Black Hat: Belkin Paying 65 Cents for Good Reviews on Amazon, New Egg

A site called The Daily Background is reporting that the Belkin Business Development officer, Michael Bayard, is paying 65 cents for writing nice reviews of Belkin routers. 65 cents? Hardly seems worth the trouble.

Here is one of the requests on Mechanical Turk:

Positive review writing.

* Use your best possible grammar and write in US English only
* Always give a 100% rating (as high as possible)
* Keep your entry between 25 and 50 words
* Write as if you own the product and are using it
* Tell a story of why you bought it and how you are using it
* Thank the website for making you such a great deal
* Mark any other negative reviews as “not helpful” once you post yours

Instructions:

The link below leads to a product on a website. Read-through the product’s features and write a positive review for it using the guidelines above to the best of your ability. I have also provided the part number for this product and you can click on the links below to see it on several alternative websites. In order to post some reviews you will need to create an account on the site. You can use your own email address or open a new free webmail account (gmail, yahoo…) and use it to post with.

I hope there is an explanation for this, otherwise this is pretty sloppy work. To be black-hat is one thing, but you've got to cover your tracks.

belkin mechanical turk Black Hat: Belkin Paying 65 Cents for Good Reviews on Amazon, New Egg