The power of testimonials has been a well known force in the advertising world, but now the Buchanan Group, who also run the newslike styled “Brand Power” ads, has started a new series of TV ads under the name of “Zoot Review“. The new campaign uses the power of endorsements in order to underline the advantages of the products. While peer to peer reviews are probably still the strongest recommendation a product can have, a celebrity is probably the next closest a TV view can relate to - after all your friends are not going to be on the tube endorsing this or that product.

The ads try to emulate that a person of your personal circle of trust recommends a specific product. The people that are used in the ads are celebrities or doctors. Aside form those key personalities, the site also encourages the users to write their own reviews. But are those reviews really neutral - it’s hard to tell, when the endorsement may be a paid statement.

If you are looking for unbiased product reviews from people like you and me take a look at SharedReviews. Our site also features a profile of the reviewer, so you can see how comparable the reviewer is to you.

Hey SharedReviewers!

Video Uploads now working!

After a very long hiatus, we have re-enabled the ability to upload your own previously recorded videos for your reviews. This includes both new reviews, and uploading as part of an update on old reviews. Although we have always supported capturing video directly through your webcam, this has been a sorely missed feature and we look forward to all of the great videos everyone creates and uploads.

With this announcement, there will be a special contest for the first member who uploads 5 valid videos on 5 new reviews published starting right now! ( The video must be original and created by the author, and must display or highlight the use of the product/service being reviewed). The winner will be awarded a prize of $50! I’m starting this thread in the Community Chit Chat forum for those who complete the task so you can post links to the 5 reviews for consideration. For those who had videos waiting to be uploaded on old reviews, sorry they won’t count for this contest, but make sure you do upload them since they will count for future contests starting in December!

When on the Create Review Page, ensure you use the BROWSE bar directly under the Video Box on the right, versus the one in the image section on the left.It may take some time to upload, then encode the file so please be patient. I have tested files up to 5 megabytes in size and imagine it can handle files even larger before your browser times out (dependent on your internet connection upload speed).

Forum now playing nice with FireFox 3.5+

All members with FF 3.5 will now be happy to know they can reply to any post in the forum. Also, the loss of carriage returns has been fixed for all new posts going forward. If there were any old posts that absolutely bother you without carriage returns, you can go back and click EDIT then SAVE and carriage returns will be added to them.

Please reply to this message, post in the forum: bugs and errors section, or email support@sharedreviews.com if you experience anything strange with these fixes.

As always, thank you for your support and patience!

Hi SharedReviewers!

Heading into our fifth month of Cash rewards, and the cusp of the holiday shopping season, we’re excited to continue with another $2,000 in cash rewards this month and to pre-announce some changes coming for the December cycle. The first set of changes will be a category overhaul, we hope to clean up, consolidate, remove redundant, and add new relevant categories.

The second big change will be the addition of a new referral program here at SharedReviews. We will add a new interface for you to track all of your referrals going forward, and you will earn referral bonuses on any earnings of anyone who signs up listing you as a referral! You will earn a bonus of 10% of all of your referrals earnings for a given cycle for a 12 month period from the date they sign up. This will only count for referrals who sign up after the new program goes live.

Here is the breakdown of how each category’s share of the $2,000 will be split in November:

1st: 40%, 2nd:25%, 3rd: 20%, 4th: 10%, 5th 5%

1) Vote allowances are going to remain with the same amount allocated last month.

Here is the current structure:

ShareScore: Amount of votes per category
0-24: 1
25-74: 2
75-94: 3
95-100: 4

ShareScore: Total amount of votes available to you
0-24: 100
25-74: 200
75-94: 400
95-100: 800

2) Vote bonuses for publishing new reviews and referring new members to the site remain at 15 additional votes for a newly published review, and 20 additional votes for a new referral.

3) This Month’s Contests will remain the same as last month, they are:

1) Most Votes Cast:
1. $25
2. $20
3. $15
4. $10
5. $5

2) Most Published Reviews:
1. $25
2. $20
3. $15
4. $10
5. $5

3) Most Votes Received:
1. $25
2. $20
3. $15
4. $10
5. $5

We plan on sending out the October earnings reports and announcing the contest winners by the 10th of November. We have had a few delays in sending out this notice as well as the September payments due to all of the activity in our Bounty Alpha, but more on that next month :) The payments will be sent out today or tomorrow. Happy SharedReviewing!

Congratulations to everyone who participated in our September Cash Rewards Cycle!

September Cycle Community Statistics:

1. Total Community Reviews that were voted on: 8,335
2. Total Community Reviews that received pageviews: 18,070
3. Total Votes cast by the community: 22,343
4. Total qualifying pageviews for all reviews: 238,789
5. Community share of revenue this cycle: $1,000.00 split between 100 Hot Categories
   

Our Top 10 SharedReviews Earners:

First Place: Alice

Review Revenue:

1. Published Reviews: 285
2. Reviews that received Votes: 144 reviews received a total of 1950 votes
3. Reviews that received Pageviews: 219 reviews received a total of 6812 pageviews
4. Reviews that earned Revenue: 30
5. Review Revenue Earned: $37.25

Voting Revenue:

1. Votes Cast: 299
2. Votes that earned Revenue: 225
3. Vote Revenue Earned: $5.81

Total September earnings: $43.06

Second Place: dsnygrl

Review Revenue:

1. Published Reviews: 203
2. Reviews that received Votes: 128 reviews received a total of 1712 votes
3. Reviews that received Pageviews: 185 reviews received a total of 5819 pageviews
4. Reviews that earned Revenue: 26
5. Review Revenue Earned: $29.75

Voting Revenue:

1. Votes Cast: 121
2. Votes that earned Revenue: 86
3. Vote Revenue Earned: $3.04

Total September earnings: $32.79

Third Place: Kakoa

Review Revenue:

1. Published Reviews: 175
2. Reviews that received Votes: 85 reviews received a total of 775 votes
3. Reviews that received Pageviews: 104 reviews received a total of 1588 pageviews
4. Reviews that earned Revenue: 11
5. Review Revenue Earned: $10.75

Voting Revenue:

1. Votes Cast: 335
2. Votes that earned Revenue: 260
3. Vote Revenue Earned: $11.73

Total September earnings: $22.48

Fourth Place: Karen

Review Revenue:

1. Published Reviews: 812
2. Reviews that received Votes: 129 reviews received a total of 774 votes
3. Reviews that received Pageviews: 268 reviews received a total of 3971 pageviews
4. Reviews that earned Revenue: 13
5. Review Revenue Earned: $16.25

Voting Revenue:

1. Votes Cast: 817
2. Votes that earned Revenue: 83
3. Vote Revenue Earned: $2.63

Total September earnings: $18.88

Fifth Place: cnt24

Review Revenue:

1. Published Reviews: 192
2. Reviews that received Votes: 101 reviews received a total of 751 votes
3. Reviews that received Pageviews: 164 reviews received a total of 3961 pageviews
4. Reviews that earned Revenue: 11
5. Review Revenue Earned: $11.75

Voting Revenue:

1. Votes Cast: 465
2. Votes that earned Revenue: 247
3. Vote Revenue Earned: $6.61

Total September earnings: $18.36

Sixth Place: Rae777

Review Revenue:

1. Published Reviews: 351
2. Reviews that received Votes: 82 reviews received a total of 502 votes
3. Reviews that received Pageviews: 174 reviews received a total of 2448 pageviews
4. Reviews that earned Revenue: 10
5. Review Revenue Earned: $11.25

Voting Revenue:

1. Votes Cast: 513
2. Votes that earned Revenue: 236
3. Vote Revenue Earned: $7.00

Total September earnings: $18.25

Seventh Place: crunkyjens

Review Revenue:

1. Published Reviews: 128
2. Reviews that received Votes: 45 reviews received a total of 531 votes
3. Reviews that received Pageviews: 84 reviews received a total of 2468 pageviews
4. Reviews that earned Revenue: 20
5. Review Revenue Earned: $12.41

Voting Revenue:

1. Votes Cast: 637
2. Votes that earned Revenue: 571
3. Vote Revenue Earned: $15.56

Total September earnings: $27.97

Eighth Place: Tink

Review Revenue:

1. Published Reviews: 229
2. Reviews that received Votes: 88 reviews received a total of 803 votes
3. Reviews that received Pageviews: 130 reviews received a total of 2431 pageviews
4. Reviews that earned Revenue: 10
5. Review Revenue Earned: $10.25

Voting Revenue:

1. Votes Cast: 391
2. Votes that earned Revenue: 241
3. Vote Revenue Earned: $7.27

Total September earnings: $17.52

Ninth Place: Debbie831

Review Revenue:

1. Published Reviews: 167
2. Reviews that received Votes: 77 reviews received a total of 405 votes
3. Reviews that received Pageviews: 80 reviews received a total of 1457 pageviews
4. Reviews that earned Revenue: 8
5. Review Revenue Earned: $6.75

Voting Revenue:

1. Votes Cast: 329
2. Votes that earned Revenue: 289
3. Vote Revenue Earned: $9.88

Total September earnings: $16.63

Tenth Place: FrankV

Review Revenue:

1. Published Reviews: 76
2. Reviews that received Votes: 20 reviews received a total of 87 votes
3. Reviews that received Pageviews: 32 reviews received a total of 283 pageviews
4. Reviews that earned Revenue: 1
5. Review Revenue Earned: $0.50

Voting Revenue:

1. Votes Cast: 386
2. Votes that earned Revenue: 375
3. Vote Revenue Earned: $15.98

Total September earnings: $16.48

Hi SharedReviewers!

Our fourth month of the new cash rewards program sees us going back to sharing all cash rewards evenly across all categories. Our data from the “Hot Categories” test is in, and now it’s time for us to do some analyzing before we go back to trying something similar. The early news is that it helped some successful categories be even more successful, but it also made things a bit more difficult for everyone as they competed for their share of the cash rewards. the next time we try this we’ll address all of the feedback we received, and do our best to ensure it’s not only successful for SR, but it’s also more fun for all of you!.

Although we are going back to all category earners, we will be changing the earnings spots per category from 3 to 5. This was the one thing everyone loved about “Hot Categories” so we’re going to continue this indefinitely.Although we may not be able to do this again next month, this month we have increased Cash Rewards to $2,000 which is our largest amount since Cash Rewards started! Here is the breakdown of how each category’s share will be split:

1st: 40%, 2nd:25%, 3rd: 20%, 4th: 10%, 5th 5%

1) Vote allowances are going to remain with the same amount allocated last month.

Here is the current structure:

ShareScore: Amount of votes per category
0-24: 1
25-74: 2
75-94: 3
95-100: 4

ShareScore: Total amount of votes available to you
0-24: 100
25-74: 200
75-94: 400
95-100: 800

2) Vote bonuses for publishing new reviews and referring new members to the site remain at 15 additional votes for a newly published review, and 20 additional votes for a new referral.

3) This Month’s Contests have changed, they are:

1) Most Votes Cast:
1. $25
2. $20
3. $15
4. $10
5. $5

2) Most Published Reviews:
1. $25
2. $20
3. $15
4. $10
5. $5

3) Most Votes Received:
1. $25
2. $20
3. $15
4. $10
5. $5

We plan on sending out the September earnings reports and announcing the contest winners by the 7th of October. Happy SharedReviewing!