Do you sometimes have trouble coming up with review ideas or reviews?

Hi Alex - Nice to see a person here I know from another site. Just getting back here since school break is now for three weeks and have time to look around again. I got bored with epinions and cannot earn too much there as it cuts into kids SSI money, so basically let my TR in Online go and now the money is next to nothing. Are you also on gather.com? My site there is http://autismfamily.gather.com and if you are not send me email here with your address and I can send you an invite as they have points for referral, not here like continually but one time. I have just ordered my 7th $25 Barnes and noble gift card from there and only been on the site for four months now. I joined Epinions in Jan of 2000 so got burned out and too many changes and people scamming to enjoy it further and kids are getting older and I found that branching out at http://autismspectrumdisorders.bellaonline and other sites has given me a larger readership on autism and also now an amazon affiliate. Good topic, hard to find them here, but read my alerts so looks like some good changes here.

You've been writing one review a day for three years?! Wow! I've written some reviews for Ciao UK - but they tend to be once a month - the most I did was four in a month. How did you manage it? You must have been very disciplined?

Nope, not at all. I never got into the whole goal setting thing there, but I know that a lot of people did and still do. Therefore, I never had to think or struggle when choosing a product to review. As as I found something I wanted to share, I would just simply go write about it. If I couldn't think of anything, I wouldn't beat my brain. I would just wait a few weeks (or however long) until I had a product worth reviewing again.

I have many items to be reviewed, and I even have 5 or 6 that would be a first review! However, it comes down to laziness. I just don't have the motivation lately :) Maybe because I have to many hobbies already, than I find this site and get addicted! My goal this year was 365 reviews, but then I got engaged and thrown off. Even so, I believe I managed to post at least 200 reviews so that's not so bad! Next year my goal is just to write anytime I can, but since I'll be getting married I'm avoiding setting any goals. After the wedding, and once I'm settled into my new house in May, I plan to come up with a list of "goals" for Epinions and categories to focus on. But for now, I just write when I feel like it :)

There are times when I feel like I am going to run out of things but that just gives me a reason to go shopping! My hard drive crashed and I lost about 20 completed reviews plus all the info for SAP's on products that I wanted to get added. As long as they make Lego sets, pens and Type O Negative CD's, I'll always have something to write about.

I dont have any set goals, and I have no problems coming up with ideas for things to review. I guess you could call it writers block. I just cant seem to make myself write the reviews sometimes.

I would love to write a review a day. Unfortunately with 3 kids to raise (plus a friend's two kids who are staying with us), a full-time job, plus a household to manage, I don't always have the time. I take a lot of notes and have been saving them in draft so I have all the material available whenever the mood hits. I probably have 10 movie/DVD sets sitting out there that I just have to finish. I get tired of the b.s. though. It seems like certain people can get away with anything there, including coming into my comment section saying I am plagiarizing when a Lead has weighed in on the matter, and "Community Care" does nothing about it. Yet I got shellacked in one section I used to be an Advisor in for being "too nice". All this wears on the motivation. I like to branch out and sometimes it's hard finding material outside of books and movies to write in. It's helped moving to a popular vacation area, but I still struggle.

When I worked in front of a computer all day, my goal was to do 3 a day. It didn't last very long. I've only gotten up to a total of 149. I never had a problem finding products to write about, but now that I'm writing on Associated Content more, I'm having a lot of trouble trying to think of something to write that is not a review (they don't really seem to like all the ones I keep sending in).

Hmm... I somehow never set any goals, but have managed some 200 odd reviews in 5 odd years which works out to about 2 reviews every month. My way of reviewing is based on whether I feel strongly about a product and whether I feel that what I am going to share about it is going to add value to others. So typically I tend to do more reviews on products which have lesser number of reviews. Also topics like books and movies are my most reviewed categories, while the others are bit less used. It is not due to the struggle to put ideas in writing, it is more the struggle to think what can I say differently that can add value to the existing lot that stops me from writing more often. Cheers! Ram

Congratulations on keeping to your goal! I was planning to write one review a day this year, but life got in the way. LOL. So now I am playing catch up. I sometimes get writer's block on the site. I find it especially frustrating when I have a review in mind, but the product isn't listed. You can have them added sometimes, but it doesn't help with my immediate frustration. A lot of times I will simply browse the site, looking for things I want to write about. And when worst comes to worst I head to writer's corner; I can always think of something to write about there. :-)