The following is a guide to dealing with review sites. When I say review sites, I mean those that function as a review site should, with proper consideration to honesty and accuracy. This piece is written largely from the perspective of how we work here at RabbitsReviews, but most of what we do is pretty standard when it comes to review sites.
Why Get Reviewed?
There's something about reading a good, balanced review that people trust and are willing to take action on. I've dined at more restaurants over the years due to some critics recommendation in a newspaper or magazine, gone to movies or stayed away based on how many rotten tomatoes they've received and I buy electronics only after scouring the Net for multiple review sources. I'm not the only one. Many people turn to reviews instead of jumping in blind and you can only gain access to this traffic by being listed.
Another good reason to get reviewed is to get an experienced opinion on your site. It's easy to get too close to a project. Reviewers generally have a depth of experience and enough distance from a site to give it an honest and balanced assessment. Use that to your advantage and improve on your site where you can.
Finally, scores matter less when it comes to a review than the review itself. You should submit even if you think you won?t do well. The scoring impacts how much traffic you get but has very little affect on whether or not people will buy. Case in point,
Giant Gay Cocks is one of our lowest scoring sites. They scored a 43 but we've sent 13 sales in the past year. If you believe in your product and have something to offer, your score won't matter as much as us being able to convince surfers that they won't get ripped off.
So those are a few great reasons to get reviewed. Let's go a little deeper.
Our Responsibility
We are here to record what the industry is doing and to be a voice for the consumer. We have two main responsibilities that we take very seriously. First, anyone looking to protect the long-term viability of their business needs to put the customer first. To do that we need to be honest. And secondly, for our business partners, we have a duty to accurately represent the sites we review. Thankfully, we have mechanisms in place that help ensure these responsibilities are met.
The History
RabbitsReviews was launched in 2003. At that time, there were a handful of others already online, such as
AdultReviews, which launched in 2001, and
TheBestPorn, which may have beaten us to the gate by a few months. Both had been working in the industry for some time and were able to stake an early and lasting claim, but there was still room for growth and competition. Since then, there are many more review sites in the game. Take a look at
this list to see for yourself. RabbitsReviews has been able to slowly gain more search engine traction and (at last count) has become the most visited porn review site online. We've seen the inside of over 9,000 paysites and dealt with over 2,000 sponsors. (Try switching epass account payments with that many to sort through. :) With seven years of experience under our belt, here's our look at what we do and what we think you should know to get the most out of submitting to us, or any other review site out there.
The Submission Process
Submitting to RabbitsReviews starts off a process that can take anywhere from a few business days to six weeks. This is pretty standard for review sites. We offer rush review service for webmasters who are in a hurry to get their review online and that takes three to five business days. Some other sites also offer ways to get listed faster. At Rabbits, we require something additional in order to put these cases to the front of the queue, but most sites are patient enough to wait the usual three to six weeks it takes for a review to be published. The length of time depends on how busy we are, but if you're at all concerned, make sure to contact the site you're submitting to for a general idea of how long it will take and what you can do to get your review online quickly, if need be.
The submission process at most sites is pretty standard. You can check out the submit forms for
RabbitsReviews,
TheBestPorn and
AdultReviews while
WebmasterScore allows you to submit to multiple review sites at the same time. It is usually helpful to add someone to ICQ from the site you're submitting to. That way if there are issues or questions, you can get them resolved quickly.
Here are some of the finer points:
User Names and Passwords: We require a one month pass to your site(s) but it's better to give us at least two months to avoid problems. That's about as long as it takes for a new review to come in, get approved, get reviewed, have the graphics done, have it edited and then put in queue to be posted. If you set access for any less time, or enter a login that's bad from the start, it slows down the process by us having to come back and contact you for another one and can often lead to us abandoning the review. Give us 30+ days. We've been doing this for a long time, and so have the other leading review sites, so there's very little chance of abuse. To this end, don't give us a login like rabbits/reviews. We've had a handful of webmasters complain that they've had to cut off our accounts due to large number s of people logging in and downloading content. We've been around for long enough and any password sharing site will have obvious logins like that on their favorites list. In other words, be smart.
Recips: Not all review sites require a link back, but most ask for one. It's part of our business model at Rabbits, though. If you have a program, we are willing to work with you to find a place to put it, but we don't take any new submissions without one. It's just not fair to everyone else. If you run a site without a program, we can still list you, but we are very particular about that link back.
Site Info: We ask for additional information about download limits, trials and exclusive content. It helps speed up the process and if you can't provide an answer, and we can't figure it out for ourselves, we'll err on the side of caution.
Additional Info: If you think there are some finer points to your site that you want considered, make sure to let the site know when you submit. For example, if your site features content that you think has never been shot before, let them know. Or if you have a ton of movies but you've put half of them in a different area that could be overlooked, make sure to say it. The chances of getting the review you'd like go up when you take the extra step. It's worth it.
Our Review Process
Every site is different, but here's our workflow:
1. New submissions are checked, approved and then assigned to a reviewer
2. A reviewer will take anywhere from three days to two weeks to start the review, depending on the work in their queue. They have about 90 minutes to scour a site, write the review, tally the score and then it's passed off to graphics.
3. Graphics may take a few days before screen shots are complete and FHGs built. They pass that off to editing.
4. Editing will put the finishing touches on in three to five business days to finally go over the review one last time and then release it for publication.
Our reviews are largely a hands-off process. There are guidelines to ensure our standards for copy and SEO are adhered to, but once in, the reviewer has full control of the review and scoring for any given site.
