ciao.co.uk

It does, perhaps, smack of 'navel gazing' - the idea of writing a review of the site on which you are writing a review. However, given that 924 other folk have done the same, it would seem that we all have riveting navels.

If you are reading this, you are probably aware that Ciao is a site with several aims, to wit:
1. to provide consumers with reviews of product written by the very people who use such products - other consumers;
2. to provide to firms feedback on their product or service through the reviews written by consumers;
3. to provide to firms market research information through the use of surveys completed by members of Ciao;
4. to provide advertising revenue to companies through the use of various forms of advertising, including but not limited to on site ads, pop-ups, roll overs and the like.

Ciao fulfils these goals by providing certain benefits to the members who use the site:
1. a chance to earn money (albeit pennies, usually) by writing reviews in certain areas (more on that in a minute;
2. a chance to earn money (again, usually trivial amounts, though there are exceptions) by filling in surveys (after completing extensive 'personal profile' information);
3. a chance to belong to a 'community' of like minded folk, thus turning writing and reading reviews into a hobby;
4. a chance to write and have one's writing 'peer reviewed' (or sometimes just extravagantly praised, whether or not it deserves it);
5. a chance to read and review the work of other writers - in an ideal world, this would also be an opportunity to improve one's own writing, as the best way to learn to write well is to read a lot;
6. and, perhaps not least, a chance to use the reviews written to make purchasing choices (this is, of course, the opportunity afforded to EVERYONE who visits Ciao, member or not).

Ciao is certainly not the only site with these aims and benefits (though it IS the only one I am aware of that includes the taking of surveys as a money making opportunity). In the UK and Europe, we have Dooyoo, and in the US there is Epinions. Many people who have the 'opinionating' bug write on some or all of these sites, since generally, cross posting is tolerated.

Let's take a look at the 'benefits' to members (the second list above), and examine how and how well Ciao provides these bonuses to members.

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EARNING MONEY
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One of the main benefits that draws people into Ciao is the chance to earn money. For Ciao.co.uk, you must have a UK bank account. Your earnings are paid directly into your account upon request (though you must have £5.00 or more built up before you can claim). Ciao are variable on how quickly they pay - you must check your bank balance frequently, as it may be several weeks before they pay up.

So, let's now look at the various income streams available.
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Earn Money through Writing
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The idea here is that by writing reviews in certain categories and on certain products, you can earn cash for each member who reads your review and rates it favourably (Exceptional, Very Helpful or Helpful). The products which attract remuneration change frequently (they are apparently assessed monthly), as does the amount you can earn. When you are on the product page (the page that gives details of the product and links to places you can possibly buy it), if the product attracts payment, there will be one, two or three little pound signs (£) in a box. One £ is half a penny per member rating, two [££] indicates one penny per member rating, and £££ promises two pence per member rating (remember, these are MEMBER ratings - non-members don't count, except insofar as the remuneration rates are apparently partly based on the product's attraction for non-members). Furthermore, if you have written the first review of a paying product, you earn double the normal remuneration rate for the first month after publishing the review, after which you earn the 'normal' amount.

Now, it would appear on first glance that the more you write, the more you earn (so long as you are careful as to what you write about). This isn't strictly true. If you choose to 'churn' - a site term for publishing a whole slew of opinions in one day/hour/period of time, the chances are you'll actually earn less. This is partly because the quality of review may well be poor if you're able to publish 15 in one hour (although there are exceptions to this - if you're cross posting from another site, for example), but largely because you will not get so many reads per review as you would otherwise.

Generally, if you read and rate moderately around the site and get yourself reasonably well known, you should be able to expect, if you avoid 'churning,' around 30-50 member ratings. If you are VERY well known around the site, and have a lot of time to spend reading, commenting and generally making yourself available, you could get over 100 member rates per op. These kinds of numbers are more likely if you leave at least a few days between publishing each review.

Furthermore, there is the Premium Fund. Each month, non-Café reviews (the Café is the part of the site that is especially community oriented - this is a non-paying section of the site where you can write stories, poems, the kind of question-and-answer essays that you tend to get through email - the 'what's on my duvet' type thing and so forth) are eligible for a share of the Premium Fund. A review can get anywhere from nothing additional to an extra 50p to £10.00 from the Fund. If a review gets £10.00 or more, a little gif of a diamond appears next to the review. Sadly, the criteria for diamond reviews are a closely guarded secret, and there are certainly months where it seems the diamonds have been rewarded more or less randomly. That isn't to say, of course, that every diamond rewarded opinion didn't deserve it. It just isn't clear what is required to receive one, and it isn't clear why some reviews and reviewers are rewarded and others are not. For the record, I've NEVER received a diamond - perhaps this colours my view of them.
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Earn Money through Completing Surveys
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For many members, the surveys can be more lucrative than the writing. I stress, however, CAN. First, you need to fill in your profile - this is a bunch of tick-boxes that indicate your interests, products that you own, age, location and so forth. Once you have filled that in, the theory is that every so often, so long as your email address is up to date, you will receive an invitation to complete a survey. The amount you can earn from the survey seems to be partially dependent on how long it will take to complete, and partly on who is sponsoring it and what it is for. Although Ciao claim that you can earn £5.00 or more from a survey, the vast majority of surveys in my experience are worth between 75p - £2.00. This assumes you even qualify - often you will complete anything from a few questions to a whole bunch of questions to be told you are not in the target group for the survey. This can be extraordinarily irritating - especially if you have spent a reasonable amount of time answering questions. This is also annoying if you are disqualified after a question such as "what gender are you" - surely that's in your personal profile!

Although the surveys aren't generally hugely well paying, there are exceptions, and it's these exceptions are what is likely to keep you filling the suckers in. Last summer, I filled in a survey worth around £1.35 or thereabouts - it was about credit cards. A few days later, I was telephoned and asked if I would be interviewed face-to-face for up to one hour at a time and place of my choosing. The interview took about half that, and to my glee, I received £40 in cash for my time. However, please note, this is the exception, not the norm.
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Earn Money through Other methods
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You can also earn money by inviting friends to join Ciao, using the 'invite a friend' link on the Member Centre. I will quote Ciao's Q&A here, since there isn't really much else to say about this method of earning money: "For each new member whom you recruit for Ciao, and who writes at least one product review on the site, we will make you a one-off payment of 50 pence, and then pay you a 50% commission on your member's earnings* from the Ciao website for the first 6 (six) months of his/her membership. (* Excludes survey earnings.)"

I've successfully (in that the invitee has written at least one opinion) invited three people.
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So...How Much Can You Earn?
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Obviously ,that's different for each person. As a guideline, I'd guess that since I became active on Ciao in July 2002 (when the pay rates were a bit better), I've earned maybe a couple of hundred pounds, if that. That is, however, a guess - I am not going back to check each month's earnings!

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COMMUNITY & PEER REVIEW
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Since you clearly cannot make a living writing on Ciao, what is it, you may ask, that keeps us here? What is it that gets us to practically donate our time and expertise writing for this site? What it is that attracts us despite the pop-up ads, despite the low pay, despite the surveys that kick you out after five minutes? For many people, it's the community - and in many ways, that is harder to define and describe than the earning potential.
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The Café
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I've already briefly touched upon the Café. The Café really is a mixed blessing. The Café is the place to publish your stories, essays, poems, lists ('10 favourite songs', '10 worst gifts'), Q&As ('what's on your duvet'), advice - in fact, anything that doesn't directly review or relate to a product. The Café is non-paying - earning neither pennies per read nor Premium Fund.

There are some wonderful pieces in the Café, and some wonderful writers who publish mainly in the Café. I would guess nearly every member of Ciao (not all, but most) will eventually venture in for a virtual cup of coffee. However, there are some truly dreadful pieces in there, and some truly stupid, inane, ridiculous topics. For one, there is the 'everything that starts with' - this can seem handy (and yes, I've used it), since you can pretty much put ANYTHING in there. And boy, people do. You find all over the Café many confessional pieces - someone's goldfish died, someone has some awful disease, someone has problem with their parents/siblings/kids, someone is depressed, someone knows someone with some bizarre hobby or condition. Yes, there ARE some confessionals in there that are very good and honest explanations of whatever it is they are confessing. But much of it might as well be entitled 'please feel sorry for me'. Or alternatively 'I can't write a coherent sentence, but since this bit isn't designed to help the consumer, rate me VH anyway'.

Please understand me, I am not saying that EVERY Café' writer is rubbish, or that every Café piece is drivel - that certainly isn't the case. After all, I've written there (*grin*). But for SOME members, it is the lazy way to earn community points. Which leads me neatly into the next point.
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Community Points
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You don't just earn money on Ciao. Oh no. You also earn Community Points - which for many members, is as important or indeed MORE important and valuable than the money. In fact, many members will tell you that they don't write on Ciao for the money (which is, to a point, probably true, since you don't earn much money).

Each time you do pretty much anything on site, you earn community points. You earn a point for rating a review. You earn three points for writing a comment. You earn 30 points for writing a review, and 80 points if someone 'trusts' you (more on that shortly). You earn 150 points if you invite a friend. You also earn points for every member read you receive (depending on the rating), and for every positive rating your review gets. The better the rating, the more points you get (more or less) - You get two points for the read, six points if your review receives an E (exceptional) or VH (very helpful) rate, and three points if your review receives and H (helpful). Conversely, you LOSE points if your review receives an SH (somewhat helpful), NH (not helpful) or OT (off topic).

As you accumulate points, little coloured dots appear next to your username. Each colour represents a band of points - my dot is orange, which tells members that I have somewhere between 50,000 - 100,000 community points. On my member page, you can find out exactly how many points I have. In theory, the point/dot system is supposed to indicate how experienced you are on site, and how active you are. Supposedly, the 'higher' your dot, the more respect you are receiving, and deserve. What the dot DOESN'T tell you, (and where the dot system completely collapses) is how responsible the owner is. Since you get points for rating and commenting, there is little to stop a member from opening up loads of windows and rating everything and commenting on all with nonsense comments (you do have to wait a minute or so between opening an op and rating it, but for the experienced skimmer, this doesn't present a problem). There is also little to stop a member from churning, so long as the standard of review is more or less reasonable.

The other issue with the community points is to do with the standard of rating. Because a VH and E attracts the most points, people see the VH rate as a minimum - as the 'norm' - since anything else doesn't get them up the dot ladder so quickly. Also, since one lower rate seriously affects the overall rating, which in turn affects the placement of the review down the category list (the highest rated review is at the top, the lowest at the bottom), anything but a VH often seems to be frowned upon. There are members who will rate pretty much anything VH, just to attract return reads, rates and trust.

On the up side, having belonged to Epinions, where many reviews attract no comments, the points system does encourage communication between members. It would just be nice if more of it were meaningful communication.
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Trust
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In common with all the opinion sites to which I have belonged, you have the opportunity of 'trusting' other members (indicated on your profile pages as the 'buddies' tab). I have actually written an entire essay on trusting, and how I use it, as have many others. At its most basic, it is a way of bookmarking the profile pages of those members who have, in some way, impressed you - either through interaction or through the quality of their writing.

It has become more than that, though. Each member can trust up to 100 other members, though there is no limit on how many people can trust you - so I trust eighty-odd members, but have just over 200 trusting me. Where this can be tricky is that a member receives 80 community points for each member trusting him or her. If a member ceases to trust another, that member loses the 80 points. It does, therefore, become a real issue for some folks. Some members feel it their responsibility to read EVERYTHING written by the people on their buddy (trust) list. They may also feel that they should automatically receive return reads. Apart from the fact that many people don't have enough hours in the day to read everyone who they trust or who trust them, this can become a bit of a millstone around one's neck, and can cause resentment.

As an aside, I personally prefer Dooyoo's solution - there is a list of who you trust, and who trusts you, but no running tallies. There is no indication anywhere how many members are being trusted by you or are trusting you, so it doesn't become a big competition.
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Guest Book
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Unique amongst the sites, Ciao has an integral Guest Book facility. On each member's profile page, there is a tab labelled 'guestbook'. Here is a place to leave non-op related comments, conversations, notices and so forth. If you wish to respond to a comment someone left on one of your ops, you would go to their guest book and reply there. If your comment is more of a private nature, there is also a private guest book. Only the member to whom the guest book belongs can read the entries in there (actually, I suspect Ciao could too, but I am not sure). You can delete entries from your own guest book, though you cannot delete entries you made in other books.

I am really of two minds about the Guest Book system. On the one hand, it does prevent comment threads (in theory) from becoming cluttered with the 'how are you' type comments. It also gives one a chance to promote meet-ups, events and the like - or indeed, just to hold conversations without necessitating the exchange of email addresses.

On the other hand, it encourages gossip, feuds and general silliness. Since one can delete entries from one's own Guest Book, it can also give you a false impression of the owner - that they are nice and fluffy, or hard and demanding - or whatever impression the owner wishes to put over. The guest book facility often seems to lead to a cliqueness not found on the other main British site. To sit on the fence, I'm glad I belong both to a site that has them and to one that doesn't. Then I can choose what I'm in the mood for.
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Personal Home Page
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You have a space (it's a tab on your profile page) to open your heart, mind, and html skills to the world. Using BASIC html (there is quite a bit of code that is not allowed, including certain types of links to other sites, I believe), you can create a mini-home page. Add pictures, colours, lines, text - show yourself off to the world.

I really have little opinion one way or the other about this. I have stuff in my homepage, though I haven't updated it in over a year, largely because it now tells me that half my code is not allowed, and I can't be bothered to re-write it all. Still, for those of you with a visually creative side, go for it.

There is also a tab to advertise your eBay auctions. From those who know, apparently that's quite cool. I don't eBay, so that tab is meaningless to me.

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RULES & REGS AND ENFORCEMENT THEREOF
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To keep the site from descending any further into chaos than it already has, Ciao has terms and conditions - rules and regulations. You can check those out for yourself, but many are obvious - don't be abusive towards other members, don't plagiarise, don't cheat or do anything illegal or that breaks copyright. You can only have one account per person, and you have to rate fairly, and not participate in so-called 'clicking cartels' (though how that differs from the trust system isn't entirely clear). Don't do anything that will disrupt the cosy little community that Ciao claims it values so well.

Seems straightforward, no? Well...no. Thing is, the enforcement of the terms and conditions seems haphazard in the extreme. For that matter, the procedure to report breaches of the T&Cs is cumbersome. It used to be you just popped an email over to abuse@ciao, and you'd have an email conversation with a real person. No more. Now you need to go to the Member Centre, choose the category of abuse (plagiarism, abusive comments, multiple accounts etc), fill out a form, having taken note of the review number or member number and other such information, then hold your breath until you turn blue. What you will get in return is a form email, explaining that emails cannot be answered individually, but that the complaint will be dealt with.

The thing is, there seems to be no rhyme nor reason in the way complaints ARE dealt with. Tongue in cheek comments, or 'advertising' on your 'about me' (mentioning any other websites in your about me is verboten) can get you removed from the site with no right of appeal, however blatant plagiarism is seemingly tolerated (and, by extension, encouraged). Opinions which have been critical of Ciao itself or its advertisers have been summarily deleted by Ciao with little or no explanation (which is something Ciao claims it doesn't do in its own FAQs), whilst fabricated, copied, plagiarised and offensive reviews have been allowed to stand. Long standing members who have won multiple Premium Fund awards and the respect of the community are removed, and serial abusers are allowed to return. Trivial matters are dealt with quickly, and serious ones ignored.

This inconsistency on the part of Ciao itself, in my opinion, has created the tension that now exists on site. It is this, more than any amount of 'community fluffiness', or disputes between members, or silly topics in the Café, or poor rates of pay that has been contributing, and may possibly cause Ciao's downfall. If they are not careful, they will be left with the churners, abusers, plagiarisers, poor writers, emotional cripples and other internet pond-life that make Ciao sometimes an unpleasant place to be. Ciao are currently inconsistent, and any parent knows that being consistent when meting out discipline is key to a harmonious relationship between the parent (Ciao) and child (members).

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CONCLUSION AND OPINION
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Well, I'm still here. Just. I do currently have a specific grievance with Ciao relating to a review of mine that was plagiarised, so am, in all fairness, disgruntled. Today, anyway. Ciao is a good idea, and there are some good people who participate. There are some good writers and good raters. I have made friends - real friends - whom I've met and everything. That is good. I have also been 'shouted' at, revenge rated, copied and ignored. That's not so nice. Whilst things like that can happen in real life, their effects would be mitigated were Ciao simply fair and consistent when enforcing its own rules, and remembered that it is us members that earn money for them. They earn far more from us than we EVER will from them.

A 'foolish consistency' may indeed be the 'hobgoblin of little minds,' in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, but remember, the operative word in that quote is 'foolish.' Surely we should expect and demand some fairness and some correlation between the rules and their enforcement. Life may not be fair, but Ciao should strive to be.

So...do I recommend Ciao? Yes, with reservations. Though at the moment, there are other sites I'd recommend first.