total number of galleries and videos totally wrong and a hell of a lot more.

Rich Media and Sir Rodney are the only sites who refused to correct obvious errors which would have stopped surfers looking for an Indian site going to one that is in the minority for having a REAL Indian.

You know me and my reputation from near enough when I started back in 99 .... I do not use any other race than an Indian and call them an Indian as do the majority of so called "Indian" sites.

TBP, Rabbit and a couple of others have made fair crititicism of SGD as well as praise it, and corrected the errors when pointed out. Those sites I have respect for

What I do find funny is how the different reviewers see the same site. One praised SGD for the ease of navigation and another said it wasn't that easy... LOL. Thank g-d most reviews have agreed with the ease of it....

So I stay with my comment.. If a review site wants to look at my Indian sites I want someone who knows what he's looking at, and then with that knowledge he can compare it fairly to the competition... Not some asshole who knows nothing about it and is comparing it in his mind, to his fav blonde cheerleaders site... !!!!

And do you still have me on ICQ 61867184... We must catch up

So is the lady from Topbucks wrong when she wrote earlier that even bad reviews still sell sites?

That apart, the reason for writing crappy reviews is a) even if it doesn't work, to attempt to steer your readers away from them and b) without crappy reviews (since there are crappy sites) your reviews would have a much harder time being seen as credible.

Try to apply that to anything else in life...it isn't all good or fine, and if they don't review site x or y then their visitors will be dissapointed (in case they are looking for specific sites)

Review sites should list ALL their reviews good, bad or ugly...

This sort of reasoning has mob-mentality written all over it

/offtopic: will hit you up next week btw ;)

From our perspective, we went with the opposite approach. We have one (or all) of the same four editors look at every single site we review. This keeps the reviews/scores as consistent as possible across the board. Plus, on a review site like ours, you're not just getting compared to other Indian sites. We have to review your site as a whole vs. any other site we have listed and keep it as consistent as possible so the rankings are fair (whether that's a cam site, dating site, amateur site, DVD site, etc.).

As much as we'd like to love every niche we come across, we don't, and we can't really tell you what niches you'll like either. We do our best to stay objective to niches or specific girls, review the site as a whole, and go from there.

Sir Rodney Weighs In

Not sure you are aware but in addition to Booble we run the Sir Rodney and Sir Randy review sites.

At the risk of being attacked by those whose sites we didn't care for, I would like to point out a few things: (1) Sir Rodney was created to provide a resource we could not find elsewhere (2) our business model is fully disclosed to the user (3) we could care less about who owns a site, we review it solely based on our opinion, and rate it accordingly, just like a book or movie reviewer in a newspaper (4) we correspond with every webmaster who writes to us personally. We correct and/or remove reviews when asked. (6) we only use our own content in reviews, we do not use images, or screen shots of any kind (7) we allow anyone, including webmasters, to post their own opinions, even at our own expense. (8) we provide a comprehensive list of other review sites on our links page.

There ARE quite a lot of review sites out there today. Only a few are decent, and very few have over 1,500 reviews as we do. But, like everyone who seeks to compete by providing a quality product or service, we hope the consumer can tell the difference.

I have also written several blog entries on the topic:

http://pornblog.sirrodney.com/2006/0...laught-of.html

http://pornblog.sirrodney.com/2005/1...iew-sites.html

Finally, while insulting us (which I will let go by because I?m such a big guy) JoeA neglected to point out that following our ?discussion?, he cancelled our affiliate relationship, and we removed his review from our directory, which proves my point (4) above. No harm, no foul, although JoeA seems to think this should all be aired out in public. Perhaps I should re-publish his review here, hmmmmmm? Just in the interest of full disclosure

I didn't really want to get into the discussion, but I will make one post anyways. I co-own one of the oldest review sites, pornadept.com just so you know.

- Steve I respect you for what you achieved with your site and thou I haven't reviewed them, I am sure they are all quality sites. But what you're saying in this thread is kinda stupid.

Each review site has it's structure, we list other categories, we list sites in the same category, older reviews ... it's the format that works the best with a site like this, so why should we change it?

You say you want only links to your site on a page with the review of your site? Why should you be able to tell me what to do with my traffic? Because some of the reviews receive 10 hits daily from SE using keywords that are related to your sites?

Less than 10% of our traffic comes from SE's, maybe even less. We pump it to the reviews from our other sites, buy some traffic ... I think I should be able to do whatever I want with my traffic.

We use a few samples from each site we review, and show them to the surfer so they know what the content looks like. It's only used to show them the quality, we don't use it to promote other sites. What's wrong with that?

Now you are complaining about review sites, who send you regular sales, you don't want them to send sales to other paysites, just to yours. You have issues with the format of such sites, just because they link to other sections of the site itself... what comes next? Will you email google to only feature links to your paysite when someone searches for the name of some of your models?

I know you're very sensitive when it comes to using your content, but this time you're pushing it too far.

Think of it in terms of its being a grocery store... lots of competitors vying for shelf space and in store advertising, store being giving incentives to push specific brands, but in the long run if they are selling the product then at least they are moving more units.

BTW... We do well with BP - conversions are amazing and retention is excellent. That is in spite of what I consider to be a pretty lackluster review. I cannot for the life of me figure out how they can compare us unfavorably to some of the other sites that don't have anywhere near our level of customer service, volume of content, frequency of updates, variety of niches, quality of streaming, strength of community, or anything else excepting a lower price. We do just fine regardless and did not suffer at all for saying no to a lower price point for BP surfers.

The quality of what Lightspeed and Homegrown offer surfers is what will keep them happiest and in retention the greatest profit lies.

A few replies in one...

Sir Rodney..

We agreed by email that you would remove the review for SGD but would keep a link to it and I was happy... The prob was... You guys removed all mention of SGD, so I de-activated your account... Not the other way round.

In fact I was quite surprised that the links were removed after we'd come to an agreement....

Here's a quote from Al's last email dated Jan 17 : "Thank you for keeping our account active; we will still list your site and keep sending you traffic without a review. " But the links vanished... Because of that I took Al's email to be a load of crap and did what I did.

If there was a genuine error at your end and the links were removed with the review, email me at webmaster at saharagetsdirty dot com and we'll sort it out

TBP...

I have no probs with your review at all. Having a team do a review is actually the fairest way and then the result is an average of them all.... The only prob is that the log in I gave you guys keeps failing and when I reply to you, my email bounces back .... LOL.

just when i'm about to start an "honest" review site...
whew...

True you gotta make a difference, but like I said 30k pics and a 6.0 because they didnt offer wmv is lame.

But hey a review site is based upon opinions and everyone has a different one so.

A bit more Booble Bob

If you had an email address here I would have sent you the last emails between Al Gomez and myself. My cause for concern was that your reviwer said Sahara was Pacific Rim/Persian... Those places are just a few miles apart and even further from a UK born of Asian Indian parents, model That was just one mistake.

I just sent Al an email updating him about this thread, so lets see what happens..

Hi guys... Apologies for my late reply and big thanks to Ryan and Rick for jumping in here! Steve, I really wish you'd have held off on this discussion until after the XBiz conference (which is fabulous, by the way). I was attempting to read this and respond on my Treo at the party last night but all that did was make me want to throw the darn thing in the swimming pool! Of course, the internet connection here at the Hard Rock is painfully archaeic, too... so if it was ever your intention, you have definitely succeeded in driving me crazy, congratulations! ;)

First and foremost, thanks for the publicity! Incase anyone has missed this point, it's a great idea to have your sites listed in Review Sites; it's a good additional source of traffic, and that's a good thing. As well as listing your sites at www.thebestporn.com, make sure to get listed elsewhere as well. Here's a list of other reputable review sites: http://www.thebestporn.com/resources.html

I also encourage you all to have your sites reviewed. It can be an invaluable source of feedback and advice on how to improve your site from the User's perspective, and thus potentially increase your bottomline. It's free advice... take it!

Steve, I'm sorry you didn't like your review score. Of course, such a thing is rather subjective, but we do use four reviewers for Official Reviews in order to reflect a more objective point of view.

Let's be clear... our reviewers write reviews in order to inform adult consumers. We provide a valuable service for consumers and, from the responses we continuously get from them, they are very grateful for the information. We do not write site reviews in order to make webmasters happy. (Inevitably, most of them are indeed very happy because by the time an informed consumer reaches their site, they tend to have already made the choice to buy.)

We want feedback from consumers and webmasters alike; whatever advice you can provide us in order to improve our service is greatly appreciated, of course! But what makes us successful and valuable to both consumers and webmasters is the fact that we aren't going to change a review because a webmaster does't like it. We'll certainly fix any factual inaccuracies (which may happen occasionally) but what makes us valuable is the fact that we're honest, unbiased and scrupulous. Steve is a great case in point here actually; we already send him quite a few sales and it makes us all a decent amount of money. We just upset him because our reviewers are honest... and THAT is exactly why we have a growing user base that TRUSTS us. That Trust is worth far more to us and to anyone who's site is listed with us than placating Steve Jones.

Steve, you run a successful business; it serves you well. We do, too, and we're very highly respected for that. If you really must wage a war, I encourage you to do so with a more appropriate adversary.

If any of you need to contact someone at thebestporn, hit me up personally! [email protected]

Respectfully.

~Aly.

Proverbial Hatchet Buried (in the ground), I hope!

Joe, as I said, we always correct an inaccurate review, as we would have in your case, had you not threatened to sue us. It may have been a bit of an over reaction on my part ;) Hopefully you and Al Gomez can sort it out.

I am not hard to find. My email is all over my site: bob (at) booble (dot) com

Yo Timlake!!!

You can my e-mail on 1-11-06? It started as "I checked out your members area again, and took some notes down. You've done a lot of things right, and it shows by your success!!"... I never heard back from you.

I did my best to explain most of the concerns you had I believe. Let me know if that didn't get to you for some reason.

Much love!

Aly you must be worth your weight in gold ;)

WELL SAID!

then how did they get access to the members area? and assuming they paid for it, it's a win win, they made money out of the suscription, they won't pay the review site any commission and still may get some suscriptions in the process. Keep in mind that if they aren't mentioned at all, they wouldn't get a signup from that site anyway, so I fail to see why the bitching

Can you please resend - I thought I did but could not find the email or the reply. Thanks!

And yes, btw, we did find a lot in your review very helpful and constructively critical.

Sent!

Thanks so much sweetheart!
I lost a little weight lately, here's hoping it doesn't show... ;)

A few interesting sides in this. Nice to see a good business/marketing debate.