Ciao.com - Price comparisons and consumer reviews

If you are looking for a product, like a DVD player, but not sure which one to buy, in Europe you can look at Ciao, a website intended to provide consumer reviews and price comparisons for products in the Western European market. You register for free to use Ciao. It has reviews of products in multiple languages. These reviews are rated by site users, and the ones with higher ratings will be awarded a small cash payment every time a member rates them "helpful", "very helpful" or "exceptional." In this way, the site can guarantee a certain quality of writing. Your payment accumulates monthly, and Ciao pays you in British pounds. The authors of particularly good reviews are offered bonus rewards. You can search for products by category, brand, or detailed descriptions. There are thousands of products listed and reviewed on Ciao.

"Ciao is a multi-million-strong online community that critically reviews and rates millions of products and services for the benefit of other consumers. Available free of charge to consumers in local-language versions in major western European markets, Ciao combines unbiased consumer reviews and up-to-date price information from hundreds of online merchants to make it the most comprehensive source of shopping intelligence on the web. Testimony to Ciao's success, more than 38 million consumers visit the site every month, making it one of the largest shopping portals in Europe."

Plain and simple, if you want the job done right, pay people to do it--this is the rule that Ciao is following. Most of the reviews are in fact very helpful, and the site is well-organized and easy to use.

What happens if everybody dedicates themselves to writing reviews just to make a few bucks, instead of really using the site to search products?