Comparing Usenet Comparison Sites
March 9, 2010 - NewsAdmin Staff Writer

Shopping for a quality Usenet service can be an imposing task when you consider the dizzying array of choices. Those who survive the ordeal are never quite the same, incurring emotional scars that stay with them for a lifetime. There are more than 100 services offering a variety of newsgroup accounts, account features, and promotional specials, with each provider confidentially declaring their Usenet supremacy over competitors. In a perfect world a neutral review board would monitor each service 24/7, administer polygraph tests to owners to verify their marketing claims, and deliver unbiased evaluations of each provider. Unfortunately it's not a perfect world, so when a newsgroup user is window shopping they'll often rely on Usenet comparison sites such as NewsAdmin.Com to help them select a provider.

Most comparison sites make a legitimate attempt to fairly evaluate Usenet services. They do a thorough job of outlining each provider's service, routinely update their information, and they serve as a helpful resource when trying to distinguish one provider from the next. Alas there are always two sides to a coin, and for every quality comparison site you'll find a polar opposite. Rather than showcase the best providers, some comparison sites have fallen into the habit of promoting specific providers because they profit from those recommendations. Before selecting a newsgroup provider, you may decide to find a useful comparison site first, and the following tips can help you to discern the good from the not-so-good.

Pay-For-Praise
With an affiliate relationship, a Usenet provider will pay you cash for customers you refer to their service. Some providers will pay affiliates as much as 100% of the customer's initial membership fee, in addition to a 10%-20% commission on future membership renewals. As an example if a referral purchases a $24.99 month unlimited newsgroup account and renew their account 6 times, a provider might pay an affiliate $24.99 for the initial referral and $30 (20% of $24.99 X 6 renewals) for the membership renewals... so it's not uncommon for affiliates to earn thousands of dollars each month for their referrals! NewsAdmin.Com does not participate in affiliate programs because we view them as a conflict of interest. For the Usenet comparison sites that belong to these programs, there's a financial temptation to promote specific providers that make them the most money, rather than promoting the providers that operate the best services.

How can you tell if a Usenet comparisons site participates in these cash for referral programs? Look at the format of the hypertext links within their websites. An affiliate receives a unique affiliate-ID from a Usenet provider, which the affiliate includes within the hypertext links at their website. When an end-user clicks on the link to visit the provider's website, it sets a cookie that follows the end-user through the provider's site, and credits a commission to the affiliate when the user purchases a membership. Some comparison sites will try to hide their affiliate relationships, but you can usually reveal the affiliate relationship in one of two ways... 1) place you mouse over a hypertext link, right-mouse click and select "Properties" 2) most web browsers offer a command that allows you to view a web page's HTML source and the details related to any hypertext links. Affiliate and non-affiliate site links may look something like this...

Non-Affiliate Link To A Provider
http://www.some-usenet-provider.com

Affiliate Link To A Provider
http://www.usenet-comparison-site.com/server.asp?id=some-usenet-provider

Affiliate Details Within Web Page's HTML Source
<a href="server.asp?id=some-usenet-provider" name="some-usenet-provider" id="some-usenet-provider">

Comparing Apples & Oranges
Every newsgroup user has different requirements when it comes to selecting a Usenet provider. With that in mind it's important for Usenet comparison sites to offer a wide range of relevant details, and to ensure that a common criteria is used when comparing providers. If a comparison site has a bias toward a particular provider they may hype a unique service feature that has little significance to end-users (free t-shirt or newsreader) while downplaying or overlooking important user features offered by other providers (NNTP & Web access, newsgroup search engine, download accelerator, etc.). It's not uncommon for questionable sites to make apples & oranges comparisons that benefit their provider of choice. For example they may promote that their favorite provider only charges $10 month for an unlimited newsgroup account... compared to other providers who charge $15-$30 month... but they fail to mention that the accounts come with hidden restrictions (data or speed limits) or that the $10 is a promotional price that only applies to the first month of service and then increases to $20 month upon renewal.

The Ratings Game
Everyone has been there before... you select a restaurant, a mechanic, a dry cleaners based upon "excellent" ratings and reviews you've found online, only to have a miserable personal experience with those businesses. The problem with online ratings systems is that they're easily manipulated and abused. If a Usenet comparison site belongs to affiliate programs for example, they will often rank providers not by the quality of their service but by how much affiliate cash they generate. If a site allows users to submit provider ratings (a 1-5 star system for example) providers will pose as end-users to submit a poor rating for a competitor. There's also an opportunity for disgruntled end-users to submit unfair ratings... for example they may be angry because a provider closed their account for posting 10,000 spam messages to the newsgroups. For these reasons we do not include traditional ratings at the NewsAdmin.Com site. We'd rather have our readers evaluate providers on the points of their service (Compare-A-Tron) instead of basing their purchase decision on another person's feedback that may or may not be credible.

Updates, Updates, Updates
It's a challenge for Usenet comparison sites to keep their information current, when you consider the number of providers, account options, and service features that we need to track. Specific items such as retention levels, newsgroup counts and membership pricing change routinely, so you'll need a Usenet comparison site that performs routine updates of their provider information. Sites may rely on providers to inform them of changes, they may step through infrequent updates (quarterly, bi-annually), or they may not perform updates... all of which can lead to situations where end-users are basing their provider evaluations on outdated information. Comparison sites aren't perfect... ourselves included lol... but at NewsAdmin.Com we make every effort to manually update providers’ details on a frequent schedule, and we give providers several tools that give them a convenient method for informing our staff of their service changes.
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