[ohashi]

I'm in a strange position here. I fundamentally agree that reviews for the most part are absolute steaming pile of crap of a space for many niches. I work in one of the worst - web hosting reviews. It's plagued by fake affiliate reviews dominating basically every search result. I've been trying for 10 years to run a company that did reviews differently in the web hosting space.

Full disclosure, I have affiliate links on companies that have them too. But I also list companies without them and it has had zero bearing on any result in 10 years. In fact, when I launched I had to beg the CEO of the top rated company to create a special affiliate program for me. Why? Because he didn't believe in review sites and affiliates in the space. It took months, but I told him if he didn't create one, what I was trying to do would never have a chance because I'd never make a dollar - you're the top rated company. I want to do something different, but it needs to remain somewhat financially viable and if you don't have a program I'm dead before it starts.

So what happened in those 10 years?

Honestly, not a whole a lot. I have mediocre rankings (often page 2-5) on some of the most competitive terms on Google. I can't afford to buy the links my competitors do because they make 10x or more what I do pushing the highest paying affiliates and designing for conversion. The site has some traction within niche communities - especially the WordPress hosting space - because I also run annual performance benchmarks (https://wphostingbenchmarks.com) where I document and thoroughly test most of the meaningful players in that space.

It makes a couple grand a month, I've disclosed the revenue publicly on IndieHackers (https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/reviewsignal-e1ddcc26...) and it's gone down since then.

The data I'm providing is almost surely the most transparent data tracking the industry and maybe the least biased (the reviews work by analyzing Twitter sentiment at scale - everything publicly documented in terms of ranking algorithm and published comments).

But outside little bubbles in communities that care, nobody noticed. Google doesn't care. Google happily ranks affiliate sites spending six figures buying links off apache.org and other open source projects (look at those sponsor lists on a lot of open source projects - hosting/gambling is a bad sign).

I got excited when my work fighting against .ORG registry price increases and sale at ICANN (https://reviewsignal.com/blog/2019/06/24/the-case-for-regula...) got a lot of press, even getting cited by the California AG in his letter which effectively killed it. I got backlinks from a lot of large news sites and traffic. I honestly saw no meaningful improvement in rankings or traffic.

So I'm stuck, I keep the sites running - part time - mostly between other projects. I've moved back heavily into consulting and other projects because being an honest affiliate - I can't compete. Providing honest, transparent data and presenting it with the goal of informing versus pushing sales is a terrible business model. The majority of people simply don't care. A lot of 'in-the-know' folks read and get informed by my work. They advise their clients using it, and I never see any financial benefit from it. The broader world, especially Google, doesn't know or care.

Is the root problem affiliate links? It certainly skews incentives and pushes manipulation. If we removed them, what fills the void? Ads? Sponsored content? Something else? I don't think the problem goes away - there is so much money in some of these industries and the stakes are so high. Companies and people will take advantage of it one way or another.

How do we identify honest / good content from the garbage seems to be the bigger question. After 10 years, I'm don't have an answer and I'm certainly not being noticed.

[edbloom]

This is a perfect example of how fundamentally flawed modern SEO is. @ohashi has been producing the best hosting reviews in the WordPress ecosystem since forever. It seems like at some point in the past decade on page quality signals have been completely drowned out by backlink signals that can be easily amplified by bigger content producers and a resurgence in cheap on page SEO tricks.

Sorry Kevin I don't know what the answer is, but I'd thought I'd just say a huge thanks for the great work you do year after year. It might be VERY niche but perhaps some sort of annual premium membership for professionals in the WP ecosytem might be something that might work? I'd certainly be happy to support your work on an ongoing basis with access to niche "members only" performance reports on things like WooCommerce benchmarking tests etc.

[ohashi]

Thanks edbloom!

It really does help motivate me to hear people get value from my work, because it definitely isn't financially motivated at this point.

I appreciate the offer of premium members only payments. I want my data to be public, I like open sourcing my contributions when possible. I think transparency and openness are the key to better reviews. So I've not ever approached that route. I've also avoided taking any sponsored money from web hosting for any sort of advertising because of even the potential conflict of interest (many have offered to sponsor those benchmarks).

There might be something in the works to help it financially this year, nothing really concrete, but I'm exploring some new options. Ultimately though, I'd rather it wither and die than just doing what every shitty affiliate ruining the space has done.

[pixl97]

Answer, if you want to make money is play Google's game. Go get some VC funding to buy ads. Google with put the ads on their front page which will boost your search results. Eventually you'll figure out you dont even need a good product, you win with a mediocre product and a lot of SEO/ad spend.

Break Google up. Course that will never happen as politicians like the power Google has over the internet in the hands of a US company.

[ohashi]

The whole reason I built what I did was because after a decade in the web hosting world, I still couldn't name a review site that was worth referring anyone to.

I wanted to build something different and meaningful. I did. It just hasn't mattered in a broad context.

If making money was the goal, I'd put whomever wants to pay me $300/sale first and pimp them out as the best company in the universe. Fuck that. I hoped that I could make a reasonable amount (at least enough to keep it going and maybe scale it a bit) and create a more honest review space.

Winning in this case isn't defined by money earned, you're advocating a race to the bottom I wanted to avoid. Google needs a shakeup and so does search as a whole.

[sersi]

Why not go through the direction of having a patreon or other monthly donation? No need to necessarily give rewards, just asking for contributions

[ohashi]

I am honestly having a hard time articulating why I don't like the idea of people donating their money to me for what I do. I will try, maybe I am irrational?

There is so much money being passed around in web hosting review space, by companies to affiliates. I still make thousands per month off these affiliate deals. If my site were to rank at the top of search engines, I would be plenty compensated. Having individuals sponsor the work and it continuing to languish is a position I'm not really a fan of. A single sale commission can range from a few dollars to high hundreds or occasionally a thousand+. I can't imagine enough people wanting to donate a meaningful amount that would change that equation. I'd personally feel bad for every Patreon sponsor putting in 5,10,20 dollars because I might feel like I'm not doing enough with it. If those people just sent one person who ended up purchasing via a link on my site, it would likely outweigh most donations, it would also spread the reach to places I likely can't get to.

That's just what is running through my head, I don't know if that makes any sense.

[yourapostasy]

Is your business model capable of sustaining a paywall of the most useful value, by eliding the information? Your affiliate links still point to your review effort, but the actual top ranking information is behind the paywall.

Make it a variation on the "businesses pay for business-class stuff, amateurs get the free stuff" model.

For the top say, 20% ranks, it is behind a paywall. People will know which vendors are members of the set of the top 20%, but not their ordinal collection. The bottom 80% members of the set's ordinal collection is displayed. If I'm looking for a site to store Grandma's cat pictures, the bottom 80% is probably good enough.

You could also tilt the paywall so free only reveals who NOT to do business with, and who ranks at the bare minimum acceptability.

You can have the paywall only enforce an embargo, instead of all historical results. Say some period beyond which the businesses that can afford to pay you will not care for the results, like a year or whatever.

You can have a "free hour(s)" once a review cycle just before when you publish where the in-the-know crowd can get the results for the newest review cycle, tied to a YouTube livestream, where you do a monetized Q&A.

There are lots more variations to ponder, but I can't help but think there must be more useful ways to slice and dice the valuation of the information here, and monetize in tranches like finance and entertainment do, instead of all in one go.

[ohashi]

I guess the problem is two fold, could I charge some people a premium for premium information? Absolutely, yes.

Does hiding some information behind a paywall fit with my goal of a better review landscape in the web hosting industry? Sadly, no.

Sure, I would come out financially ahead, but the industry basically wouldn't be any different. I'm not going to rank any better or have my information spread more effectively behind a paywall. The number of folks impacted would also surely go down as many wouldn't pay.

If the goal is simply profit maximization at this point, there are definitely avenues to explore like what you've suggested. That's boring to me honestly, unless it can have impact to along with it. I do appreciate your thoughts on the matter and suggestions.

Personally, if it gets to that point I'd rather sell it off and move on to working on something else. Most of us are software developers and entrepreneurs. I'd rather build something more interesting and with more potential. I can make money doing consulting work any day, after 10 years, the allure of simply trying to profit maximize on what I built by introducing barriers doesn't appeal. That might be part of the reason it hasn't been as successful as it maybe could have been. I suppose that's the hill I may die on - open, honest, transparent review data for everyone.

[yourapostasy]

Aha, that makes it much more clear. You likely can achieve your aim with more marketing, along the lines of setting narrative in the industry.

You already have an objective measure to flog, build a "council" or "board" around it, with the "Platinum" members being the providers who were most consistently in the top three ranks in all the past reviews. Get some good writers who can whip up some clickbaity articles that would find placement for some fun.

"You're getting cheated out of bandwidth if you don't use these web hosting providers!"

"Most Web hosting providers don't want to let you know this secret council!"

Make it tongue in cheek, self-parodying maybe to the clickbait industry.

Intermix with and reference to some more serious PR to avenues where industry people are likely to read it, where you lay out your concerns of improving the industry and the benefits to them. Make the report red-orange-green-easy to at-a-glance interpret for non-technical management for good-enough outcomes, then analyze the results into a historical trend for the aggregate industry's progress.

Honey versus vinegar, basically.

Your consulting expertise on designing projects to make it easy to transition between providers, and a calculator to compute when to pull the trigger to perform the transition would probably more than pay the bills.

[ohashi]

Maybe the marketing hasn't been great. But nobody seems to care. The status quo benefits the companies that get the most marketing, why invest in trying to change the rules that benefit them?

I tried some more expose type stuff, revealing spam networks operated by hosting companies, publishing pay to play attempts, exposing fake reviews and even getting one CEO on record supporting astroturfing. Despite how outrageous this behavior is, it never gets much attention. That last company I'm talking about tends to be on all those affiliate garbage sites you will see and has popped up in the past few years (https://reviewsignal.com/blog/2018/07/22/hostinger-review-0-...). I make sure to let as many people know as possible anytime I see the brand. But their marketing/astroturfing campaign certainly dwarfs anything I can do. And most people don't care. The publishers take the money, the company takes the customers and funnels more money into deceiving poor customers via affiliates and search. The only loser is customers as a whole, who have little voice or power in the equation at any level.

In little bubble communities, I do have some traction and recognition. People may know, but they tend to be echo small chambers. Sure, some people flow in and get recommendations. But the majority of people, it's just who ranks at the top of search results. They don't invest in doing deeper research. They want to see 'X is the best product' and move on.

That's another problem, nuance. Is there a best web hosting provider? Not even close. Even with a very specific use-case, it's extremely rare to say, yes, this is the best company. I've been tracking 10 years of data and no company comes close to perfect reputation. The extreme top just crack into 80% range in terms of positive sentiment. The generally pretty good are in the 70's. That means 20-30% of people are having bad experiences with the best companies.

I've publish the review data with ranks based simply on statistical numbers, but I don't do ranking for performance benchmarks. I also encourage that it's one data point, simply being in the fastest tier or having the highest consumer opinion doesn't mean it's the best. There could be other factors which matter.

For example, Pantheon is the perfect company for has a great reputation but I wouldn't recommend it to most people to consider. First, they specialize in WordPress and Drupal. So if you're not on those platforms, it's not relevant. Even if you do, they are very opinionated hosting. If you have a development team and want strict Git workflows where code moves up and data moves down, they are fabulous. If you're a semi technical person who mostly does marketing, it's probably a terrible fit because you don't want to learn Git, have to push every change through testing, staging and then production to make progress. But their hosting in my tests were fast. They have great consumer reviews. For the people who it makes sense for, they love it. And I would recommend it to probably less than 10% of people who meet the basic criteria of using WP/Drupal for the reason stated above.

As far as consulting experience goes, I actually end up consulting more for the people who build sites. After running the largest benchmarks for WordPress for ~8 years now, people have brought me on to help test new WordPress products or scale existing sites. That's more interesting and rewarding honestly seeing direct results, being compensated to help them achieve goals. My compensation overall is okay, it's just not coming from reviews these days.