There are many fake review sites out there that seem to provide unbiased, independent reviews of various wrinkle cream products.  Unfortunately, many of these sites are setup by affiliate marketers trying to generate commissions for the products they are shilling for (see the explanation of affiliate marketing here).

A typical format for an affiliate page would be a review site comparing 3-10 products, with one product getting the best rating (e.g. 5 star) and another product getting a mediocre or bad rating (e.g. 2-3 stars).  Making all the products 5 stars doesn’t work because people will pick up on that.  Two-sided reviews tend to be more effective.

The product that makes the affiliate marketer the most money gets the top spot, followed by the next most profitable, etc. etc.

So do these products really work?  I don’t know because I’m not a woman or a dermatologist.  But I can tell you that you need to be very careful when it comes to these products because a lot of deceptive practices are used to market them.  Here are a few of them:

Fake comments

Some sites will add fake comments from “visitors” to add an element of social proof.  We tend to be more likely to do something if everybody else is doing it too.  If this trick didn’t work, affiliate marketers wouldn’t be using it.

The following example is from wrinkleserased.com/lifecell-skin-cream/.  In this particular case, all the commenters’ websites point to http://none/.  Clearly these aren’t real comments because real people won’t post the same broken link.  This is a case where the affiliate marketer didn’t do a good job at making the comments look realistic.

Geo-targeting

Some websites will also personalize the landing page to its visitors so that the author of the page appears to be from the same city.  For example, Suppose I go to the site riyawrinklefree.com and I am browsing the Net from Toronto, Ontario (ON).

I see the following comment on the site:

This is performed by a Javascript on that site.  (Disabling Javascript will cause that script to not work and show blanks instead.)

What a coincidence!! I'm from <b>
                          <script src="http://j.maxmind.com/app/geoip.js"></script><script type="text/javascript"><!--
document.write(geoip_city());
// --></script>, <script type="text/javascript"><!--
document.write(geoip_region());
// --></script> </b>too! How long did it take to ship?

Sneaky bastards.

Appeal to authority

A lot of these sites will post logos of major media outlets on their site (e.g. ABC, CBS, New York Times, CBS, National Post, etc.) to give their product some credibility.  But chances are, none of these media outlets talk about the specific product being sold.

Similar appeals are made to celebrities and to TV personalities such as Oprah and Dr. Oz.  Affiliate marketers will find weak excuses to claim a connection to make the product sound more credible.

Some other products in this space

• Lifecell
• Dermajuv
• Belisi RX
• Revitol
• Athene 7 minute facelift
• Alphaderma CE
• Strivectin SD
• Freeze 24/7
• Murad Resurgence
• Hydroderm
• And many more

Be careful out there!