Hi SharedReviewers,

The Return of Cash Rewards!

This month marks the first month of return to Monthly Cash Rewards for Voting and Publishing Reviews on SharedReviews. It also marks the first month where we now calculate unique visitors into the mix for determining a review’s share of the rewards.

Later this month you will see a new “Visitors” number associated with every review. This number will be calculated with the number of member votes to determine the review’s “Popularity Score”. The most Popular Reviews in each category will earn a share of that category’s percentage of the Cash Rewards allocated for that month.

For the month of July, SharedReviews Community Cash Rewards is $1,500. For this month, the total will be split evenly amongst all categories, where the top review will earn 50% of that total, second place 30%, and third place 20%. Any amount earned by a review will be split evenly between the author receiving 50%, and the voters sharing the other 50% evenly.
We are planning the release of new social features over the coming weeks that will allow you to share your review on other sites. Unique visitors from other sites, and Unique visitors from search engines will all contribute to your unique visitor total for your review. Over the next few weeks we will be writing a number of how to articles to help you drive awareness of your reviews outside of SharedReviews, so stay tuned.

Voting:

Voting is a very important part of earning on SharedReviews, although the vote allowances determined by your ShareScore have been lowered from the hiatus period that just ended. Here is the new breakdown:

ShareScore: Amount of votes per category

0-24: 1
25-74: 2
75-94: 4
95-100: 8

ShareScore: Total amount of votes available to you

0-24: 200
25-74: 400
75-94: 800
95-100: 1600

ShareScore is still an integral part in determining your vote allowances. Some ShareScore changes of note:
1) Voting on a review rejected for being plagiarized has had its negative impact removed. We do not expect all members to check each review they vote on for being plagiarized, and hence we wanted to make sure there were no negatives associated for those who do not want to make the extra effort
2) Successfully reporting a plagiarized review has had a significant increase in ShareScore bonus. We wanted to reward those who make the extra effort to report plagiarized reviews.
3) Inviting someone new to the community (From an English Speaking Country) has had an extra bonus added for ShareScore. Growing our community is a key to the long term growth of SharedReviews, and this bonus combined with some new features being added to the friends management tab and signup process over the next few weeks will make it easier and more fun to grow your network of friends on SharedReviews.

This Month’s Contests:

1) Most Votes Received:
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 Popular Video Review: $50 to the top video review by votes!
4) New Reviews in Lesser Categories: The following categories will give the author an additional $5 bonus for the top voted review that is:
a) Published this month
b) A review on a product that matches the category, without any copied or plagiarized text.
c) Must contain a photo or video of your product (by you).
d) Must have original experiences relating to the product, and you must have purchased the product.

Categories:
1) Snowmobiles
2) Snowmobile Accessories
3) MotorSport Accessories
4) Wheels/Rims
5) Lazer Hair Removal Devices
6) Video Conferencing Devices
7) Rowers
8) Stair Climbers
9) Home/Office Security Systems
10) Business Loans
11) Travel Insurance Packages
12) Gazebos
13) Snow Blowers
14) Satellite Phones
15) Equity & Reverse Mortgages
16) Mobile Homes
17) Modular Homes
18) Mortgage Refinancing Packages
19) Road Bikes (Bicycles)
20) Golf Vacation Packages

The most Votes Cast Contest is no longer applicable this month due to the significant reduction in vote allowances.

We have many more announcements coming in the next few weeks, so stay tuned!

We have been extremely busy these last 6 months at SharedReviews HQ. From completing a site re-design to adding many new features, fixing tons of bugs all the way to ensuring the health of the business as a whole, we’ve been working diligently for the day we could announce the end of the revenue sharing hiatus forced upon us late last year.

Although the company has had positive cash flow for some time, everything past bare bone operational costs has been dedicated to paying down member outstanding balances from last year. This has meant some sacrifices for the business, including the temporary departure of some great people and limited availability for the rest. I have been able to continue to dedicate myself full time to SharedReviews, but like everyone else I’ve sacrificed more than you know to see us through to this day. This is why I wanted to extend a very special and personal thanks to those of you that have remained active during the hiatus. Your support, feedback, and involvement inspired us to sacrifice no matter the cost until we came through and our promises could become reality.

With that being said, It is with great excitement that I announce a definitive launch date for the all new SharedReviews Cash Rewards Program. We are going to process the final back payment on all outstanding balances over $10 the first week of June. During the month of June we will continue to work on some changes to the site, including adding more social features as well as finishing and testing the redesigned cash rewards system before the launch on July 1st, 2009. This means that July will be the first official month of earning, and all payments for the new program will be processed via paypal 30 days after the last day of the month.

What are the changes to how you earn on SharedReviews?

Community Cash Pool: We needed to find a model that allowed us to be able to predict our costs while also giving every member a clear idea of how much they could earn before a monthly cycle began. Now, instead of a portion of company revenue being allocated after a given month is finished, we will pre-announce a dedicated amount before a cycle begins. This will range from one or two thousand at minimum to the potential for much, much, more depending on available cash flow as well as any sponsor contributions or incentives we may have in a given month.

Ranking: Voting will continue to be an integral part of SharedReviews, but the ranking of reviews in each category will also include how popular that review is outside of the community. This means we will be tracking and displaying how many unique visitors your review receives and calculating this with member votes to determine your review’s “Popularity Score”. We aren’t leaving this number to chance though; many new tools will be available for you to promote your reviews on social networks, blogging platforms, news sites, bookmarking services and more. Just like voting, your traffic success will be determined by your strategy and effort where we will provide many tools, resources, and how to articles to get you started.

Contests: The contests we have maintained during the hiatus have been so successful that we’ve decided to continue them even after July 1st. This means that most votes cast, most published reviews, and most votes received will continue with new contests released each month to keep things interesting. The first new contest that starts June 1st will be a $50 prize for the most voted video review to celebrate all of the video enhancements and fixes we recently launched.

We’ll announce more details as we get closer to the July 1st launch date. As always, feel free to contact us directly or post any questions or feedback you may have in the forum.

Hey SharedReviewers!

It’s been a while since I’ve updated the community on how we’re doing behind the scenes, so I figured there’s no better reason than the recent passing of our one year anniversary!

First, Some Background

We started our company back in January of 07 with a dream, and that dream was to increase wealth online. Now, when I say wealth I don’t mean money - money is a means of transferring wealth. I’m talking about providing something of value that people want, and that something is knowledge and experience. We believe that every single person has amassed experiences and insight that would bring significant value to others. Now, if only there was a fun mechanism with meaningful incentives for authors to share them.

What exactly is SharedReviews?

On the surface you may think that SharedReviews is just another product review site, but it goes much deeper than that. To us it’s designed to be a reflection of a mantra. That mantra is that product experiences, like scientific research, how-to articles, or any other knowledge that’s shared, helps others improve their lives. The opportunity for us was to create a community destination for consumers that allowed them to not only share their product experiences with ease, but also connect with each other in a meaningful way that helped them become more powerful and informed shoppers.

The Impressive Results

Since our launch in February of 2008, we’ve seen steady and impressive growth both in the number and engagement level of our members, as well as the diversity and breadth of product experiences published on the platform. Let me share some data to give you some insight into why we’re extremely happy with how things have progressed:

• Almost 300,000 unique visitors generating close to 800,000 page views across the site in Jan 09.
• Over 100,000 votes cast by community members each and every month.
• Over 35,000 product experiences published for all to learn from in more than 400 categories that cover everything from Batteries to Cars to Mortgages.

I believe the biggest reason we’ve made so much progress is the dedication and support of our community. Loyal members who believe in SR, saw the potential of what we’re trying to do, and acquired so many positive benefits in their lives by being members that they have continued to help grow our community through both the good and the difficult. For that we are eternally grateful, and it renews our belief in what we’re trying to do every single day that we sacrifice to see SharedReviews become the success we know it’s destined to be.

The Future

Where are we going from here? Our number one priority continues to be payments towards outstanding member balances. Once we are completely up to date, we are going to re-enable our revenue sharing program with a number of fun new twists, not to mention the release of some brand new social features that are guaranteed to make spending time on SharedReviews even more fun!

As a new revenue stream both for the company and top writers in our community, the Bounty Service is going to be a major focus for us going forward. In case you haven’t heard, a “Bounty” is an article request for customers to use on their own sites. Our ability to collect and leverage writer demographics such as experience, education, and interests allow us to target the best authors for every assignment that comes in. We’ve had so much success from the trials we’ve been running the last few months that we’ve hit our limit on how many we can process without finishing off our new website dedicated to managing it all. We are literally busting at the seams to fulfil orders, and being late on releasing the new Bounty site is one of the unfortunate results. We’re working on getting the site launched as soon as we can, and we’ll make an announcement before the end of the month with an exact launch date. We wanted to thank all of the authors who have applied to become writers for the bounty service, and we’ll let you know who qualifies as soon as the site goes live.

Tomorrow night we’re going to require a downtime of a few hours in order to release a pretty big upgrade to our backend that will speed up the site quite a bit. Within the next few days after that we’re going to release some changes to the create review page in order to facilitate more structured data collection dependent on the category chosen. We’ll announce more details about this on Saturday in the member forum.

We are continuing to make member payments twice a month, and you can expect the next payment to be processed on March 20th.

Thank you for Sharing!

Peter Ejtel
Founder
peter@sharedreviews.com

After it official and obvious now that we’re in a recession, 2009 starts off with everybody watching a lot closer where and how they spend their money - especially after the holiday season. In reality, this is probably something we should have been doing all the time, but in times where people have money (or available credit) they just tend to worry less about where it goes. So in tough economic times we all start counting our pennies.

So now we spend less and buy less. We wait for sales on the products we want and search and use more coupons. We spend more time researching the products we are planning on buying - we make sure they fulfill our requirements. And this is where product reviews come into play.

When I am selecting something to buy, I like to hear from people like you and me who have used the product before. And depending what I’m planning on buying, I have my own “experts” in my circle of friends, but I’d like to usually hear more opinions, especially the more expensive the product is. So I turn to the Internet.

Sometimes I am very slow in making a decision - six months is nothing unusual for me when it comes to making a bigger purchase. Professional reviews are of limited help, since they do not focus on the actual experience someone has had with a product, but mostly on comparing features. While it’s handy to know which product has the better features, I’d also like to know how easy it s to use the product and I’d prefer hearing it from someone who uses the product on a day-to-day basis.

And just like in my circle of friends, on SharedReviews I can take a closer look at who is writing this product review by looking at the user profile, which in turn helps me in making a better buying decision.

Hey SharedReviewers,

It took us a few days longer than anticipated, but the author application forms and early customer signups are live! You can access the new site by clicking the “Apply for Program” link in the top right corner of your SharedReviews Profile Home page, or direct dialing http://content.sharedreviews.com in your browser address bar.

So, what are Bounties?

Bounties are assignments from customers for custom content they’d like to purchase for their websites. Although initially this will be articles only, it will eventually include Videos and Photos for all those avid Photographers and Videographers in the community. Basically, customers will publicize “Assignments” they’d like you to fulfill. Our proprietary matching engine will then recommend the best authors for the assignment based on the criteria they enter, where they’ll make their choice based on the profile, history, and work examples authors publicize in their member profiles and the info they enter on the application form.

We’ve been trialing this program in a private alpha the last couple of months, and with all of the learning we’ve acquired we see some very cool ways we can revolutionize the pay for content industry for both authors and customers, so expect some earth shattering and cool things to materialize when we go live. In the meantime, make sure you come and apply since there’s no cost and the earning potential will be huge for those that have the skills, plus we may have some assignments for you even sooner.

The requirements to become accepted as an author in the beta are:

1) You have a SharedReviews member account. Our matching engine will leverage all of the great profile info members have shared, and we’ll eventually be integrating all author aspects directly into the SharedReviews site in the future.

2) You’re physically located in North America. We may open this up to other countries with English as their primary language such as the UK and Australia, but we need to keep it simple out of the gate. If you’re located in one of those latter two countries and are interested in the program, make sure you let us know either directly through an email (accounts@sharedreviews.com) or on the SharedReviews Forum so we can gauge interest.

3) You can show us examples of work you’ve done so we can see what you’re capable of. You’ll have the options of sharing your resume, sample articles, or links to other sites to highlight your experience. Don’t worry if you’re not a professional freelance writer, we want to open this lucrative vertical up to anyone who has the ability to create great content and wants to pad their income in these times of economic uncertainty, so quality Reviews and your history on SharedReviews both apply as well.

Although we may be opening up sections of the new site over the coming weeks, expect our big beta launch in January where we hope to offer some of the highest author payouts in the industry!

Peter Ejtel
Founder/CEO
peter@sharedreviews.com