As a member of Ciao, I inevitably read about Dooyoo, I went over to check out what the fuss was about. If you have never heard of it and you are reading this review, well, see, you have just heard about it. Told you it is inevitable. So what did I find?
I found a website that works in a similar way to Ciao. Members write reviews on products, websites, services, etc, as well as participate in debates. Then each member is rewarded for his or her opinions. Well, if you are reading this, likelihood is that you know all that already, as it is the same as Ciao. Many Ciao members are members of both and submit the same reviews to both sites.
There are a number of differences though. As I am a member of Ciao, I guess I will follow suit with other reviews about Dooyoo on here and compare Dooyoo to Ciao. Dooyoo has some good points as well as bad.
Registration was easy enough so I would not bore you with it. Free to join as usual. The site looks very different from Ciao. First thing you would notice is probably the colour scheme. Mainly green. The Dooyoo logo is green and black so this was to keep everything consistent.
The home page on Dooyoo has been completely changed and everything looks very professional. This was not always the case as I have seen the old layout. It is good that they are improving the site.
When you have decided to look for a product, you can select choose from electronics, computers, games, movies, finance, mobiles, and more…You can then select by manufacturer, estimated price, platform, specifications, etc.
You can search their site by Products, Users and Prices. I do not think their search engine is all that good. When searching for i.e. compaq presario 2800, it gave me 149 results but not one is actually the Compaq Presario 2800. There are other Compaq products, other Presarios, and even a car with the model number 2800. Basically, I had to scour through 30 pages just to find that they do not have it.
I am usually just searching for products but also searched for users. It gives you near matches as well as exact matches, which is bad sometimes for products as described above but good for user searches.
Instead of earning cash, Dooyoo reward you with Dooyoo miles. These are like points.
1000 Dooyoo miles = £1.00 10 Dooyoo miles = 1p
To redeem them, you can opt for Amazon E-Voucers. You used to be able to opt for SendIt.com (formerly BlackStar?) online vouchers but apparently you can't now even though I still see the SendIt.com logo on the site. You can of course exchange them for cash or donate them to charity. You need to be 18+ to claim Dooyoo miles though. You need to have earned 10,000 miles to claim vouchers and claimed in increments of 5,000.
They charge you are a £5 handling fee for redeeming £50 cash, which I feel is a bit cheeky of them. No handling fee if you earned £100 though. For Amazon and SendIt.com vouchers (sent via email), you will need a minimum of 10,000, which can be redeemed in increments of 5,000. I redeemed one large £50 Amazon voucher via email. It took about a week and a half to arrive in my inbox from day of redemption. Voucher worked like a charm. I think £50 is the old voucher redemption minimum.
You get 30 Dooyoo miles for each member read you receive. That is 3p per member read. It used to be more but I did not know about review sites then. On Ciao, many reviews are unpaid and can pay 0.5p, 1p and 2p per member read (Double pay for first month if you are first to write about a product) so Dooyoo seem to be a bit better here. There is a catch though. You need to have accumulated a certain amount before you can cash out, and it is quite a lot compared to the £5.00 payout amount on Ciao. Also, Dooyoo Miles expire after a year so you have to cash out before then or you lose them. What you could do is redeem some as the ones that will expire soonest will be the ones redeemed. To be fair though, since Dooyoo pay a fixed 30p per rate and give Crowns more regularly, it seems a lot easier than Ciao to reach the minimum amounts. With some (even Product) reviews on Ciao, it is not paid per rate. Some only pay half a penny for products, which you would think are worth more. Products/Websites already with many reviews are usually unpaid (i.e. Amazon, eBay, Play, etc). Only time Ciao pay more is if it is 2p per op, you get 4p per rate if you are the first to write for that product in the category or if you get lucky with the Premium Fund or win a Diamond. Dooyoo still pay out more consistently though.
Ratings available are Very Useful, Useful, Somewhat Useful, and Not Useful. No Exceptional but to nominate an exceptional review, you simply click on the Nominate for a crown link. Better than the system on Ciao, that hardly anyone knows about. Recommend Product link on Ciao is supposed to be for recommending the review to be considered for a Diamond. Can they be less clear? The Very Useful and Not Useful are the other way around on Ciao (Very Helpful, Not Helpful, etc rather the Useful) so I often nearly click the wrong rating!
There is not a points system like on Ciao. Some people like it, other people do not but I do rather like the Community Points thing on Ciao. I like it because I also have something to aim for (to get to the next colour dot) but I am not bothered that there is not one on Dooyoo. In some ways, it is good that Dooyoo do not have a points system, as newly registered users may feel disheartened to have lots of points deducted on their first review. Most people do not do too well when they are new to writing reviews and may just give up and not return to the site as a result of this. New members may feel intimidated by higher ranking members but many are friendly so it has not bothered me. I do not really look at the points anymore on Ciao so it is the same to me whether they exist or not. Also, no paid surveys on Dooyoo like on Ciao.
There used to be a lot of pop-ups on Dooyoo but I think they have really cut down as I do not notice any these days. Good move, as pop ups are the spawn of evil. Banners are more effective advertising anyway, as you cannot close them.
Unlike Ciao, Dooyoo lack a guest book feature. People use an unofficial guestbook, known as Tooyoo. Not everyone has this and communication has often been done within comments on each review by another member and this is not good. Comments are often left in another members review to thank them or something, and they are often unrelated to the review they are commenting in. Some members post their email address up, other post there Tooyoo name or link (if they have one). In a way, it is a good move to make the community thing optional as some people may just want to read / write reviews and do not want to talk to other members. On the other hand, some members may want to contact other members regarding issues relating to the product reviewed or regarding the lower rating, etc. You can also post up 3 Favourite Sites and a large text allowance to introduce yourself. On Ciao, it is very limited and recently, they have been complaining about any sort of advertising. Even saying something like ---Check out my auctions--- is not allowed even though eBay is a Ciao sponsor. Go figure.
You cannot upload pictures of products like you can in Ciao. Would be nice if you could but I guess it is not that important for most products. This is probably to reduce the amount of bandwidth and space required to run the site so I will not moan about this.
The site used to be infested with site bugs, server errors, etc but I have experiencing fewer now. One bug seems to convert my apostrophes and other punctuation to number codes. They look like the HTML codes for punctuation so the pages are not translating them into the appropriate characters. Sort it out, Dooyoo! Here I am praising the site but then get this rubbish. Weird how some other recent reviews I have posted are not affected so it seems to be only some areas of the site.
There used to be a problem where the first 1000 or so characters turned to lower case and parts of reviews being bolded. I think I would prefer those errors over losing my punctuation as it makes my review more difficult to read.
I think that Ciao have more products listed on the site than Dooyoo. Quite a few products that I wanted to submit reviews were not available on their site whereas they were already on there on Ciao.
What if the product I want to review is not on the site already? Well, you can suggest a product. Dooyoo have since added a product suggestion system, which is extremely easily located as they have now put the link within your account. It is even easier to find than compared to on Ciao, which is a bit difficult to find or even impossible at times. The new system is A LOT quicker than it used to be in terms of having products added. From past experience, products were VERY, VERY RARELY added. I have waited over a year for some of my product proposals to be added and they never were. However, the new system gives you an idea of how far down in the waiting list your proposal is when you submit it. I have been informed that the queue number did update when it was first introduced, but it does not any more. No idea why and I would have liked to see the queue update as product proposals are fulfilled. Since the new system, I had one product acted and within a reasonable time scale. i.e. 1-2 weeks. I do not believe the queue of proposals is done in order as I proposed more than one product at the time and only one was fulfilled out of the group. I hope they can make the queue update again but so far, it seems Dooyoo have been making vast improvements to the site and I am starting to use the site more because of this. I have since had another added.
First off, most of you will have heard of the Premium Fund award scheme on Ciao. Thirty reviews considered best on Ciao get £10(+some more money sometimes) and a Diamond next to the title of the review. Other reviews that are considered good get a chunk of money (but we are not told for which reviews.). Now, I think 30 reviews out of so many, is not really fair, as there are certainly many more reviews that deserve the award. Here is where I think Dooyoo are on top when compared to Ciao. Instead of Diamonds, they award Crowns and they award these on a weekly basis. Each crown gets you 1,500 Dooyoo miles. That is equivalent to £1.50. I know you are thinking it is a lot smaller than the Premium Fund here but they give out a lot more of them. It is nice to have a crown next to your title. It is like more recognition and can be more proud of your review. You also know what you received credit for.
It is also more encouraging for users to see crowns in their review titles. I was chuffed to see TWO crowns in my first week of joining.
Another thing is that if you write the first review for a product in the following categories
- Computers - Electronics - Software - Videos
You are in for a chance to win 3,500 Dooyoo miles in their monthly draw. I do not believe I have won any. I do not know how you know without checking the number of Dooyoo Miles you have and I do not really pay much notice.
Next good point is that they pay more, and they pay for the non-commercial review too if I am not mistaken. Never wrote any of this myself (yet?). They also pay you if you receive a Not Useful rating which I find to be unusual. Not Useful ratings may just be revenge rates, which would be a good time to pay for them. Otherwise, if a review is deemed useless, I do not think it should be paid. However, if all the reviews are useless, I do not think they would get to the payout amounts anyway.
You can also write a short opinion called Express Reviews if you do not have much time. That is interesting but I do not use it. You can also choose to read only the express reviews from particular authors, which is a good feature for when you are strapped for time but want to check out the reviews of certain users. Editing reviews seem to take a few minutes to update after clicking the Send button, which is a tad annoying but nothing major.
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Overall, Dooyoo is a great site, especially after the improvements and bug fixes. In many ways, it is better than Ciao, but I enjoy using both sites. They pay more but it is a shame there are not as many users as Ciao but I am hoping that will change. The site keeps improving so they clearly care and take feedback into consideration. A lot of people post their reviews on both sites (cross posting), which I also do but some do not participate in Dooyoo much after posting their Ciao review or vice versa. I am hoping that this will change with other people as I am using the site more now too. Highly recommended.
Thanks for reading. Comments welcome.
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