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Affiliate scams have ruined reviews | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| IHeartSpanish Newbie United States Joined 4897 days ago 3 posts - 16 votes Studies: English* | Message 1 of 18 22 January 2011 at 2:05am | IP Logged | ||
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This is my first post, just wanted to get something off my chest.
Once upon a time, especially before the internet, you really took a chance when you bought something or paid for a service. Without a recommendation from a friend, you were going in blind when you bought something. And then the internet came, and you could find reviews, and honest ones. I remember when I went to buy my first car, a plymouth neon. And then I found tons of horrible reviews from epinions.com and instead picked a car that had great reviews, that being a geo prism. In the end that car ran great with very little problems, saving me possibly tons of money and worries.All thanks to these reviews. And then came the concept of affiliate marketing. For those who is unaware of what affiliate marketing is, I will explain. Basically companies give commision to those who advertise for them. If you have looked up any language learning program, especially those made famous by the internet ( like Learning Spanish like crazy or the rocket languages program) then you surely have seen one of these advertising sites.Sometimes they say things like " is rocket Spanish a scam...Find out".Some just look like regular sites. However the majority of affiliates market though websites with FAKE REVIEWS". I know rocket Spanish and Spanish like crazy would give you 75% commision on the cost of their downloadable program,if someone clicks through a link you post. Now I am not picking on anyone who uses affiliate marketing to make money...However it is almost impossible to get honest reviews anymore. And my main issue is that people lie and tell people whatever, just to make a quick dollar. For instance when rocket Spanish first came out, I read countless sites that said it would make you fluent in Spanish. Tales of people who became fluent in 3 months were everywhere. The website itself said it would make you fluent in 3 months, so these people were just taking their lie, and running with it. I bought it just to check it out, and while a good course, it taught basic Spanish.I already had Learn Spanish like crazy and Pimsleur at the time, so I had plenty to compare it to. Secondly, while I like the format of rocket Spanish a little bit better than Learning Spanish like crazy, I believe that LSLC covers more Spanish than rocket Spanish, as least in terms of the audio. But almost every site was saying how rocket Spanish was much better, covered alot more Spanish etc... This was confusing because shortly before that, everyone was hyping LSLC. So looking into it deeper, it all became clear. Rocket Spanish paid its affiliates 75% commision, while LSLC only paid their affiliates 50%. Now, several years later,its even worst.Finding reviews on certain products are almost impossible ( usually because these products pay low commision, say 25% commision on a $40 product) and now its really hard to find honest reviews. It seems Amazon.com is about the only place where you can find honest reviews, however many times products( especially products that were made for and sold on the internet) have suspicious reviews. For instance I have seen where a product might have 3 or 4 mixed reviews, and then out of no where, it will get multiple 5 star reviews in a day or 2, many times by people who has never reviewed a product before. My main gripe is its hard to distinguish rather a product is good or not, because everyone is only reviewing a product to make money. Its no different than a celeb promoting a piece of crap exercise machine that he has never used. Because of all being sick of these fake reviews, I have decided to start a series of my honest reviews of products I have used ( however all for learning Spanish).Stay tuned. And good luck with your language journey. 11 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6360 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 2 of 18 22 January 2011 at 2:37am | IP Logged | ||
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You make good points, but to be fair, the opposite is also true. I read a lot of senselessly negative reviews on just
about everything, including language products. Some bloggers have even been sued for it. Be careful kids:) 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| IHeartSpanish Newbie United States Joined 4897 days ago 3 posts - 16 votes Studies: English* | Message 3 of 18 22 January 2011 at 4:31am | IP Logged | ||
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I would not say its the opposite. Since you mentioned bloggers, many people blog as a way to make money ( through a combination of being paid to write articles/blogs and through advertising) and sometimes needs something to write about.
Not to mention I have seen many affiliate website bash other products in order to hype up one other product. For instance, Pimsleur is a very popular product, but its not an internet-made product, from just one website (like rocketspanish.com or any of products like this). Because of this,Pimsleur(for example)does not seem very profitable to promote,so they will bash it to promote these other products. As far as the senseless(but honest) reviews, I have seen opinions of products of any sort be very different. A product that one person loves, another person will hate. Just a matter of opinion,even it some people go a little crazy. One again thinking about Pimsleur, many people love these programs( I am a fan myself) though others complain that the progam is to expensive, covers too little material, moves to slow etc. Honestly if it was not for reviews at amazon and on this forum, its untelling some of the language learning programs I would have bought.Hopefully with the help of all the people on this forum, we can give honest reviews, to help people out. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| translator2 Senior Member United States Joined 6729 days ago 848 posts - 1862 votes Speaks: English* | Message 4 of 18 22 January 2011 at 5:15am | IP Logged | ||
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I have a blog site where in addition to links related to foreign languages, I sell books in exchange for a small commission, BUT I personally own (or have owned) each and every book on my site and I make it a point to only recommend the ones I like. It only generates around $10 a month anyway, so there is no point in being dishonest.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| yuriythebest Bilingual Tetraglot Newbie UkraineRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4893 days ago 7 posts - 8 votes Speaks: Russian*, Ukrainian*, English, Greek Studies: Japanese | Message 5 of 18 22 January 2011 at 8:21am | IP Logged | ||
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Yeah I'd stay away from review sites and mostly use the forums to find out what's good.
I've also seen some disingenuous youtubers promoting their stuff. Edited by yuriythebest on 22 January 2011 at 8:22am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hjordis Senior Member United States snapshotsoftheworld. Joined 4996 days ago 209 posts - 264 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 6 of 18 22 January 2011 at 9:33am | IP Logged | ||
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Unless it's something I really want with a lack of any sort of reviews at all I always read the bad reviews and, especially, the neutral reviews first. If there's a complaint that comes up often, and that complaint is about something that would bother me I leave it at that. Otherwise I move on to the good reviews just to make sure it's actually something I want. Bad reviews tend to be a lot more telling, whereas good reviews are often more along the lines of great product! definitely recommended! even if it's 4 stars.
I buy online frequently, mostly language books and such, and this method has only failed me once. Even then I had a feeling it wouldn't be as useful as I wanted it to be, but I got it anyways. I don't really buy language courses at all, but I'd assume it would work for them too. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kmart Senior Member Australia Joined 5934 days ago 194 posts - 400 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian | Message 7 of 18 22 January 2011 at 12:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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I consider myself pretty good at telling fake reviews from real ones. In the first place, I'm only interested in well-written reviews that detailwhat is good/bad about the product, not just rave "It's great, it's wonderful, I became fluent in 3 months".
Secondly, there's a certain sameness about fake reviews, they often have a very similar "voice", and if it's a foreign language product aimed at native English speakers, a bunch of rave reviews written in faulty English is a bit of a give-away - eg why are all these people making "spanglish" mistakes in reviews for a Spanish language product? And thirdly - if in doubt, check it out here - although you get a wide range of opinions on the same product, you do get intelligent, thoughtful responses that enable a reasonable assessment of the product. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| TerryW Senior Member United States Joined 6167 days ago 370 posts - 783 votes Speaks: English* | Message 8 of 18 22 January 2011 at 1:47pm | IP Logged | ||
It's amazing how many Amazon reviews pop up that only say something like: (5 stars) "I'm going to give this to my brother for his birthday, and it arrived in 3 days in excellent shape!" or (1 star) "I want this real bad, cuz I seen it on TV, but I been waiting like 10 days already, and it still ain't hear." Usually in these cases somebody will add a comment to their review reaming them out for not reviewing the product and for messing up the rating average. Edited by TerryW on 22 January 2011 at 1:58pm 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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