A really good informative post, well done :)
I applaud the effort. However, I don't think it will stop the questions being asked, people are just a tad too impatient.
Thanks all, I wrote it to help people understand the process more, so hopefully it will do just that.
@Sub the other bonus is that if someone asks, instead of typing the same answer for the tenth time that week you can just link to the post instead ;)
Some great advice, and good for linking to those that ask about tester items and such to.
I love reviewing items (Bought or tester)simply because I get to provide honest and valuable feedback on them for both LH and others than read my reviews. The added bonus with testing toys is they are free you get to keep them but I don't do reviews just for free toys.
Brilliant post! I responded to someone the other day asking how to be a tester and once i had written it i felt a bit mean and bossy even though it wasnt at all said in a mean way. At least now theres something easy and simple to follow!
i must admit the first time i came on here and read about the sex toy testing i assumed you put anything in there. It wasnt until i saw the list that it made sense! So i cant really say anything about people who put everything into their list if they dont know.
Ahhhhhh.... You absolute STAR!!
This is fabulous - thank you SO much PurringTiger.
Great, informative post! Well done!
Thought this lovely new thread would be a good place to post for a bit of advice. I saw somewhere that someone said that you're more likely to get selected for testing if your reviews require less editing, so I've been saving my reviews in their raw form then checking them against the edits that go live on the site to see whether it might be good to change my writing style, or whether there are any silly mistakes I'm making. (I've already learned the difference between 'discrete' and 'discreet', so that's going to save someone at LH a whole lot of time! I never knew there was a difference before... learn something new every day, etc.) I suppose I just wanted peoples' perspectives on this - do most testers do something similar, or is this a touch pernickety? Do successful testers require essentially no editing or is the selection issue more for reviews that would require almost everything to be edited?
Would love to hear your thoughts on this.
I would say (Could be wrong here) that of course having a basic understading of writing, punctuation and grammer helps, but unless you need everything edited then the actual contents of a review are a bit more important.
I feel like I generally have good spelling, and avergage punctuation and grammer, so my reviews will need some editing. As long as I get all the actual contents of the review down though then I am happy simply as I know I have written it all to the best of my ability.
Skitty i made an error on my first ever review (put the price wrong!) and was convinced that i would be banned! Cazz was very understanding and said that the reviews are read first anyway to make sure there arent any obvious errors that get published!
i wrote my tester on word as some people had advised because on the ipad theres no spell check and its just harder to edit. Now im going to write them all from a computer because its much easier. I make mistakes but find it very difficult to spot my own!
At uni one piece of advice i picked up was to read your work backwards as then its easier to spot spelling mistakes because if you read forward you tend to skim read it because you already know the basic content because you wrote it.
Cheers for the feedback on this, both of your perspectives are really helpful. It's a relief to know everything doesn't have to be 100% finished and ready to go live!
Great advice on reading it backwards, I'll have to try that. I also find it hard to spot my own mistakes which is why I started doing the comparison thing because before I was just seeing the live review with no comparison to what I actually wrote and thinking "ooh, I must have done well with this one, I don't see any changes!" sort of thing, when really I just don't have a good memory ;)
On the off chance I get picked for testing, is there an email address I should be making sure doesn't get put into my junk folder?
Chaos Zero wrote:
On the off chance I get picked for testing, is there an email address I should be making sure doesn't get put into my junk folder?
customercare@lovehoney.co.uk
This post should be a sticky on the forum, as some people will always ask this in the tester's thread over and over again. It's very informative and well written!
Chaos Zero wrote:
On the off chance I get picked for testing, is there an email address I should be making sure doesn't get put into my junk folder?
If it does go to junk or you dont see it, dont worry! The email lets you know you have been selected, and for which item. You then get another to say the item has been dispatched and is on its way.
If you dont see the email then its a nice suprise! The link to do your review is at the bottom of your account page so even if you accidently delete the email then you can still do the review as a tester.
Excellent post PT, very informative :)
Great post, thanks alot for the advice! x
just submitted another tester review!
can someone shed some light as to the length of reviews? again i have done another long review but i felt i needed to as there was quite a bit to cover! it was the black magic wand btw.
when i do the tester reviews (this is my second) i like to make it thorough and take it seriously. i just hope its ok!
i did put it into little sections with a pros and cons list at the end so people can just scroll to that if they wish!
I have only been writing reviews for a short time and I, just like anyone else, wondered how I was doing. I have read some of the other posters reviews (posters that I see as contributing and open/honest) to pick up some content and formatting tips. I have actually had the same review length question, JM88. What I will say, is that I have read a few of your reviews and didn't even notice how long they were until after I was done. Basically they were well written and I think that if well written and informative, the length doesn't matter. It is the long ones that bounce around and don't actually say much that I skim or won't read much of. So, in short, good job JM, and keep the reviews coming.
Very informative, a great reference point for the next time someone blindly asks disjointed questions in the forum!!! 