If a review site posts something REALLY false, how to deal with that affiliate?
 

Because I come from a magazine background, I've always felt like there was nothing I could do when a review site posts something inaccurate or compares apples to oranges in reviews. I feel like the writer's opinion is the writer's opinion. Unfortunately, I also often feel like reviewers tend to just repost tour claims and don't really look at the site much, they tend to look at video and not photography even though some surfers prefer one and some the other, and site owners doing the difficult job of trying to cover multiple niches sometimes end up with writers who just don't know the niche they are assigned to review sites in. For example, if a tour doesn't say DAILY UPDATES, then a site reviewer will write that they don't know how often the site updates or if a tour does say EXCLUSIVE CONTENT, a reviewer might give an exclusivity thumbs up to ridiculously overexposed stuff.

I tend to get really bummed out when review sites have SpookyCash stuff written up by writers who just don't get the goth niche. Even though quality review sites can make significant sales, I tend not to seek out review site traffic because I feel like they lose me money if I get all frustrated and upset reading what they post about either my sites or those they theoretically compare them to. I'm my best affiliate and I can't get all distracted.

But I came across something last week where I felt like I had to speak up because what was posted was not regular review site near-accuracy but actual libel. A new review site posted that one of my sites -- a site which is very much active and regularly updated with new content, not cycled stuff or anything -- used to be the best in its genre when it was updating so too bad it had not updated in YEARS. WTF!? There is a difference between questionable opinion and a balls-out lie and I don't think I've seen a balls-out lie on a review site before.

So I contacted the affiliate and he put me in touch with his outsourced writer. If I accidentally got something that wrong, I would be mortified, but the writer seemed belligerent and like he was on a mission to make his original writing as close to postable as possible. He defended his insanely wrong review by explaining that he never had a pass to the site and just plagiarized mostly The Best Porn and a little bit of Rabbit's Reviews, both write-ups from like four years ago. Now, I could quibble with TBP and Rabbit, but you can be damn sure neither of those sites posted something as egregiously wrong as saying that an extremely active site is dead and has been for years. I've found it annoying that the actual affiliate seems to think it is my job to school his outsource worker.

So how should I deal with that affiliate? Do I term him? Is this as over the line as it seems?

up his payment until he changes or buries the review.

Get his phone number and call him, seems he's an asshole.

ban him 8char

I guess you could call him/her up and give them a time-limited pass to go in there RIGHT NOW and do a proper, full review. I doubt that you or any sponsor with affiliates allows promotion via false claims.

Posting the review site url seems like a good first start :thumbsup

Whenever this has happened to us we have contacted the review site directly and it gets cleared up pretty quickly. but I see the dilema here... an out sourced writer... I dont know what else can be done but ask the review site to get you a new review of your site.

Ya know, I don't think it ever occurred to me or any attorney we've ever retained to have something in the TOS telling affiliates not to falsely claim sites they are promoting are defunct. Not the sort of thing it occurred to me would happen. Off to re-read my own TOS now . . . heh, looks like the SpookyCash TOS does have something about accuracy, although that part was written with the idea that affiliates might claim a particular model did something on camera in the members area which she didn't or something like that.

Yep, I figured as much. But I see no reason why it isn't perfectly applicable to a false claim like you mentioned. I mean, "I dont know when this site last updated" is an honest opinion or simply honest statement. But saying "this site has not been updated in years" , is clearly a lie IF you in fact do updates more often obviously. So just based on that, I'd say it's a simple false claim.

I would use that to light a fire under their butt to go do a proper review else you may not have any other recourse than to consider it an actual TOS violation.

those girls and u are hot!

Kill the account.
Problem solved

I absolutely hate reviewing sites without usernames and passwords for this very reason.

Make accessing your member's area easy for reviewers - I get really fucking annoyed when I'm asked to review a site for an affiliate program that isn't contactable, I mean why on Earth would you even promote that program in the beginning?

At the end of the day it's the affiliates fault. The reviewer is just trying to make a living from writing and I think it's totally reasonable for him to satisfy his employer by basing a review on TBP/Rabbits. I only EVER use these sites for my reviews IF I find a shady billing system or claims that the content is rotated (these things simply can't be explored in the 20 minutes I'm inside a site).

Other than that, I only ever copy something from these sites should I not have a username and password at hand. In these cases, I really find taking the content resolutions and numbers annoying - you simply can't trust them.

You can blame the reviewer, who will blame the affiliate employing him, who will blame the program he's supporting for not allowing him to have a username and password for the site so his reviewer can do a decent job. All in all, I think there needs to be a better system out there so us writers don't have to work on complete conjecture.

Anything said from anyone anytime can have an effect on business. Its a shame people cannot keep reviews sensible. Rabbits have gave reviews to all our sites. Our gloryhole website has had a review that is a little dissapointing but I cannot deny what they have said. The review is honest. There is a difference between honest & malicious.

You seem to have a lot of followers & know your niche. I would hope that you find that this review or slander that the said person has wrote shall not effect your business. If this is the case, any publicity is good publicity.

I would certainly either email & speak to the person asking them to reword or at least understand your niche first. Obviously anything untrue should be removed. If they do not agree to this, ban them & try to get your content removed from their site using removeyourcontent.com

Goodluck with everything Amelia

Would you ever write that a site was dead, based on the TBP and Rabbit's write-ups being from a few years back, but with neither review in any way implying at all that the site was dead?

I've done freelance writing and I understand that review sites don't pay reviewers enough to check back every day for a couple weeks, but it is very frustrating to work as hard as I do and then hypothetically see some site which launched with 17 updates, one of which featured a contract girl of mine in violation of her contract, and never updated at all . . . get higher marks than a site of mine which has been stable and updating for a decade. Then, if I don't complain about this, apparently the result is a bunch of lesser review sites cribbing reviews from a goth section which is not overly accurate to begin with. Makes it hard to know what to do re: the whole review site thing.

Whats his url

Just contact them and ask them to change it ... If an affiliate doesn't want to comply it's your right to terminate your agreement.

As a review site owner (and a new one at that) I'm always willing to change the verbiage of something if the sponsor feels it's not inline with what they offer. Especially something like this where the information is false...

The way I see it is my reviews need to be as accurate as possible. If a user of my site signs up for an account based on the information I give them, I NEED that information to be correct so they come back to me and trust my brand. Not to mention in this case it sure as hell wouldn't be helping me gain any sales!

Seriously though, just talk to them!

Oh and I am signed up for your program as well I just haven't gotten to write my review yet. I also have a policy of sending a link to the sponsor for for every site I review. I encourage the sponsor to read it and give me feedback. I want a review that will sell the site but also be fair to the user by being accurate.

Seems pretty simple. Either he corrects it, or he doesn't make money with your program anymore. The writer is probably someone inexperienced with reviews who doesn't know/care that reviewing a site without a password isn't standard procedure.

We always change it when webmasters ask. I don't know what the big deal is.

Good luck, hopefully he has ethics and changes it.

It seems weird to me too that the affiliate would not comply and would expect me to just interface with his belligerent outsource worker.

Well, you're doing it.

You should've told him to take care of it or suspend his account until he does. Reference your TOS when you suspend the affiliate's account. Also give him a username/password so he can see the site is regularly updated and that his review contains a blatant lie. If he doesn't correct that mistake after all that, then he's probably retarded and you should terminate his account completely because he violated your TOS and he's a fucking idiot.

You're right. At first, it seemed like maybe the writer could give me insight into why he thought something so tremendously false. I mean, there are update previews which post on the outside of the site which anyone could see from looking at the tour for a few days, but I like to look at a review as an opportunity to improve. Only I should have disengaged and kicked it back to the affiliate the moment the writer showed that he seemed more ill-intentioned than stupid. I did cc' the affiliate on all emails I sent, though, so I am troubled that the affiliate didn't step in at any point. I sure would not let a writer (or a person in any other position) who worked for me talk to a sponsor or anyone I else I work with that way.

cancel his account. get your lawyer to send him a letter. post the url to warn other website owners and other review sites to check for plagiarism.

don't let another man bully you woman.

AmeliaG - Hit me up if we have an old review, we are happy to get you a new fresh one done.

Ugh at this.... He defended his insanely wrong review by explaining that he never had a pass to the site and just plagiarized mostly The Best Porn and a little bit of Rabbit's Reviews, both write-ups from like four years ago

I don't even let review sites have passes to my sites anymore cause I'm so sick of their shit. I always read what reviewers wrote about my sites from day one. In 2004 (did affiliate side 2001 up) when I started I ran 2 non nude paysites and I put up with the bad reviews cause it didn't have any hardcore action and same with when I did topless sites they still complained for lack of hardcore even though the sites tours stated "topless".. But in recent years I've had reviewers redo reviews and even on things they said in the past were negative when i fixed them just said something negative about something else..

I've got no problem with being honest in a review but the reviewer should know the niche he is reviewing and always try to find good things to say about sites not just the negative stuff. Think the site is garbage then just tell the owner that the site is not worth your time and don't write any review. yes even bad reviews make sales but i don't need or want sales from this type of BS.

I have been paid by sponsors to go into there paysites and look at the inside. The last one I did, I got screamed at by the owner. He wasn't happy with the broken links inside, content that required a password and the surfer couldn't get access. His site was built by the best designer out there. That I know because it was screamed at me at least 10 times. I don't do review sites. If you are a sponsor and you pay $25 a sign up and another sponsor pays $35 same niche, pretty much the same site on the inside, who gets the better review. It all comes down to one thing, money talks and bullshit walks.

If your a review site and you never even looked at the inside of a site, how can you do a review? If it was my paysite that had a review and I didn't like it, the acount would be shitcanned. I would also redirect that webmasters traffic back to him or her.

Find a way to make money off the negativity

take the good with the bad... I still get sales from bad reviews as I do good reviews... thats like me saying I think avitar was the worst movie I have ever seen in my life... and I stand by that feeling.. it was the worst.. I think the cgi sucked ass.. I think the editing of the movie was bad.. I think the story line was shitty...

now do you think james cameron agrees with me? of course everyone wants good reviews but fact is every one is different... to those who shitcan affiliates for writing bad reviews

well thats just being a whiny little bitch about it.... go cry and cry more about it...

Ken can you vouch that shitty reviews get sales as well


do you see my point?

Lumping all review sites together as if they are the same is as silly as lumping all xsells together as if they are the same...

A 'review site' that writes a review without ever seeing the members area is NOT a review site... When I get contacted about any revie. I have written (for my own review sites or dozensof other review sites) I have factual information to back up every aspect of the review. Any factual error takes seconds to clarify or correct.

spoken like a true business man and not a whiny little bitch like others in this thread

I have my own devices. I'll check to see if a site has dates on the content in the tour, I'll check the samples given in the tour and right click > view source (checking the date it was uploaded to the server), I'd also check the copyright labels at the bottom of the page to see if they're up to date (For example: Copyright ? 2005-2006 Hot Sluts).

Though I wouldn't actually say anything unless the evidence was concrete. I wouldn't even mention the update rate for the site.

Maybe the writer looked at some comments left on Rabbits by previous members? 1 person saying it wouldn't be much, but if 3-4 people were all commenting that your site rotates content and offers nothing good anymore, I'd certainly mention that in the review.

I may have said absolutely nothing then, do forgive me - just woke up and I'm feeling a little weird today.

someone writing a bad review about your site is like saying you have an ugly kid.. you will always think your kid is good looking but do others?

Hire killer and kill the guy.

That doesn't apply here. The review states something that is unarguably false, not an opinion.

I don't know how to fix it, Amelia, but good luck. I'd be pissed as hell, too.

I would guess that if he is giving a shitty review not many sales are coming in from him. What is to be lost by terminating him? And I have to admit I am surprised that these review sites don't really review. And people complain about ratios.

submit your site to myporndb.com and fill it yourself TRUE

It seems obvious that there are two types of review sites. Those that take their job seriously and those who don't.

A few things spring to mind: Why would the owner of that particular review site not be interested in correcting the review? I mean, it's in his interest that the information is accurate. And why would he just forward you to the reviewer? He needs to take responsibility and fact check the review himself if there are questions about it. I for instance have numerous times made minor changes to reviews based on webmasters letting me know that something isn't 100% accurate. I even read every single review and check out the site before we post it.

I will never understand why some people just post crap reviews of sites and expect to make a quick buck. It's the exact opposite things you need to succeed with a review site. It's sites like that that hurt all serious review sites out there.

It is good you're so passionate about what you do, but if you're going to worry too much about what every review says about your site, you'll earn yourself a tremor.

E-mail them if you want something corrected, if they're cooperative - fine, if not just let it go. A link is still a link and it'll bring in sales no matter what review says - surfers are not stupid and can draw their own opinion. It is highly unlikely that your's is the only review at this site that is largely inaccurate, most likely others are inaccurate too - meaning whatever surfers are using this site will use it as a link dump mostly, not trusting their opinion on sites' qualities. Your link is in the dump, and that's all you need actually from such kind of sites.

:2 cents:

What if they say your kid has only one leg or has three eyes? That's not an opinion. Unless the kid does have one leg or three eyes the person talking shit is lying.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh I'm going to totally start telling friends that their kids have extra eyes.

The site owner finally just got back to me now . . . and acted like he works for the writer and signed off of ICQ in the middle of our convo . . . but, after being referred back to the writer, the writer tells me he was outsourced freelance.

That sounds like a reasonable solution.
:thumbsup

:2 cents::2 cents::2 cents::2 cents::2 cents:

I used to write reviews in my spare time for a lot of reasons. There were certain sites I wouldn't review and certain sites I hated reviewing but one thing I never did was write a review without actually logging into the site and getting the information for myself. If the writer chose to not even bother to pursue getting an active U/P from the affiliate then both of them are in the wrong. I cannot imagine how pissed I would be if I saw a blatantly false review of one of the sites in Payserve's portfolio

I think with the affiliate essentially 'hanging up on you' on ICQ you are left little choice but to suspend his account until a correction and maybe even an apology is made public