Those lucky few reviewers approved for this program will be guaranteed to get their reviews fully moderated and either paid/rejected within one week of submission. (This is 3x-6x faster than the current system, in which it can take a week or two for the scorecard, a week or two for the review to published, a week or two for the review to paid after being published, and then even longer there is any disputes or such.)
However, the criteria to get approved for these ultra-fast approvals and payments will (of course) be very strict and even many legit long-time quality reviewers will still not qualify. This is because if even one or two scammers got through and approved for this, they could steal thousands from us very quickly. Keep in mind, every dollar stolen from us by a scammer is stolen from honest reviewers. It's all the same finite pool of money being used to pay the reviewers, so the more scammers steal from that poll, the less is left for honest reviewers.
The tentative strict criteria one must meet to even apply for acceptance into program is as follows:
- Must have a linked Facebook account that is at least two years old.
- The name on the Facebook account, your OnlineBookClub username, and your "full legal name" as shown on your valid government-issued photo ID must all match. (Middle names are not considered, so "Scott Hughes", "Scott Michael Hughes", "and "Scott M. Hughes" would be considered as all matching for this purpose.)
- You must upload a selfie of you holding your valid government-issued photo ID, and that must be manually checked and marked verified by an admin (typically me).
- Must have at least one verified purchase review of a BOTM on at least one major book retailer (e.g. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Walmart, Target, etc.) and the name on the review must at least loosely match the name on your account. ("Scott H." would be considered a loose match for "Scott Hughes" and "Jon").
  • The name on your PayPal account must match both your OnlineBookClub username AND the name on your photo ID.
- You cannot have any significant PRQ disputes.
- You cannot have any open typo disputes. (The application process will include a check of your previous reviews to see if there was books that contained typos that you marked as containing none, or books you otherwise marked as containing significantly less typos than they contained.)
A reviewer who meets the above criteria can apply, but then a manual account review by a human admin will be done before the approval is finalized (similar to the current manual approvals for Level 6).
The manual review will check for any indicates, even slight, of skim reading or other scamming/dishonesty, as well as then also more quickly checking that the reviewer is providing high-quality reliable work.
It will be a lot of checking and qualification upfront, but that means then each review the reviewer submits after that will need to undergo much less checking. Most of the checks we currently do after a review is submitted (which accounts for the time it takes to approve the reviews) before sending the payment is primarily simply to prevent money from being sent to scammers.