IM Report Card FAQ

Welcome aboard! To help you get off on the right foot here are a few tips to get you started. There is no "right" way to get started, but you can't go wrong with this ...

Step 1 - Customize your Profile. On your Profile page you can upload a custom "avatar" or picture, setup a "signature" that appears at the bottom of all of your comments, as well as set-up your public profile page so others can learn more about you.

Step 2 - Download and install our browser Toolbar. This will save you time and help you make the most out of IM Report Card by letting you view a website's grade, etc. and interact with IM Report Card in real-time while you surf the web!

Step 3 - Help spread the word about IM Report Card. The bigger our community, the more valuable it becomes for all. Plus you'll earn extra credits from all of your referrals!

On your Profile page in the green referral section you'll find your unique referral URL along with all the tools you need to quickly and easily get lots of referrals.

Step 4 - Dive right in and start sharing your experiences by grading and commenting on all of the Products, Services, People, Biz-Opps and Other sites you know about.

You can view all of our reviews via these main category links, which are also found at the top of every page of the site. You can also use the search box to quickly and easily find almost any of the over 2,000 items already reviewed on IM Report Card.

Step 5 - Before buying ANY Internet marketing related product or service, read our reviews and see what the IM Report Card community has to say about it first. More ofen than not this will help you from getting scammed.

Step 6 - When you do buy or test out a new product or site, be sure to come back and tell us about it. Grade, comment on, and share your own experiences with the products and services you do buy, and the people you do business with online.

That's it! If you do these things we absolutely guarantee that it'll make your Internet marketing journey easier and more financially rewarding, you'll earn some extra money using the site, and you'll be helping lots of other people all at the same time.

All of our reviews are written by our team of in-house writers. We are not accepting full reviews from users at this time, although we may in the future.

Our writers always try to present an unbiased review based only the facts they gather from their research. Our writers have no incentive (financial or otherwise) to either tout or bash any product, service or person, so you'll find most of our reviews are unbiased.

Most of the time our writers have not even used the product or service in question. We are simply trying to provide an "overview", and a platform for our community of users to reply and post their own comments based on their own personal experiences.

In the event that the writer has used the product or service they are reviewing they will often include comments and/or opinions based on their own experience with it, but this is always very clear and should be taken as just one person's opinion.

Most definitely. You can "bookmark" any product, service, person or biz-opp's review page and then easily view all of your bookmarks at any time on your profile page.

To bookmark an item simply click the little bookmark icon in front of the item's name, or click the "Bookmark this Review" link in the sidebar, on any review page.

You can also "subscribe" to a review and receive email alerts any time another user posts comments on that item. The process is the same. Just click the little subscribe icon or click the "Subscribe to this Review" link in the sidebar on any review page.

You can view and/or delete any of your bookmarks or subscriptions on your profile page.

If you've had a bad experience with a product or service listed on our site, please be sure to grade it and leave some comments to share your experiences with others.

If the item isn't already listed on our site, please use our Suggestion Form to tell us about it so we can review it and add it to the site.

Unfortunately there's nothing we can do to help you get your money back. If all else fails, the best course of action is to contact your credit card company and dispute the charge. It may take awhile, but you will get your money back 99% of the time.

We are trying to remain as unbiased as possible. If we start listing specific products as scams, or stating that certain products are great, many people will think we're biased and/or have ulterior motives and it will undermine the value of the community.

We simply provide the platform for users to share their own experiences with the products, services and people that they have experience with.

Once real users and real customers do this, the truth about a product or service usually becomes pretty apparent - and anyone interested in that item can make up their own mind based on these comments and reviews from other users.

Because the first few comments on any review are always read the most!

Many of the popular products and services we review end up gathering dozens and dozens of comments, and sometimes people will just scan through them. But almost everyone reads the first few comments - especially the very first one.

If you're the first one to comment on something - or even the 2nd or 3rd - that means your Signature will be seen by lots more people, and you'll get a lot of exposure for whatever you want to promote in your signature!

To set-up your Signature, just visit your Profile page.

On top of that, you also earn bonus credits for being the first or second person to comment on a new review. If you're the first you earn triple credits (150 instead of 50) and if you're the second to comment you earn double credits (100 instead of 50).

On the review pages we are only looking for comments that provide real value to other users interested in the product, service or person being reviewed.

We are looking for your thoughts and opinions based on real-world experiences.

Please do not post comments on the review pages if you have no personal experience with the item reviewed. Questions and general comments are not helpful there.

Believe it or not, every single comment is manually reviewed and approved by one of our editors or moderators. Here are the "official" rules about posting comments:

1. Comments should be based on personal experience with the item reviewed.

If you don't have personal experience with the item being reviewed please do not post a comment on the review page. Instead, you should post in the "official" forum thread for that item. You'll find a link for this next to the Comment button on the review page.

2. Comments must provide specific, helpful info about the item reviewed.

Tell the community what you would have wanted to know before you bought it, what you like or dislike about it and why, what your specific results were, etc.

Comments that say nothing more than "I tried it and didn't like it" or "It's a great product" are not helpful or appropriate, and will not be approved.

Likewise, please do not simply regurgitate features or info from our review, other users' comments or the site reviewed as these types of comments won't be approved either.

3. Comments must be original and not contain content from other websites.

Under no circumstances should you "borrow" comments or reviews from other sites and post them on IM Report Card as your own. *Every* comment is checked for originality. If you do this you'll lose your credits and your account will be canceled.

Please note that this also applies to content that you may have previously posted on another site, as we have no way of verifying that you actually wrote it.

4. Comments should be free of excessive spelling/grammar mistakes.

While we appreciate that not everyone speaks English as their first language, our primary audience does. Please help keep the community's content professional by using proper grammar and spell-checking your comments before you submit them.

5. Comments should not be self-promotional or "spam".

The purpose of commenting is to share what you know about the item reviewed, to help others who are also interested in that particular product, service or person. While your Signature may contain promotional content or links, your comments may not.

The most common reason a comment is not approved is that it's too general and doesn't include specific, helpful infobased on your use of or experience with the item reviewed.

Here's an example of an actual comment that was rejected for being too general.

While the comment does reflect this users' experience with the site, when all is said and done all that was really said is that they found it confusing. This is far too general.

When in doubt, just be super specific - how long did you use the product or site, what specifically did you like or dislike and why, what were your specific results, did you get the results you expected based on the claims made, etc.

"Being that I currently make most of my money online from GPT sites, I definitely looked into trying out this one! It came highly recommended and to be as legit as possible so I signed up.

I found that it was very confusing at first. Where as I was accustomed to doing offers and earning cash, there was so much more to this site, like finding treasures, pearls, etc. I couldn't figure out what half of it meant or how to benefit from it! I also found the layout of the site to be quite complicated as well.

I'm definitely not saying this site is a scam as it is highly recommended and seems to be legit, however, be prepared to go through a bit of a learning curve when you first sign up."

Internet Explorer is the only popular browser that doesn't include an "as you type" spell checker. We think Firefox is the best browser, but if you insist on using Internet Explorer there is an easy solution ...

To add spell checking functionality to Internet Explorer we recommend that you install the ieSpell plug-in. This is a free, totally safe and highly recommended plug-in that will be useful when using IM Report Card and any other site where you enter content.

To install the ieSpell plug-in, here's all you have to do:

1. Click here to open the ieSpell CNET Download.com page in a new window

2. Click the "Download Now" link to start the download.

3. When you're prompted to "Run or save this file?" click the Run button.

4. When the installation has completed, just restart your browser (if it's open).

Once installed you'll find 2 new menu items called "ieSpell" and "ieSpell Options" under the "Tools" menu, as well as a new icon on your toolbar. (Note: the toolbar icon will only appear if you haven't customized your toolbar.)

There are several ways to use ieSpell, but the easiest is to simply right-click in the text field or text area that you want to spell check and select "ieSpell". This will invoke the spell checker which is very similar to the spell checker in Microsoft Word.

So when you're done writing a comment at IM Report Card, simply right-click in the comment box and select "ieSpell" to spell check before you submit your comment.

For more information on ieSpell you can check out the ieSpell website.

You can't. Our feeling is that when enough people comment on something, the truth will come out. If 20 people say the sky is blue and 1 person says the sky is green, the person who is obviously wrong is not going to have much influence.

Our goal is to simply provide a platform for everyone to share their own opinions and experiences. We don't plan on removing or editing comments unless they are in violation of our posted comment rules and guidelines.

Every single product, service and person reviewed on IM Report Card has its own "official" discussion thread in our forums, and that's a great place to "dispute" or respond to something another user has posted in their comments.

You'll find the link to the forum discussion thread for any item right under the green Comment button on the review page for anything reviewed on IM Report Card.

If you represent the item reviewed and wish to submit an official response to a specific user comment or complaint, please see the FAQ below on how to submit a rebuttal.

Comments on the review pages are meant for every user to have a place to share their own opinions and experiences. We don't want these comments cluttered up with back and forth discussion, so you can't reply to comments directly on a review page.

You are welcome to post your own comment, and address issues raised in previous comments, as long as your own comments provide specific, helpful information based on your own experience with the item reviewed.

Aside from this, every single product, service and person reviewed on IM Report Card has its own "official" discussion thread in our forums, and that's a great place to "dispute" or respond to something another user has posted, ask questions, etc.

You'll find the link to the forum discussion thread right under the green Comment button on the review page, and this is where you are welcome to post just about anything you want including questions and general discussion about the item reviewed.

If you represent the item reviewed and wish to submit an official response to a specific user comment or complaint, please see the FAQ below on how to submit a rebuttal.

If you are a product owner or representative of a site we've reviewed and wish to submit a rebuttal to a specific user comment/complaint, you may do so at any time.

Do NOT however post a "normal" comment on your own review ...

Instead, Contact us with the relevant details. Please be sure to clearly state the name of the item reviewed, the comment you are responding to, and provide "your side of the story", and we'll attach your response to the applicable comment.

Be sure to include your full name and position or association with the item reviewed.

If a product/site owner posts a "rebuttal" to one of your comments or complaints, we'll simply append their response to the end of your comment for others to see.

We'll also send you an email notification so you'll know they have responded.

Once the product or site owner has posted "their side of the story", that's it. No more comments or responses are allowed on the review page by either you or them.

If you wish to respond to their response to your original comment, you may do so by posting in the official forum thread for the item reviewed.

We only review products, services, biz-opps, people and other sites that are related to Internet marketing or making money online - so please don't submit any other sites.

The other basic requirement is that a site must be somewhat popular for us to review it. There's just no point in our reviewing really obscure sites that barely get any traffic.

The way we judge a site's popularity is via it's Alexa ranking. If you don't know what that is, don't worry - our system will handle this automatically. If a site you submit is not popular enough to be reviewed at this time, our system will let you know.

If you do know what an Alexa ranking is, our current maximum Alexa ranking requirement for a site to be reviewed is 300,000. This maximum may be increased over time.

Our primary focus is on reviewing true Internet marketing products, services, business opportunities and people that sell Internet marketing products and services targeted to the home-based and small online business owner.

When it comes to things like traffic exchanges, "get paid to" sites, etc. we can only consider them for review if they are relatively popular.

There are just too many of these types of sites to review them all.

If you're going to submit these types of sites, here's a breakdown of the types of sites we're more strict about and the Alexa requirements for each.

If you don't know what an Alexa ranking is, you shouldn't submit these types of sites.

Type of site	Category	Max Alexa	Sub-Category Required
Free products/services	Pick one	25,000	Yes
Traffic Exchanges	Service	25,000	Yes
"Guaranteed Visitors"	Service	25,000	Yes
"Safelist" programs	Service	25,000	Yes
"Get Paid To" sites	Other	25,000	Yes
"Paid Survey" sites	Other	25,000	Yes
Web hosting companies	Service	5,000	Yes

Important! If you want to submit these types of sites, you *must* select the proper sub-category on the submission form or your submission will be rejected.

Please note that while most submissions that fall into these categories will be approved if they meet the Alexa requirement, we reserve the right to reject any submission if we feel that reviewing it would not be helpful to most of our community members.

We generally do NOT review the following types of sites ...

General products or services such as Twitter, PayPal, Facebook, etc. - even if they can be used for Internet marketing
Sites that allow the user to earn products or rewards for "completing offers"
"Pre-launch" or "sold out" products and services that are not currently for sale
Products and services targeted only to very large companies
Social networks, discussion forums, blogs, etc.

When it comes to people, we generally only review people that provide products or services targeted to home-based and small online business owners.

If a person doesn't sell any products or services, we generally won't review them.

Likewise we aren't going to review people that provide products or services to Fortune 500 companies - because our users do not own or work for Fortune 500 companies.

People are obvious, so let's talk about the other 4 categories ...

Originally we were just going to review products and services, but we found that many users are also interested in other things that are not simple products or services.

In the offline world the distinction is usually pretty clear - products are tangible and services are intangible. But that is not always the case online.

Here's how we try to determine the most appropriate category for an item ...

Products are usually quite specific in what they do, or what they are meant to teach you, and usually involve a one-time payment to purchase. Products include software, ebooks, training courses, and many web-based applications.

Services are usually something that the seller will do for you, or provide for you - often on an ongoing basis. Examples would include web hosting, autoresponders, an article writing service, affiliate networks, ecommerce applications with monthly fees, etc.

The Biz-Opp category is for business opportunities - which are usually offers to purchase or participate in a standalone business "package" where almost everything is provided to you. These include things like MLMs and Network Marketing programs.

The Other category is for anything that isn't a true Internet marketing product, service or business opportunity. These includes various ways to make money online including "paid to click" and other "get paid to" sites, "paid survey" sites, etc.

With all of the different offerings online, and product developers constantly coming up with new and creative ways to deliver their goods, this isn't always an exact science. Depending on the item, and the person categorizing it, the choice isn't always clear.

We just try to do our best, and ask that you do the same when submitting items for review, etc. If you come across something on the site that you feel is clearly improperly categorized, please let us know and we'll review it.

Sure thing. Just look in the "reason" column for the abbreviated reason. Here's more details for each of the reasons your submission may have been rejected ...

Not an English site - We only review sites that are in English.

URL is not working - We were not able to access the URL you submitted and/or the URL did not lead to the item that you tried to submit.

Sold out/not for sale - We do not review "pre-launch" or "sold out" products that are not currently for sale. Please re-submit when the item is available.

Forum or blog - We generally do not review marketing forums or blogs unless the forum or blog is an integral part of a product and/or the primary site of a person we review.

Free - not unique - We generally do not review free products and services unless they are extremely popular and/or controversial, etc.

Not a specific item - We review individual products and services - not companies. Most likely you submitted a company's homepage and they offer multiple products and/or services. You may want to resubmit with a more accurate URL.

Can't earn money here - We only review sites related to Internet marketing products and services, people, biz-opps, or other sites that offer a way to earn money online. You'd see this if you submitted a survey site that only offers prizes, for example.

Not popular enough - Even if a site's Alexa ranking is 300,000 or less, we may not review it if the item is too obscure, there is little or no information available about it, or it's something we think the majority of users simply wouldn't be interested in.

Already listed - The item you submitted is already listed on the site, or is in the process of being reviewed and will be listed on the site soon.

Not for Small Biz - Our audience is small online business owners, so we only review products and services targeted to them. We generally do not review products or services specifically made for large or Fortune 500 type companies.

Not marketing specific - We only review specific Internet marketing products, services, people, business opportunities, and other sites that allow a person to earn money online. We do not review general product and services such as Twitter, PayPal, Facebook, etc. even if they can be used for Internet marketing purposes.

There are two different types of bonuses you can earn from posting comments.

First there are the "early bird" bonsues. If you're the first user to post a comment on a review you'll earn triple credits - 150 instead of the normal 50. If you're the second user to post a comment you'll earn double credits - 100 instead of the normal 50.

Please note that our moderators are extra strict on the first and second comments. If you're the first or second user to comment on a review you absolutely must provide specific, helpful information based on your experience with the item reviewed.

Also note that any bonus credits earned from being the first or second user to post a comment on a review won't show up in your stats until your comment is approved.

The second type of bonus you earn from comments is the "helpful" bonus. Other users have the opportunity to rate all of your comments as being helpful or not. For every helpful rating you receive you'll earn an additional 1 credit.

There are just 2 requirements in order to cash out your credits ...

There is a $20 minimum payout (2,000 credits worth)
To cash out your credits and get paid, at least 25% of your credits must be earned from new comments that you and/or your referrals have posted.

(Bonus credits earned from being the first or second person to comment on a new review, special promotions, etc. don't count towards your total when determining the 25% ratio. This makes it easier for you to reach the required 25%.)

If your ratio is at least 25% but your combined referrals' ratio is less than 25%, you will only be able to cash out your personally earned credits. Credits earned from your referrals will accrue until the 25% threshold is reached.

#2 is a very important part of our anti-fraud system, which takes away the incentive for scammers to use automated programs and/or brute force to quickly grade and rate 100s or even 1,000s of products and comments here at IM Report Card.

(We have other systems in place to detect this and protect the integrity of our grading and rating systems, but taking away their incentive to even try is important too.)

Legitimate users of the site shouldn't be affected by this policy because legitimate users don't just come to the site and grade 100s of products. They also add comments and share their experiences with the products and services they've tried.

If your only intention is to click around as fast as you can trying to build up credits, with no intention of adding value to our community, don't even waste your time.

Occasionally we get an email from someone who is trying to verify that our credit system is accurate, claiming that they've found some "discrepancies."

Usually they try to do this by attempting to figure out how many credits their referrals have earned, based on the stats on their public profile pages, and comparing it to the numbers listed in the referral section of their own private profile page.

Our credit system is 100% accurate, but it's also somewhat complex and this is never going to work for a number of reasons, including but not limited to ...

1. When you view your referrals on YOUR profile page, the number of credits earned listed next to each of your referrals is NOT updated in real-time. They are updated hourly. Some people have 100s of referrals and it is impossible to calculate these numbers in real-time for 100s of referrals every time the profile page is loaded.

2. The activity summary on a member's public profile page does not give you enough info to determine how many credits they have actually earned. For example, users earn 1 bonus credit each time one of their comments receives a "Helpful" rating.

3. Users sometimes earn bonus credits if they are the 1st or 2nd person to comment on a review. If you referred them, you earn 50 credits for all of their comments that are at least 100 words, regardless if they are the 1st, 2nd or 50th person to comment.

4. Users can post comments that are at least 50 words, but in order to earn credits a comment must be at least 100 words. So you really have no way to figure out how many credits your referrals have earned from posting comments just by the number listed on their public profile because they may have comments less than 100 words.

Unfortunately we get a lot of people who sign-up because they think IM Report Card is just an easy way to make money. They try to grade things they have no experience with, and rate comments without even reading them. We can't allow this.

You're probably not one of these people, but before you can earn credits from grading and rating stuff we just need to make sure you can provide value to our community ...

Please find at least one item you're familiar with and post a comment about your experience with it that'll be helpful to other users who are also interested in that item.

Once you have posted at least 1 comment that is approved by our moderators, you will then be able to grade products, and rate reviews and other users' comments, etc.

Sorry we have to make you do this, but it's just one of the many ways we protect the integrity of our grading and rating systems - and that's important for everyone.

You can only grade a certain number of products and/or rate a certain number of reviews or user comments in a given period of time. This is a necessary part of our anti-fraud system, and unfortunately we can't tell you any exact details.

Users who use the site the way it is meant to be used should rarely see this message.

If you're seeing this message, simply slow down and/or grade or rate less items. You don't need to, and we don't want you to, rate every single comment on the entire site.

Perhaps you can rate only comments that you find extremely helpful, and vice-versa. And of course you should only grade products that you have actually used ...

The value of our community lies in the collective intelligence we all bring to the table, and share with others - mainly via the comments we post about the products, services, people and biz-opps that we have experience with.

If you post an inappropriate comment, we'll send you a detailed email explaining why it's inappropriate, and ask you to review our comment guidelines before posting again.

The "timeout" page simply requires that you review our comment guidelines, and check a box to let us know that you've reviewed them and agree to follow them going forward.

So please don't take it personally. It's just our way of making sure you're aware of the community's policies, so your comments will provide value to other users.

There are currently three ways that we make money from IM Report Card ...

1. Some of the links that take you to the sites reviewed contain an affiliate link. That means we earn a commission if someone should happen to sign up for the site they are visiting. Please note that this does not affect the reviews written at IM Report Card. Our writers have absolutely no incentive to write favorably or not about any site. And even if they did, any review that was written in a positive light that shouldn't have been would be "corrected" by the comments left by IM Report Card members like yourself.

2. You may notice little Google ads in the sidebar of most pages. Whenever a user clicks on any of these ads we make a little bit of money.

3. The Featured Sites page highlights products and websites that we think are really great. Depending on the site, we may receive some form of compensation for referring you to these products and sites if you sign-up, make a purchase, etc.

We currently accept new users from all countries except the following:

India
Lithuania
Malaysia
Nigeria
Pakistan
Philippines
Singapore

Unfortunately we've experienced a tremendous amount of fraudulent and inappropriate use of the IM Report Card website from users in these countries, and until we figure out an efficient way to combat this we can't accept users from these countries.

If you are in one of these countries and want to use IM Report Card responsibly, please accept our sincerest apologies. We know it doesn't seem "fair".

Until we figure out a way to efficiently deal with this problem, you're free to use the site as a resource - you just can't post comments or earn credits.

Users in certain other locations will be asked to provide additional information upon signing up, and based on this information the user will be approved or denied.

Please note: Do NOT attempt to use proxy servers or other methods to hide your IP address and/or location in an attempt to circumvent this policy. If you do, we WILL catch you, and you will be permanently banned from accessing the site.

The "Top Users" lists are based on user activity over the past 7 days (technically the last 168 hours), and are updated 4 times a day.

To make it to the top of the Most Active Users list, you simply need to post lots of good comments that get approved by our moderators.

For the Most Helpful Users list you need to post at least a handful of new comments that are extremely helpful so that lots of other users will rate them as helpful.

Since we manually approve all comments, every comment that makes it on the site is "helpful" by our standards - so to make it to the top of this list you'll need to post REALLY good comments. Hint: Detailed, specific comments get more helpful ratings.

To get on the Most Referrals list, just tell as many people as you can about IM Report Card! This list is based strictly on the number of new activated users you refer.

In order to create an IM Report Card account you must have some Internet marketing experience and be able to write helpful comments in English that are free from excessive misspellings, grammar and formatting errors, etc.

If your user application was denied, we apologize and hope you don't take it personally, but our users expect a certain degree of professionalism in the content posted on IMRC.

Please do NOT attempt to submit another user application as any further attempts will automatically be denied and you'll be blacklisted from accessing the site.