Quote:
Originally Posted by Doug of Montreal
Do you penalize for sites not having zips? What about downloads? What other differences do you have compared to us? Recips aren't mandatory, right?
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I think site owners are MUCH too focused on the score box of a review. I understand why, because I own my own network of paysites as well. When you work on something as hard as a good network owner does, it sucks to see someone grade you with a 79 instead of a 99 and some people get very emotionally attached to their sites. However, as Im sure you already know... review site users actually READ the reviews. When I get feedback from bookmarkers its questions about a site, or comments about how a review missed something they want to see added now that they joined a site and found something out. Very few review readers will join or not join based on scores alone.
As to zips and downloads vs streaming only etc, those things tend to have a very small effect on scores when I review a site UNLESS the tour is dishonest about what is provided. If a tour says 'download now' and the members area is streaming only, the site will get skewered for having a dishonest tour. If the tour says 'watch videos online' or something similar and doesn't allow downloads that's much less of a big deal. The key more than anything else is that the tour accurately and honestly depict what the user can expect to see and do when they sign up. If a tour shows 80 different models and the site has 12 scenes in it, that's just as bad and gets treated the same way when I write reviews.
These days there are literally thousands of sites and in the major niches the competition is fierce. If one site has 150 exclusive videos in 1920x1080 downloadable and another has 150 videos streaming only in 640x480 it would be silly to expect the streaming only site to score as well or better than the downloadable one. However, a streaming only site that offers plenty of good content with an honest tour can still score very well and in most cases the reader is not picking the site they will join based on the scores. They may read that one site offers interactive model chat and the other doesn't or that one includes a network of interesting sites and the other doesn't. Site owners would be much better off focusing on finding good ways to differentiate their site from others in the niche, or to come up with a new creative niche, than they are if they focus too much on having two more points or less points because they don't have .zips and someone else does.
The guy who wants zips wont join a site without them, not because it got 2 less points or 10 less points or whatever, but because he wants zips and that site isn't offering them. Same with downloads or any other aspect of the paysite experience. It really is that simple.
