Insta Reviews

In this age where content is king, websites vying for online success must have useful information on various subjects on top of the products and services that they already offer. The online auctioning site eBay was the latest in a long line of website to learn this. In fact, the people at eBay even admitted that their site lacked content or any other useful information. It simply remained a place where people could buy and sell products and services.

So what did the eBay do?

They have developed new sections aimed at providing valuable content to encourage their existing users to come back more often and also to attract more new users. This step forward to encourage quality user provided content was facilitated by eBay Wiki, eBay Reviews and Guides and eBay Blogs. These will also influence the popular search engines positively and will increase the overall visibility of the site.

Though these features didn’t attract most eBay users in the way that eBay wanted, this has opened up an avenue of opportunity for the switched on seller (that means you). eBay gives you a nice payback in return for providing solid content on their site and this leads to a nice ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’ scenario beneficial for all. It has an added advantage that the opportunity offered by eBay Reviews and Guides is in a flexible and open format.

eBay Reviews and Guides give a chance for users to research various products and gain from the wisdom of other members who have had experience about a particular product. So whether you are buyer or seller, ‘Reviews’ has comments and ratings about all the items that are transacted through the site. The site may limit the reviews to a specific list of products. ‘Guides’ are short articles or reports that contain information, and the opinions of the writers, about almost any topic. In fact Reviews and Guides have become independent sections of the website in their own right.
How to benefit from Reviews and Guides.

Basically there are two ways to benefit from Reviews and Guides.

1. Use the free content as a research material and produce new content on your own.
Since it’s free, Reviews and Guides have emerged as a leading source of knowledge for people trying to create information based products.

2. Write informative pieces about the niche that you focus and use this to promote your own products. This is a more complex prospect but don’t be put off , this offers a great way for you to increase the interest generate in your eBay listings.

Read on and you will some of the common ways in which you can fruitfully use Reviews and Guides:

• Write a ‘white paper’ on the product.
• Ask a friend or relative to write an objective review that is realistic and credible. Be sure to include details that make your product better than your competitors’’.
• A top 10 products review, with your product topping the list, is also a good way.
• Write a guide that explains the usual and unusual uses of your product.
• Write a guide that offers information about the niche that you sell in. You can include tips of the trade and you can also highlights the pitfalls involved with hiring a service that you offer.
• Write a guide that contains information on how to replace or repair a product.

You can be as creative as you like and don’t forget to include pictures, photos, illustrations etc to enhance the informative nature of the piece. Only, make sure that the multimedia content that you add doesn’t distract readers from the content. You can also include eBay links to specific eBay products or eBay searches.

As it is with any other copywriting or content writing, the headline (and title) that you select must attract the readers to your article. So, if you want to attract as many readers as possible, you must ask yourselves what people would be interested about. The interest of most readers is very fickle and will often change so you must also change yourselves to suit the readers.

You have to produce a steady stream of solid content if you are to increase your presence and influence on eBay. Produce, at a minimum, one review and one guide each week better if you can do more. On top of increasing your presence on eBay, you will also attract the attention of search engines that look for this kind of stuff. Remember your content will be read by a large number of eBay users and your success will depend on the number of positive votes that you receive.

Links and Tags

Links and Tags are two of the most important aspects of writing an eBay Guide.

Links can be clicked and you will be redirected to another page within eBay. There are two types of links available.
• Links to specific pages.
• Links to eBay searches.
I would recommend that you use Links to eBay searches more because product pages has a habit of changing while the searches will remain valid.

When you create a guide, if you enter the relevant search words, eBay will help you a search link for your content. The beauty and the simplicity of this is that if you had thought of all the relevant search words, it’s possible to create a search term that will bring up only your article in the search. For this you have to think like someone who would be making the search and ask yourself “If I was to search for this type of article, what search words would I enter?”. So these relevant words and phrases that you enter are called tags. Suitable tags for an article about guitar accessories would include words like guitar pedal, guitar stand, guitar amp, guitar strings etc.

Going back to the guitar accessories example, if your company name was ‘ABC Guitar Accessories’, then the relevant search terms are ABC guitar pedal, ABC guitar stand, ABC guitar amp etc. The trick here is to create such a list of search terms, specific to your listing “ABC”, that only your listings are displayed in the search results. This makes certain that the readers of your guides will visit only your listings. Its human nature that if the readers get useful information from your guide, then they are more likely to buy your products than anyone else’s. This is a very powerful tool by which you can improve your business.

Tags are basically, keywords or phrases that eBay prompts for when you create a guide. The name “tags” were coined by eBay for such words or phrases that will help others locate the guide in the future. Since these “tags” will cause your guide to be found, they are very important.

Consider an example where your guide is ‘Tips for Planning the Perfect Hawaii Vacation’. The likely tags that you will enter when you create the guide and that users will use to search for your guides are: Hawaii vacation, Maui, Ohau and Kaui. There is however a catch, eBay only allows you a maximum of four keywords. So if you had used ‘Hawaii surfing vacation’ in the above example, you would have lost out on a lot of other more general searches.

Finally, it’s easy to get bogged down by all the tools at your disposal. Use them to increase your presence on eBay.

A book review is not a book report or a book summary. It is a personal evaluation and an analysis of a book and, for the most part, reflects your personal opinion. For someone reading a book review, it should be a mini-version of the book that will help him or her decide whether to buy the book or not. So, a book review is essentially four or five paragraphs expounding on the quality, meaning and significance of the book.

There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to writing a book review. They are just your reactions to the strengths and weaknesses of a written work and reflect how you feel about the book in general. Usually the purpose and the content are given more weight age in a book review. The book review doesn’t even have to be of a requisite length. The length of the book review usually depends on the medium in which it appears. For instance, if you are writing an online review for Amazon, you may need to constrain your letters keeping the review concise and to the point. But if you are writing for a magazine, you have the freedom to stretch your feet and write a 1500 word book review.

Basically writing a book review involves stating out the purpose of the book and how successful the author was in leading to this purpose. You can back up your opinions by using various excerpts from the text.

Listed below are some common guidelines associated with writing a good book review.

1. There should always be an opening paragraph that provides essential information about the book. This means that you have to include the title, author, first copyright date, type of book, general subject matter, special features (maps, color plates, etc.), price and ISBN. For online reviews, the blurb above the actual review contains a lot of this information so you need not repeat them.

2. You have to state the purpose of the author when he wrote the book. A quick scan of the preface or the first chapter will reveal this. If it doesn’t, then you can find out by asking yourself the following questions.
a) Why did the writer choose this particular subject?
b) The perspective or point of view from which the work is written.
c) What the author was trying to accomplish. Whether he was trying to give information or was he trying to convince someone of something. He might even be trying to write something technical.
d) What genre does the book fit into?
e) Are the Table of Contents well organized and reader friendly?
f) The intended audience the writer is targeting.
g) Does the writers’ style suit your own?
h) Did the book affect you in a deep and memorable way as only good books can. Some books can change you entire outlook ,did it happen with this book?
i) Will you recommend this book to others as a good read?

3. Try to sum up the book in the so called “elevator pitch”. That is the time taken for the lift to go between floors during which you would have to recommend the book to someone.

4. Try to evaluate how the author got his points across. You can also answer this by answering the following questions.
a) What descriptions did the author use?
b) Did the author keep you interested?
c) Did the arguments make sense?
d) Was anything left out?
e) Did the book leave feeling unconvinced and unsatisfied at the end?

5. Check out the author on the internet and find out everything that you can about him. Check into his reputation, qualifications, biography etc. Also try to find out what makes him an authority on the subject. You can also check if there is any relation between the author’s philosophy or life experience and the book you are reviewing.

6. Touch on the layout, binding, typography and various other externals of the book. You can also comment on the index, footnotes, bibliography and other things that make a book complete.

7. Of course, no book summary is complete without a brief summary about the actual content. You can state out the purpose of the book and analyze how successful the author was in leading up to this purpose. You can use specific references and quotations to support your contentions.

Many companies are now depending on opinion from people to improve their products and services. A survey is a good means to gather such data from a variety of people. You can gather opinions about products, services or you could get information from a specific group of people. Most surveys are simple to take and you will need to spend only 5 to 15 minutes on it.

For example a company can profile their customers according to their gender, age, occupation, incomes etc. Another example is where a company asks a group of people a bunch of questions about one of their products, and from the feedback, they are able to improve the product to suit more people.

Governments and other agencies also conduct surveys to receive the opinion of the people about a specific query. Statistical data can also be collected by statistic agencies by conducting a survey.

Paid survey.

Here, people are paid to participate in the survey and render their opinion on any number of subjects. More and more people have started to participate in such paid surveys. A company can conduct their own survey or they can hire a third party company to do the survey for them.

The great thing about paid surveys is that, well, you get paid for them! The amount that you can generate depends on the survey type and the length of the survey. You can earn anywhere between $10 to $200 for each completed survey or for participating in an online focus group. Assuming that you can complete five paid surveys per month at an average of $50 per survey, that’s $250 made easily.

Now, you may say “That sounds interesting but how exactly can you do a survey and actually get paid for it?”

If you search the internet you will find hundreds of websites offering paid surveys. Even though it is the quickest and easiest way to find paid surveys, you will need to make sure that the sites are genuine and not a fake because you might not receive any payments even if you do all the surveys.

Some things that you can check to make sure of the credibility of the sites are.
• Check whether there are testimonials from people who had participated in their programs.
• Check if the site looks credible and well maintained and if they show a contact address or phone number.
• See if they ask for an initial down payment for registration or something like that. This is the easiest way to get fooled because they will forget about you once they get their money.
• Check out the various forums and discussion groups dedicated to paid surveys and choose the sites that are recommended there. You can also find suggestions from experienced people who have been doing this for some time.
• Some websites may ask for personal information and sensitive data like credit card information. If possible contact the website by phone or mail and ask them why they need such personal information. Some of the sites use your personal information to send unsolicited mails and email spam.

Paid surveys have been around for some years now. Many companies are now depending on opinion from people to improve their products and services. A survey is a good means to gather such data from a variety of people. This has lead to large number of online paid survey companies. In this article, we have highlighted the pros and cons of surveys in general.

The pros.

There are many positives to watch out for when you consider paid surveys. Apart from the fact that you get paid good money for easy and straight forward work, it consumes only a fraction of your spare time. Most online surveys are reputable and will pay you for your work within the stipulated time. They have become increasingly secure over the years and it’s generally safe to register with them and give them some of your personal information. You can earn anywhere between $10 to $200 for each completed survey or for participating in an online focus group. Assuming that you can complete five paid surveys per month at an average of $50 per survey, that’s $250 made easily.

The cons.

There is always some element of risk involved when you deal with any online company. All you can do is trust word of mouth and go by your gut feelings. The euphemism “if it’s too good to be true, it probably is!” is certainly true in the case of online paid surveys.

The Choices out there.

Since there are hundreds of paid online survey programs out there offering a wide variety of commissions and rewards, you need to check the feedback received from other registered survey takers of the site. This will enable you to avoid the scamsters out there. You may also want to check out the various discussion groups and forums related to paid survey to find out about good sites and to avoid the bad ones.

You should always be careful when you give out any personal information to the paid online survey sites. You should be extra careful when you give out your credit card information because this could lead to credit card fraud and identity theft. There are many people out there who have been victims of identity theft. The malicious websites can also sell your information to marketing companies.

Reviews

To be make certain that the review is unbiased, it has to be written by an independent party and not a program associate. What you want in a review is honesty. The author must have experience in the field of online paid surveys and he must be able to answer your questions and at the same time he should be willing to share his experiences, both good and bad. So what ever site you decide to join, make sure that it is well researched and you will not have to suffer in the end.

It is a user’s responsibility to make sure that his computer is running smoothly and are free from viruses such as spywares, malwares and Trojans. These viruses can be a great threat to your computer security and can cause your computer to crash down. It can also create a gateway where hackers and unauthorized users can remotely access your computer data.

Keep a watchful eye on the things that you can download from IRC chat, email attachments, or from other chat messengers. The Trojan-Spy.Win32@mx is a common anti-spyware program that can give you a number of headaches. It can give you misleading pop-up warnings. It would also install malicious taskbar icons on your computer toolbar or web browser. It can also seriously infect your Windows systems and can disrupt the normal functions of your computer. Threat level for this trojan program is considered medium. Trojan Vundo is another program that can adversely affect your computer. It can send unwanted advertising and pop-ups once you go online. They appear in random and can be irritating. It can infect XP & Windows system and threat level is considered low.

In order not to compromise the security of your computer system against spyware, malware and trojans, always be careful when you open and download email attachments. You can use an anti-virus software and scan email attachments before downloading them. Never use and download unfamiliar programs that look malicious. They may contain viruses that can harm your computer.

Most viruses, Trojans and spywares disguise themselves as useful programs, but once you install them, they begin to creep into your computer systems and disable its normal computer functions. They can also keep an eye on your activities online and take your private information. Using a reliable and tested anti-spyware and anti-trojan software can effectively guard you off these harmful programs and keep your computer data safe and secure.