Epinions--What's in It for You?
May 25 '01 (Updated May 28 '01)
The Bottom Line It was divine intervention, I tell ya!
The Catalyst
At a party I attended recently, I found myself in a debate with a friend who contended that The Sopranos is getting better from year to year. I told him he was wrong; I felt confident I could prove he was wrong. After all, I had written a review for epinions in which I discussed the many ways in which writer David Chase had worked all sorts of hints into his scripts to suggest that even he was losing interest in his characters [1]. I had worked out the argument very carefully in my review, and when I opened my mouth to speak, I was confident that it would only be a few minutes before my friend conceded that I was right.
Only we were at a party, as I said. And there was beer. And I had had some. And I couldn't really remember any of the examples that I had used in my review. As I stood there, struggling to reconstruct my own argument, my friend shrugged and laughed at me. "You're just being contrary," he said. "No," I countered feebly, "I'm just trying to remember my argument. Give me a second."
But seconds are precious, particularly when there is more beer on hand, simply waiting to be consumed. So he rolled his eyes and handed me another beer and changed the topic. For the remainder of our discussion, I found myself afraid to go anywhere near any of the things I had written about for epinions because even though I couldn't really remember any of what I had written, I was intoxicated enough to believe that all of the positions I had taken were absolutely correct. I had fallen into the mother of all epinions traps, the pitfall of pretentiousness [2].
A few days after the party, I remembered that my friend had seemed not to believe that I had a genuine argument concerning The Sopranos, so I made the mistake of sending him a link to my review. I didn't expect him to read it, just to understand that I had really been trying to recall my position after all.
This morning I received an email from him:
Dude,
You are an idiot. That review doesn't make any sense. You don't even mention the Russian commando. I checked out some of your other stuff, and the only nice thing I can say is that I like the picture you put up. But even if you don't seem to know what you're doing, do you mind telling me how much you get paid to write reviews condemning the best drama on television and warning people away from my alma mater, the best school in history?
Now, for the Uninitiated
That's what people new to the site invariably want to know. They see the reviews and the comments and the repressed writer in them whispers, "Hey, that looks like fun!" But they also see the message about being paid for their contributions and another part of them says, "It's too good to be true. They can't really pay just any schmendrick with an internet connection for sharing his opinion of the latest Keanu Reeves movie. What gives?"
Now the purpose of this review is to provide a short and a long answer to the two questions that we all whisper to ourselves when we first discover epinions. Sure, I could have emailed my answers directly to my friend, but that would be contrary to the spirit of the site (and particularly to the general comments section), where the rule seems to be that the more public we make the minutiae of our lives, the more thoroughly we integrate ourselves into the epinions community.
The Short Answer
1) Yes, it really is a lot of fun to write for epinions.
2) Yes, they really do pay you, but nothing worth mentioning, particularly when you stick to the media categories, as I do. I have written 150 reviews, spending roughly an hour on each one. Thus far, I have been paid less than $200 by the site. If I had spent my 150 hours wearing a hairnet at the Burger King down the street, I would have made $750--and I bet I would be qualified to write one heck of a review on Burger King to boot.
If you want to write for epinions because you like to share your opinions about things, it's a good idea to get involved with the site. If you want to write for epinions because you're interested in seeing how talented and funny some other people around the world (many of them stuck in dead-end jobs, just like you) really are, it's a good idea to get involved with epinions. If you're trapped in a cubicle with no real work to do and some kind of content filter that keeps you from accessing pornography, it's a good idea to get involved with epinions. But if you think that getting paid one penny per member page view and then having a few dollars in income share thrown at you each month makes you a professional writer, you need psychological help. And believe me, you'll never be able to pay for that help with what you make writing for epinions.
Golly Wally, If That Was the Short Answer, . . . [3]
Back when I started at epinions, I remember wallowing through the morass of content in the general comments section and trying to find some useful information about the site. I was lucky (or unlucky, depending upon whether you view my epinions addiction as a boon or a bane) to have seen some excellent contributions to the site before making my way to the general comments contributions--primarily because the dreck that I encountered in that category was almost enough to drive me from the site before I had even submitted my first review.
The number of people with less than ten reviews under their belt who churn out advice on writing for epinions is staggering. And our patience for these contributions is mind-boggling. As I sifted through one useless piece of garbage after another, I told myself there should be a rule prohibiting people from contributing to the general comments category until they had written at least one hundred reviews. And then I discovered I was wrong. Apparently the magic number is 50, for the first genuinely helpful advice for newbies that I encountered was Joubert's 50th review, which really did offer some insights into the working of epinions [4]. I have since seen many contributions to the general comments section, very few of them funny [5], even fewer of them helpful [6]. But at the time I read Joubert's review, I told myself that I would try to follow his example and contribute something genuinely useful to the general comments category for my 50th review.
Only when the time came, I reread his review and realized I didn't have very much to add. But since I received my friend's email asking me a question just before I was about to write my 150th review (which was going to be about the film Best in Show), I decided to take it as a sign, a portent, an omen, a divine intervention. I consider myself karmically directed to help those of you who are wondering about the site. And the best way for me to help you is to ramble incoherently about my epinions experience with occasional links to useful pieces thrown in. The meat of this review is in the footnotes. The rest is pure, unadulterated self-indulgence. And that, my friends, is what epinions is all about.
How Can I Make Epinions Work for Me?
When I started writing for epinions, I wasn't interested in the pennies or even in finding a niche for myself in the community. I had the idea that I could use the site to develop a web presence. Search engines would turn up my reviews, some of which would be funny, all of which would provide a fair indication of my writing style. Thousands of entrepreneurs around the world who couldn't afford to hire full-time writers would see my reviews and would click on the link to my homepage, where they would discover that they could hire me to draft sales letters for them. That was my plan.
After nearly six months, I still get more jobs through referrals of people that I know than through strangers who discover me via epinions. In fact, I have only snared one client through epinions, a client who gave me some of my most enjoyable freelance assignments to date (and who paid for my services fairly and promptly, which is no small thing in the world of freelancing), but whose name I dare not divulge, lest he be inundated by proposals from wannabe freelancers at the site.
Perhaps I would have more success if I geared my profile more towards my freelancing capabilities, but I can never quite bring myself to become purely businesslike in my epinions activities because writing for the site is just too much fun. What would nathsmom think of me if I turned my profile into some blatant bid for business from strangers surfing the internet? What would aruzenchin say if he saw me pinning my resume to my fly? I haven't been able to bring myself to use epinions as the self-promoting tool that I always envisioned it to be.
And yet, I hardly feel as if I've wasted my time. Epinions does give me an important outlet. It provides a forum in which I can get my many complaints concerning American popular culture off my chest. What's more, it lets me connect with others who are just as profoundly dissatisfied with movies that feature naked people blowing things up as I am. And better still, it lets me connect with cool people who are unequivocally for naked people blowing things up.
The only real caveat I can offer to those considering joining epinions concerns the value that the site places on its most talented contributors. Advisor selection really is little more than a lottery. Don't assume that the site will nuzzle you with love simply because you're a talented writer with an interesting perspective. There are still plenty of discerning epinioneers who don't read (or have never even heard of) eplovejoy, one of the wittiest, cleverest, and most judicious reviewers on the site.
It takes time to find the readers who will respond to your work. Don't post all of your best work in the first few days that you belong to the site. I made the mistake of flooding the site in the beginning, and the first video game review I wrote (a longish piece that I still consider one of my best contributions to the site) still has less than twenty hits on it. Many new writers make the same mistake. Get your feet wet. Write a review; then let it sit for a while. Poke around the site. Get a sense of which writers you admire and cultivate some relationships before making your next contribution.
Have fun, but don't worry about the money. Five minutes spent worrying about your eroyalties is five minutes that you could have spent flipping burgers for more money than the ordinary epinioneer will get from a day's eroyalties.
That's all I have to say about that.
This review is dedicated to lobstergirl because I have always wanted to be the second person to dedicate a review to lobstergirl. It took months of waiting, but finally that sucker jkkelley decided to be the first. You're such a loser, jonathan!
_________________________
1) My review of The Sopranos can be found here:
http://www.epinions.com/content_12122689156
2) Rich2003dm has covered the pitfalls of pretentiousness in a review under that title:
http://www.epinions.com/content_7882444420
3) Sordid-1 used to use the phrase "Golly Wally, that's some might fine reading!" in his review of the week, which he has since discontinued, due to lack of (his own) interest. I'm following repulsemonkey's lead in urging him to bring it back.
4) Joubert's 50th review can be found here:
http://www.epinions.com/user-review-209-AC76B8E-3A181CBA-prod4
5) Repulsemonkey recently wrote a pretty inspired contribution to this category:
http://www.epinions.com/content_1512546436
Another funny (but also useful) piece is by annexation:
http://www.epinions.com/content_1368105092
6) Mobiprof has written what may be the most useful piece on site for a newbie, a dictionary of terms that newbies need to know:
http://www.epinions.com/content_1370660996
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Epinions.com ID:
Sloucho
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 - Top 500 |
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Member: Mike Davis
Location: Philadelphia
Reviews written: 199
Trusted by: 248 members
About Me:
Read my reviews in order to heal the sick and control the weather. Seriously.
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