The old triple lindie by Arrington

I appreciate your comments on Melodeo.com. To be clear, I actually asked TDavid to give us a negative review if needed. I want the upper level leaders in the company to see the real comments about Melodeo.com. I am now really concerned about the companies website as TDavid’s review above is actually the worst type of review a site can get. Indifference is the worst kinda review and it speaks to the level of work that will be needed to be made to the site to get people excited about it. It is bad when nobody cares to even write a review about the site. Please go visit the site and post back here on TDavid’s blog about what you think is wrong with the site.

Rob Greenlee
http://www.melodeo.com

If you are sent anything including a T-shirt before writing the review? I think the answer is yes. Why wouldn’t you want to tell readers that hey, I received this t-shirt or widget from XYZ company? Heck, I’d take pictures wearing it. If you’re paid why not tell people I was paid X dollars for this post or given ___ and perhaps even ask readers if the post was worth it?

I think if you have any sort of interaction with the product/service/support/management before publishing that should be part of the review. If it’s a private conversation and you don’t have permission or it’s information under NDA than you should at least be able to disclose you signed an NDA.

If you met the owners at a show and they said, hey, please check this out and/or blog about it. This information helps for readers understand where and why you decided to post a particular review. Motivation for why a review was written is an important piece of information — at least to readers like me.

I’ve written to reviewers to complain about obvious missing information. Including some really important things like: a) where do I buy this and b) how much is it? I don’t understand a review which skips telling me the price unless the price is completely unknown. At least get an estimate. Furthermore, I support affiliate links (preferably identified) being used to link to products. I’ve written here time and again that I want website owners to make money from their work. Just shoot straight about it.

As I write this, I’m working on a review on a new Amazon service. What is my motivation for writing this review? It’s something new and was offered to my wife, who passed the invitation onto me. Maybe not vital information to some readers, but I like to know why somebody is reviewing a product/service in every review. When that question is left unanswered, a lot of these disclosure discussions can (rightly) be raised by the reader. Why not answer the questions before they are asked and just write why you decided to write each review. Because it’s your job, you were paid or asked by XYZ to do so are all answers. It’s up the reviewer at that point to convince readers that their opinion is truthful once a sentence or two has been burned on why write the review.

Too many writing pieces don’t answer the most important question: why. If your next review doesn’t answer that question, take two minutes before posting and be sure to answer it.

Whether or not someone is being paid to write a review is the most important thing (to me, anyway): is it useful to others?

I’ve been hand typing one of these based on 3-4 different policies that I’ve seen on the web. I don’t know how I missed this one, but glad you provided the link!