WebProNews » ReviewMe

Window of Opportunity Closing for Paid Posts

Brian Turner — Thu, 17 May 2007 18:36:47 +0000

I’ve tested out the ReviewMe service previously, but after they opened their campaign marketplace I’ve been tempted to try them again and run a few campaigns – especially after Shoemoney’s recommendation and decent quality of some of the paid for reviews.

Anyway, results have come in from the weekend – so far variable as expected.

There’s a fairly even mixture of junk blogger blogs just after content, plus decent blogs who’ll give a straight and useful post.

However, I can already see a lot of benefits and hazards coming out of this.

The main benefit is the potential to generate buzz and engage a wider range of bloggers and audience than on a Pay per Post basis – plus cheaper than many paid link baiting services.

Another benefit is that you get a fairly natural link pattern, with people using different anchor text on the target URL, plus deep links if you have content provision for that.

In theory, so good so far in terms of marketing & SEO.

Here’s the problem – a lot of these blogs probably won’t be running 1 or 2 years from now, so these are best viewed as short to mid-term link solutions.

Another is that Google are actively seeking to devalue paid links, and “Paid for” or “Sponsor” is a big give away Google can easily crack down on. So I see paid blog posts as only offering shorter term benefits for SEO purposes.

Perhaps the biggest problem, though, is that in the long term I can see people feeding this market and generating tons of junk blogs to derive the income from it.

So advertisers are likely to see diminishing returns, in my opinion, if they continue to run constant and unvarying campaigns – because all they’ll be paying for is posts on blogs created with the sole purpose of being paid to publish. Zero Authority/PageRank/Trust/Traffic, etc.

So my strategy is – invest now, reap later. That means I’m getting a string of my higher quality sites prepared for a big splash out on paid blog reviews.

Will I get a return on my investment? I treat SEO as an art, so as long as I create art, I expect the investment will bear fruit in the longer term.

However, because I’m aiming to target higher quality websites with engaging offers – revenue share, free stuff, etc, then I’m hoping to generate a little buzz at least as well. If I can get people to join my communities and stay there, the long term benefits are potentially excellent.

In the meantime, I’m pushing on my webdevelopment as I portalise a number of websites, either moving foums to news sites, or adding news & blogs sections to forums.

Then it’s a big investment as and when ready to really start pushing on promoting these sites – because I don’t think the window of opportunity will stay open for long.

Comments

ReviewMe – Misrepresenting?

Robyn Tippins — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 01:02:14 +0000

I was shocked (and a little saddened) to read the Consumerist post detailing their apparent misrepresentation of blog partners. Looks like someone at ReviewMe has been adding sites to their listings that haven’t actually signed up for the service.

It seems, though, that the good ship Lifehacker might not be the only blog ReviewMe is “representing”…

As of this posting, reviews on BoingBoing and Makezine are both listed as being available for purchase.

I have done one ReviewMe post (of the ReviewMe service, actually) and because it was a part of TLA I initially assumed it would meet the same standards as that advertising company. I hope this is a misunderstanding, but I’m failing to see how that could be. If anyone from ReviewMe has commented on this, please bring it to my attention.

If this is what it looks like, this can only be bad for the oft maligned service. Yikes…

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Anything Worth Reviewing?

Aaron Wall — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 13:49:50 +0000

So I decided to test out ReviewMe for one of my sites, and I think it has been a pretty cool experience. I think most advertisers are going to eat it up after they give it a go.

I actually had to look around a bit though to find things worth reviewing on the site I wanted reviewed because most of it was not too remarkable. Which, sorta leads to the point…is anything on your site worth reviewing? Is any of it remarkable? Most websites and most pages are not, but a few good well cited ideas bolted on a conversion oriented site can carry it in the SERPs.

Most real estate sites, for example, are information free pages segmented by town and tied to an MLS search. But if you could add just a couple good ideas to the site (like a history of the town complete with pictures of how it has changed over time, especially if you integrate things like census data and charts, or can score interviews of past mayors or other famous people from your area), get a few organic links to those ideas, and use that link authority to prop up the rest of the site you can move a site from a me too site to a top ranked site.

If you wanted someone to look at your site, what are the pages you would want them to look at? Does your site have any pages that makes your site stick out from competing sites?

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Aaron Wall is the author of SEO Book, an ebook offering the latest
search engine optimization tips and strategies. From SEOBook.com Aaron
gives away free advice and search engine optimization tools. He is a
regular conference speaker, partner in Clientside SEM, and runs the
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Get Buzz, Earn Cash: ReviewMe

Darren Straight — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 16:13:54 +0000

Just signed up for ReviewMe a new site for which Advertisers can get their Web site’s products or services reviewed by related Web sites/Blogs thus benefiting from valuable exposure, feedback, and viral buzz.

But of course it’s not just the Advertisers that benefit from the Reviews because Bloggers will get paid to review the services and Web sites that are of interest to them and their readers, and reap the benefits of conversation with advertisers.

Here’s how it works for Advertisers:

Browse the marketplace of reviewers to find web sites that are relevant to your target audience. Reviews start at $40.00 and are a one-time fee per review.
Create a free account, define the products or services that you would like to get reviewed, then purchase some reviews.
Your order is sent to the reviewers and they will choose to take on the review or not.
You receive notification when each review is completed and published to the reviewer’s web site.

And here’s how it works for Bloggers:

Submit your site for inclusion into the ReviewMe publisher network. Begin by creating a free account using the link below.
If approved, your site will enter our ReviewMe marketplace and clients will purchase reviews from you.
You decide to accept the review or not.
You will be paid $20.00 to $200.00 for each completed review that you post on your site.

Ohh and just remember that if you do signup to ReviewMe and do get some reviews to post them you must make sure you state somewhere by some means or another that you are getting paid for your review post, just like I’m getting paid for this one, this is to do with the controversy around being paid to blog!

I myself am willing to give this a go, but to be honest I won’t be posting anything that’s not worthy of being posted here, and if I do manage to earn enough money on the sidelines, I’ll use the money do some competitions for you my readers, because well I don’t really blog for money. I Blog because I enjoy it!

Then again some money is nice to pay for hosting!

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Darren Straight a Microsoft Student Partner (MSP) and Windows Live Butterfly
Expert is a University of Kent Student who is an avid blogger and technology
enthusiast who loves the passion of beta testing new products and services
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Paid Blogging & Blogosphere Ethics

Joe Lewis — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 16:58:38 +0000

Influential bloggers are taking a harsh stance against services that offer payment to blog posters in return for product reviews, bringing the question of “blogosphere ethics” to the forefront of the blogging community.

It all started with PayPerPost.

Now ReviewMe and CreamAid are throwing their respective hats in the blogger sponsorship ring.

However, the concept of providing monetary compensation to bloggers in return for product reviews is creating a tremor in the force of the blogosphere. Prominent figures in the blogger community are starting to weigh in with their thoughts on paid blogging, mostly to the tune of negative responses.

Robert Scoble touches on the concept of integrity in his blog. He goes so far as to suggest, “If I were running a search engine I’d actually come out and say we’re gonna remove any advertiser on PayPerPost from our listings.”

Ouch.

TechCrunch isn’t taking the issue any less seriously, either. ReviewMe is financed by Text Link Ads, a longtime TechCrunch sponsor. Mike Arrington, however, made his thoughts pretty clear in an article covering the topic:

“While we applaud the fact that ReviewMe requires disclosure and prohibits advertisers from requiring a positive post, we still think the very act of paying bloggers to write about a product is a very bad idea. Frankly, we’re not happy that one of our sponsors has launched this type of service, and we’ve notified them that we will not allow promotion of ReviewMe through TechCrunch.”

Disclosure seems to be a key aspect of the ethical stance on paid blogging. PayPerPost does not demand its bloggers to disclose that they are receiving monetary compensation for their blog posts. Additionally, some sponsors will only pay for positive product reviews.

Conversely, CreamAid and ReviewMe both require bloggers to give full disclosure concerning the sponsorship status of their blog entries. Further, reviewers are under no obligation to give a favorable picture of the products that are discussed in order to receive compensation for the review.

While CreamAid and ReviewMe at least give the appearance of some impartiality, it remains to be seen what impact paid blogging will have on the blogosphere at large.

Influential bloggers have achieved prominent status due to perceived neutrality in tackling controversial subjects and providing fair product assessments to the blogging community at large.

Paid blogging, however, could erode at the blogosphere’s reputation of impartiality and drive a wedge between bloggers and the blogging community.

Integrity within the blogosphere will be a hot topic in the coming months, to be sure.

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