Notice: This post is a paid review of the Review Me service.
Oh, the things I do to make money.
I’m broke. I think everyone knows that by now. And next year, I’ll be even more broke, not working while I go to school full time. So, I’ve been looking for unobtrusive ways to make money with the blog, because I can do this at midnight, no problem.
I finally got my Text Link Ads code all set up, and this morning, I got an email from Review Me, informing me that my site was preapproved. I was a bit hesitant—after all, how many other sites were preapproved—but I thought I’d check it out anyway.
I clicked through, and I saw that it was a pay-for-review site. I signed up, of course, and I happen to like what I see. The service is split between Advertisers and Bloggers. A blogger submits their site, and their ranking is determined by Alexa, Technorati, and RSS ratings. Which totally explains why I’m only 2/5 stars. Considering that I could give a crap about those ratings.
Set up similarly to TLA, you make half of the money that your site earns. With a two-star rating, each review I write will be worth $60, and my payout will be $30. Also similar to TLA, I get to decide what I write the reviews about—sorta. Advertisers get to pick what site they want their stuff reviewed on. And then I get to decided if I want to review what the Advertiser is offering. So, I never have to write another review if I don’t want to.
Reviews must be at least 200 words long—not a problem for me and my need to be overly verbose—and they must be written within 48 hours of the blogger taking on the review. Then the review must be submitted to the Review Me site. This is important—Review Me isn’t going to go looking for the blogger’s reviews. As far as I can see, the reviews do not have to be positive, although I’m sure they would like them to be.
Review Me looks to be setting up a useful service, for people who want to get their products / sites reviewed, and matching up with people who like to review stuff (like me) who never get asked. So, I’ll be trying this service out, and I’ll let you know how it goes. And of course, I’ll be letting you know when I’m writing a paid review, so you can always skip it, if you wish.
Hmm. I wonder how long they can possibly stay in business. Are people really going to want to trust reviews that were /clearly/ marked as paid for?
I have no idea. I like the idea of knowing that they’ve been paid for the review, but you’re right. If the review is bought, how much is it really worth?
The Review Me blog has a post up about this, as Michael Arrington of Tech Crunch attacked another pay-per-post venture, as at first glance, it appeared that they didn’t have to disclose they were blogging for money.
I think that most bloggers who do the “review me” thing won’t be as obvious as I am about the fact that they are being paid. I’ve got this policy as being as up front as possible (as me a question, and I’ll always anwer it), but I’m sure others will be shady, with it being small text, pushed to the bottom of the post.
I suppose we’ll see over time if this takes off.
And, from the recently added FAQ page for ReviewMe:
It appears that I can be as negative as I want, although, I doubt that would get me more offers to review things. And I so want to review things!
This sounds interesting. I am looking forward to your feedback on this issue.