ReviewMe is a new service catering to blog publishers and advertisers that launched tonight. ReviewMe is a service that takes the power of blogs to heart. Any blogger can become a member on the site and list their blog. ReviewMe automatically checks a number of factors such as Technorati rank, Alexa rank and number of subscribers to come up with a price for advertisers.
Once your site has been listed, it can be discovered by advertisers wishing to pay you to write a review of their product or service. Personally I think the concept is a little cheesy – paying for blog reviews, but it will woo many bloggers on the lookout for extra income.
I signed up for ReviewMe and am curious to see what types of companies are interested in having me write a review for their service. Hopefully things are relevant to this blog’s content – you won’t ever see me blogging about random, one-off or spammy things. ReviewMe isn’t the first website to offer such a service. PayPerPost caused quite a ruckus the past few weeks with their interesting business model. Of course, ReviewMe has a few rules set in place so that people don’t “game” the system. For example, each review must be at least 200 words. Considering most of my reviews are 500+ words, I don’t think that will be a problem.
ReviewMe is currently offering $25,000 (not to one person) to bloggers who review the actual ReviewMe site and service so go ahead, make an account and check it out.
Disclosure: I will be receiving $125 for this post.
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Interesting. Curious to know if you’ll make sure to include a full disclosure letting us all know when you’re reviewing something from a lead off of the service.
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Assuming the terms of service allow me to, I’d like to state disclosure for things I’m paid for.
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Will your Reviews be Good as always or will it be biased ?
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My only gripe with this is that you can’t manually set pricing. I don’t believe that ‘Rati links, Alexa stats or what not can convey a good picture of a site’s traffic and readership.
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I have actually quite a few queries regarding the service before I submit a review. The manual price setting is one of them, as the quality/value of the traffic is important, as is the resulting SEO benefit (blogs can be optimized in different ways).
It is easy to create a PR4 blog that will be more value for SEO than most PR7 sites.
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So, did you get paid for this post? I’m just curious that’s all, please don’t take it the wrong way it’s just:
“…ReviewMe is currently offering $25,000 (not to one person) to bloggers who review…”
Intrigued me and made me wonder if you would get paid for this. Congratulations if you did :)
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Did you get paid for this post? Other people running identical stories today have admitted to being paid.
The whole service is dirty.
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I don’t think it is exactly being paid to post about this. Paul did mention the following, which I feel is disclosure.
If 25,000 bloggers blog about this, he might end up with… $1
There is a very high chance he would have blogged about the service even without the financial incentive. It is very relevant to his blog.
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Andy, you’d consider that a full disclosure statement? I would have considered it part of the story.
The accepted method of full disclosure is along the lines of “I have been paid by XYZ to mention their product;” anything less than an explicit statement is unethical and lacks journalistic integrity.
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Hi Paul, just registered in ReviewMe… thanks for pointing us!!
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We should boycot services like that! Bloggers do not need this FCUK!
If you get paid – will you still write objective reviews?
bloggers can write to advertisers themselves, no need for the intermediary.
Disclosure issues are always complicated.
I am working on something related to disclosure and blogging, but can’t release details of it.
The topic interests me in general.
In many niches, it is expected that the writer provides fully and comprehensive disclosure, probably the most visible are politics and investment.
Many other niches, even reporting don’t require comprehensive disclosure anywhere near what many people think is required, especially in a lot of recent debates on PPP and similar services.
If you had full disclosure in newspaper reporting, after every Microsoft article you might expect a list of every paid advert that has appeared in the publication in the last 20 years.
Obviously that is extreme.
Some niches, if you offer full discosure on everything, not only would you make less money, your readership would think you are a complete idiot for disclosing and highlighting your commercial relationship.
How many comparative shopping websites, including the major players clearly emphasise that every link you follow to purchase an item is an affiliate link?
How many websites every time they mention Google, also mention they have a financial relationship with Google as one of their advertisers, and maybe is also a user of their Adwords system? Yes Google does provide “What is this?”, but is that sufficient for a major online publisher who has the opportunity to negotiate special rates?
Pauls readers are generally intelligent, and will understand the financial connection, which from what I read is insignificant (well unless you get paid based upon the automated pricing). They will also recognise that the content was worth posting about anyway so how much he gets, really doesn’t matter..
What he has written is not really a review. He has provided the information he knows about the service, and hasn’t endorsed it as the best service to join.
I honestly can’t see anything wrong
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I wander if the generated added traffic/bandwidth on the blog itself does not add to the host cost of maintaining a blog.
Hey guys, the way it works for getting paid is that you “accept” the offer to review an item and then you have 48 hours to do it and send them the link. Then a ReviewMe person personally checks it out to see if your review was actually a review.
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The trackback didn’t really explain anything, but I compared your numbers to mine Paul.
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> Hey guys, the way it works for getting paid is that you “accept†the offer to review an item and then you have 48 hours to do it and send them the link. Then a ReviewMe person personally checks it out to see if your review was actually a review.
How can I review a product in 48 hours? You should have at least one week before the product actually launches.
Another question: why does Google pagerank does not count or actual visitor stats. Or quality of content – is this the downfall of automation?
I think 48 hours is good enough.. only takes but a few hours to play around with the product/service and then a few hours to write up a good review.
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Paul, you didn’t mention whether or not you were being directly compensated for this piece.
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Johnny, I’m assuming you are coming from my slightly-outdated RSS feed as I edited the post after I found I was approved for the review. See the last line that says “Disclosure: I will be receiving $125 for this post.”.
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I just got $30 for mine… I wish I was as cool as you to get $125 :)
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Ah, thanks. That wasn’t there when I first read it.
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I dunno, I just can’t help feeling that services like this do nothing but shoot credibility to hell. It’s just one of those things that feels wrong deep down somewhere. (ESPECIALLY if there is no disclosure. It’s pretty much downright unethical without disclosure IMO.) Maybe I’m just behind the times or something.
Also I feel like a 50% cut is WAY too high of a percentage for their portion of the fee. I guess they can get away with it because there aren’t a lot of competitors right now, but if (and when) this space fills up, I predict the percentage for the blogger will go up considerably.
Prediction: The next trend after these sites become common will be tools that help you filter out blogs that participate in pay-per-post sites.
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> I think 48 hours is good enough.. only takes but a few hours to play around with the product/service and then a few hours to write up a good review.
In a way, we are usability testing and user experience testing?
Dont you need to have some expert knowledge about the latter?
I am lucid here: is this the web 2.0 myspace bubble age for bloggers?
lol. A review of reviewme.
A very obvious flaw with ReviewMe is that it is almost impossible to obtain a review sample for a product and write a well reasoned review within 48 hours.
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@james – I’m starting to think that the time allotted changes depending on what company/product/service you are reviewing – maybe the company gets to set the deadline.
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This is a rather interesting concept, I myself have signed up for the service and I am debating as to whether or not it would be beneficial to myself and useful to my readers. In a nutshell reviewMe is purchasing audiences for products and if the products happen to be relevant to a blogs audience and topic then I don’t see why this would be a problem. Most bloggers write mini-reviews of new toys and gadgets they purchase, hell I made a series about my latest toy. Instead of having to pay for the products now we have a chance of getting paid for reviewing the products which in turn will let us buy more stuff and review it. I will take the dirty money they are offering and walk away happy with a nice stack of cash burning a hole in my pocket…
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I tried ReviewMe.com and didn’t get paid.
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I am writing blogs now for than 3 months.Of course i am using Google Adsense program to earn but it is not paying much that i had expected.
By getting a fixed amount for displaying ads or by reviewing will be a good one.
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This is a great news! I am signing up right away!! Thanks. Just out of curiosity, can you please check my blog and let me know how much this blog can earn?
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So you’re from Texas?! ^.^ Does it mean you gave your SSN when you signed up, since you’re from US? I’d like to try my luck for REviewMe but what holds me back is that their asking for SSN. There’s bloggers who thinks its not a clever idea. I just wanted to ask you if its safe to give these number ^.^
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