So, you see all these reviews of various products by various people - and some of them have little badges next to their names: Top1000, Top500, Top100, Top50, Top10 Reviewer. Perhaps you have wondered just how these people got those badges, and would like to get one yourself.
The first answer to this is: Write! If you don't write reviews, and keep on writing reviews, you stand no chance of getting one of these badges. To achieve a Top 1000 rating today, you probably need to write at least two reviews a week, and keep on doing so for a year. Each review that you have gives you another opportunity to garner precious votes and add to your ranking point total. Top 1000 reviewers in general have at least 70 reviews, and many of them have many more than that. But you can't just write a couple sentence review of products and expect to get helpful votes for them (and without helpful votes your review will not help you move up the ranking ladder) - the quality of your reviews is very important.
So what makes a quality review? A quality review is one that can give the review reader enough information about the product and your opinion of that product to give the reader a strong basis for whether or not to purchase that item. It doesn't necessarily have to be very long, but essential information must be conveyed. Just saying "This item is great!" doesn't tell the reader why you think it's great. Neither should it be overly detailed and (for fiction works anyway) should not give away crucial details about the ending - sometimes this is referred to as a 'plot spoiler', and doing so violates Amazon guidelines for reviews, leaving your review subject to being removed (or not posted in first place). Some examples of good reviews by Top1000 reviewers:
"A new treat for fans of animation from the wacky French" by Lawrance M. Bernabo for the movie The Triplets of Belleville .
"A Place Even A Rat Would Leave" by Marc Ruby for the book Something from the Nightside (Nightside, Book 1).
"Great story, wondrously told and acted" by Dennis Littrell for the movie Shawshank Redemption [VHS].
“Illuminating study of the textual integrity of Mark's Gospel” by darkgenius for the book The Mutilation of Marks Gospel
These reviews have several things in common. Each tells enough about the product so that the prospective customer has a good idea of just what the product is. The reviewer's opinion about the product is clearly obvious, and the reasons for that opinion are stated with specific details supporting that opinion. They all use good English, and are logically organized.
The above reviews are all favorable ones - the reviewer basically liked the product and thought they were worth seeing/reading/purchasing. Negative reviews are also possible, and although they are perhaps somewhat more difficult to write, they provide some very important information to the prospective buyer. Some examples:
"DANNY DEVITO TAKES A DIVE WITH THIS ONE..." by Lawyeraau for the movie Duplex (2003) [VHS].
“abysmal twaddle about egocentric junkies” by Alejandra Vernon for the movie Basquiat [VHS].
“An Extremely Rare Christie Misfire” by gft for the novel Hercule Poirot's Christmas
“The horror...the horror” by Jeff Leach for the movie Rodentz
The secret to writing a negative review that will garner helpful, rather than unhelpful votes, is to give solid, objective reasons for why the product did not appeal or work for you. One-sided rants based on political, religious, or personal biases, rather than specific things wrong with the work in question, are almost guaranteed to net you a pocketful of unhelpful votes, rather than the desired helpful variety. Make sure that your review concentrates on the item, not the author or other reviewer’s opinions. But be aware that even if your review is (in your opinion) an objective and balanced one, if the item you are reviewing is of a controversial nature or has a large fan following, it will very likely pick up quite a few unhelpful votes. This will not hurt your drive to the top of the rankings as long as you get at enough helpful votes to balance the unhelpfuls, as the formula used for determining rank places lesser weight on unhelpful votes than on helpful ones.
Well, you’ve written your review and are ready to post it. Before you hit that submit button, you should do four things:
1. Run a spell-check on your work. Readers will appreciate not having to decode ‘sematic’ when you meant ‘semantic’. Reviews with misspelled words give it an unprofessional feel, not the impression you want to make. Along these same lines, check the grammar of your work. Run-on sentences, disagreement between subject and verb, incorrect punctuation all make for a disagreeable reading experience, and won’t help get you those helpful votes.
2. Proof read your work! Spell-checkers will not catch the fact that you meant to write ‘rant’ rather than ‘rat’, or that you’ve left out a crucial word that totally changes the meaning of the sentence. And do it slowly, reading every word. One good technique is to make one pass through the work reading it backwards, from end to beginning. This helps overcome the tendency of the brain to overlook missing or incorrect words in sentences, as when reading normally the brain will automatically supply the missing word, or substitute the word you intended to have.
3. Give your review a catchy title. Your review may be competing for attention with several hundred other reviews of the same item. A good title is one of the best methods to at least catch the reader’s attention and make him read the beginning of your review – and if you have written well, then he will interested enough to read all of it, and maybe even give you a vote! Some examples of good titles:
“Rendering unto Caesar...” by jlind55 for the movie Becket (Letterboxed Edition) [VHS].
“The Mother of All Matches” by HugarianBooks editor for the book Bobby Fischer Goes to War: How the Soviets Lost the Most Extraordinary Chess Match of All Time
“Everything Your Mother Didn't Tell You” by hyperpat for the book The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
“Feats of clay” by Mary Whipple for the book Kiln People (The Kiln Books)
4. Save a copy of your review. Sometimes reviews get lost in processing or transmission, so having a backup makes sure that all your hard work is not permanently lost. To facilitate this, rather than compose your review in the review submission box directly, write it in a standard word processor, then copy and paste it into the submission box when you are finished.
So what else can you do to help improve your chances of moving up the ranking ladder? One item is to advertise your work: write a Listmania or So You’d Like to Guide that has links to your reviews. These guides are read by literally thousands of people, so these items can be very effective in guiding prospective voters to your reviews. Visit the Amazon Customer Review Discussion board, where you can interact with other dedicated reviewers and learn more details about just how the rankings are calculated. There are some very friendly and helpful people that frequent this board, many of whom are Top1000 reviewers, who will often go out of their way to help newcomers wanting to improve.
Above all, have patience and perseverance. Getting one of those badges won’t happen overnight, but if you keep at it you will eventually move up in the rankings, and have the satisfaction of knowing that your words have helped other people make good purchasing decisions.
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