How Much Do You Trust Internet Reviews?

I am going to share a little secret that will get me blacklisted from a few websites, but one that I feel is a good public service.

I was writing my daily Steemit post and one of the tips I wrote was to “read the reviews” before you buy. I saved that piece for another day so I could share this one with you.

When I began focusing on my writing career, I suffered the cliché starving writer symptoms.

“What do you do for a living?”
“I’m a writer.”
“Oh, cool! But, I meant, what do you do to, like, pay the bills while you're writing?”

Yeah, that’s really what it’s like.

I wrote for free. A lot. And picked up what I call junk work- writing mindless, boring stuff for pennies. I perused the Freelance Writers Job Boards and grabbed what I could. When you don’t have a “name”, nobody trusts you with anything with substance.

After a few months, I stumbled upon a client offering to pay $15- $20 for 300+ words. Her ad said if they liked your style you would be considered for consistent work of up to 20 per week. Of course I applied, and after sending a few samples I was asked to write my first piece.

The gig was to write reviews for a popular review website.

I had to create several fake personas and register at the website. She would send me the name and information of a company and tell me how many stars I should give it, and left me to use my creativity. I would write a lengthy and detailed review of a company after I researched it, making sure to say many good things about it, and only one thing that wasn’t so good( but only a little bit), so it would appear more realistic to the reader.

Because, well you know, nobody is perfect.

I’d publish my review and send her the link and find payment for however many I had created every Friday via Paypal.

I knew this was shady, but money talks and I had hungry mouths to feed. And besides, all my reviews were glowing and shed a glorious light on the company- and let me stress well-researched- so I told myself I wasn’t hurting anyone. And I quickly received a raise for $30-$50 per review, and, well, you know… I justified it…

I only did this for a few weeks because I landed a lucrative gig from a brilliant but slightly mad scientist trying to solve the California Water Crisis who couldn’t organize his thoughts into sentences and hired me to ghostwrite a presentation, e-book, and press releases. This took up all my time.

Plus, I was happy to be out of the fake review writing business.

Moral of the story, always triple and quadruple check when you are researching reviews. There is a startling amount of reviews that are paid for. Yes, many of the good reviews are from real people who had real experiences, but not all.

This brief gig did teach me some valuable lessons. I don’t believe a single thing I read on the internet anymore! My journalism background has research deeply ingrained in my bones, but this took it to a whole other level!