[skewart]

I agree.

> It feels like the reviews can be bought.

I assume Siftery's business model depends on getting paid by software companies when a prospective buyer makes a purchase after visiting Siftery. Maybe it's more advertising-based though? (Siftery folks, please correct me if I'm wrong).

Like all affiliate marketing, there's a fundamental tension between maintaining customer trust by actually making good, honest recommendations and maximizing profits by directing consumers to products whose makers are willing to pay more. A lot of affiliate marketers start out very consumer-focused in order to build a strong brand that consumers trust. They later find it very hard to resist the temptation to maximize revenue by making bad but profitable recommendations later on. Of course that will catch up with them eventually, but they can exploit the inertia of a trustworthy brand for a while.

All of that said, hopefully Siftery will be able to provide good, consumer-focused information. There is real pain point around learning about this kind of software.

[vammok]

> A lot of affiliate marketers start out very consumer-focused in order to build a strong brand that consumers trust. They later find it very hard to resist the temptation to maximize revenue by making bad but profitable recommendations later on.

spot on! this is one of the reasons why we want to entirely avoid any sort of lead-gen or affiliate business models that depend on revenues from sellers of software or services. we're planning to make money from buyers with higher value tools that help them after the discovery phase -- for example, providing insights into pricing, helping automate the RFP process and potentially helping them manage billing etc. early days though!