(A paid review)

Found this via Pam of Pamibe.

About 18 months ago, I decided (involuntarily) that I'd had enough of the corporate world and that I'd give professional blogging a try.

Results were tepid.

Things I do for money now include accepting Google AdSense ads in my sidebar, selling merchandise via the IMAO store, and blogging at IMAO for a cut of the ad revenue.

A nice trickle, but not exactly a 401(k).

Well, it appears that there's a new trickle in town - ReviewMe.com.

WHAT THEY DO FOR BLOGGERS

After you sign up, you are offered payment in exchange for your review of a product or service. Since ReviewMe.com is new, the first offer is for reviewing ReviewMe.com itself.

WHAT THEY DO FOR ADVERTISERS

Get blogs talking about you in a post - you know... the part of a blog that actually gets LOOKED at - instead of just placing highly ignorable ads in people's sidebars.

WHAT REVIEWME.COM CLAIMS

According to the site's FAQ, after you sign up, you will be offered between $20 and $200 to write a review of their advertisers' products or services, with the specific offer depending on how your blog is ranked according to some (undisclosed) algorithm of Alexa rank, Technorati rank, and estimated number of RSS feed subscriptions.

There is no content restriction for reviews.

The reviews do NOT have to be positive.

The reviews DO have to be at least 200 words.

You MUST disclose that you're being compensated for your review.

NO, REALLY, HOW IS RANK DETERMINED?

They don't say. However, Engtech hypothesizes that it's likely related to your BlogJuice score.

To crunch some numbers:

My BlogJuice score is 5.6, and I'm being offered $50

Engtech scored 3.9 and was offered $30

Paul Stamatiou scored 6.1 and was offered $125

CaydelÂ’s SEO Blog scored 0.4 and was offered $20

So Engtech is probably right.

IS THIS FOR REAL?

I don't know. Payouts are done between the 1st and 4th of each month, and - according to the site's blog - they launched on November 9th, so there's a lot of IOU's but no one's actually been paid yet. This doesn't necessarily make them a questionable operation, just "unknown at this point". Ask me again on December 5th.

Absolute worst case disaster scenario: the operation is ineptly run, goes out of business, you don't get paid for your reviews, they sell their servers without wiping the hard drives, some dirtbag gets your social security number, and your identity gets stolen.

More realistic worst case scenario: the operation is ineptly run, goes out of business, and you don't get paid for your reviews.

Likely scenario: the operation is competently run, you get paid for reviewing ReviewMe.com, but your blog doesn't have a target audience that attracts any other offers, so that's your only paid review.

Other likely scenario: the operation is competently run, you get paid for reviewing ReviewMe.com, but advertisers think your review is poorly written, unfair, or uninformative, so you receive no new offers.

Best case scenario: the operation is competently run, you get paid for reviewing ReviewMe.com, advertisers love your style, and you can make a living (or at least some extra money) doing paid reviews.

We'll just have to wait & see how it plays out.

By the way, I should mention here that the folks at ReviewMe.com have been polishing and shaping this concept since June of 2006 (and blogging sporadically about it), so it's quite unlikely that they're an utter fly-by-night operation.

SHOULD YOU SIGN UP?

Assuming that you consider the disaster scenario sufficiently improbable (as I do), you've really got nothing to lose other than the time it takes to sign up and write your first review. That's a judgment call you have to make based on how much you value your time and your personal level of risk aversion. But if you're interested, let me give you some food for thought:

Blogging for money WILL change you. Your perception of yourself and your blog will be altered. You'll start writing with your audience and potential advertisers in mind. You will not feel as free to speak your mind. You'll start down a path of self-censorship until you become a corporate shill.

Ok, that's the absolute worst case disaster scenario, but still, you WILL start to feel more like you're writing for an audience instead of for yourself. If your blog's main purpose is stress relief or casual interpersonal contact with other bloggers, you might want to turn away from mammon's temptation.

Otherwise, if you're reasonably confident that you can maintain your objectivity under pressure, go ahead & sign up.

WHY I SIGNED UP

Aside from the money, I *enjoy* doing objective analysis posts. King of the Blogs reviews, judging the IMAO T-shirt Babe contest, and my review of Matty O'Blackfive's "The Blog of War" - all posts that I *loved* writing. I'm *quite* certain of my ability to examine things from different angles and declare qualitative rankings.

So I *know* I can do this, and do it well, therefore I'm diving right in. Wish me luck.

ABOUT THAT SIGN UP PROCESS

You're going to need to do a little prep work before you sign up, because you'll be asked to both choose 6 descriptive tag words/phrases, AND write a short description of your blog. If you don't know which tag words to use, I recommend checking the most popular Technorati tags and using them - IF they honestly apply to your blog.

Or you can always create your blog's word cloud and see what your most frequently used words are.

For your blog description, try to describe your site in terms of "what's in it for the advertiser". I wrote mine as follows:

Blog aimed toward intelligent, educated adults, generally age 30-50. Politically right-leaning, featuring some partisan humor, but politics is only a minor part of the overall content. Can be counted on for an objective opinion on serious topics, with dashes of humor thrown in to keep it all readable.

Sample categories:

Blogging, Blogging Tips, Cool Toys, Funny on Purpose, Good Advice, Love Notes, Naughty Stuff, Ponderings

You might also consider mentioning your traffic stats, e.g. approximate monthly visits & page views.

A FINAL CAUTION FOR SIGN UP

Because you will be paid, ReviewMe.com will ask for you social security number. This isn't unusual. Pretty much any site that cuts you a check will request it. Just be sure that before you submit your info, you glance up at the address box in your browser and make sure the URL starts with "https" - the indication that your information will be sent encrypted.

UPDATE 11-20-06:

5 days later, my review was finally reviewed and approved by the ReviewMe.com site. They've determined that it met the requirements of both being longer than 200 words and mentioning that it was a paid review.

I've got mixed feelings, here.

I'm glad they put me in their "we owe you" category. This is one more step in showing that they're a legit operation. Of course, the actual payment part isn't scheduled until early December, so I'm curbing my enthusiasm until the check clears.

However, I'm disappointed that it took them 5 days to verify my review when I was given a 48-hour deadline to post it after accepting the assignment. I'd consider it an improvement in the quality of the site if they'd either speed that up OR find a way to give an estimate on how long they expect verification to take.

UPDATE 12-1-06:

Got paid today via Paypal. I no longer question ReviewMe.com's ability or willingness to pay.

However, DO note that their future ability to pay - as with any company - will depend on their ability to balance income against expenses over the long haul.

Time will tell on that aspect, but they're off to a good start.

Meanwhile, subject to my cautionary statements about blogging for money, feel free to sign up at ReviewMe.com.

HOW THEY ADVERTISE BLOGS

Their front page contains three screenshots of member blogs which rotate randomly each time the page is refreshed. I just happened to get mine while I was visiting:

(click to enlarge)

Note that it only includes an excerpt from the description of your blog that you submit at sign-up. Try to make your first couple sentences attractive/intriguing to potential advertisers so that they'll be inclined to check out the whole thing.

UPDATE 12-19-06:

Although I've completed and been paid for one review, I had serious doubts as to whether I'd ever be chosen by an advertiser to do another one. This blog is fairly eclectic, and I just couldn't imagine a product that would be in tune with it.

Turns out I was wrong.

I received an offer to do a review on December 18th, and the advertiser who asked was actually a good fit for what this blog is about.

So, I guess it's true that there's someone out there for everyone.

I was just surprised they found me.

Pleasantly surprised.

Posted by: Harvey at 09:43 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
Post contains 1530 words, total size 11 kb.

1 Wow. I'll be interested to hear how it all works out! Here's hoping you have fun with it, Harvey!

Posted by: Richmond at November 15, 2006 01:47 PM (e8QFP)

2 Have a great time Harvey. I know you'll enjoy doing it, and anyone with any taste at all will enjoy reading it. :-)

Posted by: Teresa at November 15, 2006 04:19 PM (5UR9t)

3 Hey, did you get paid for the review regarding the review?

Posted by: RightWingDuck at November 15, 2006 10:45 PM (i9zYT)

4 I thought of you when I first heard of this, thinking your style of writing would be perfect; descriptive, informative, humorous... And it is... this is the best review I've read. Kudos!

Posted by: pam at November 17, 2006 06:35 AM (l6NIn)

5 So, did your review ever get reviewed? My review said it had to be reviewed by their staff, but their deadline for reviewing my review passed and now it just says, "Overdue."

Posted by: Ogre at November 17, 2006 01:26 PM (oifEm)

6 Well mine got reviewed today.

Posted by: Ogre at November 20, 2006 02:31 PM (oifEm)

7 Pam - *blush* Thanks. But I would argue that Engtech probably had the *best* review from a technical perspective. Excellent nuts & bolts exploration of the product. Mine's more of "yeah it works, but will it work for *me*?" kind of a thing.

Posted by: Harvey at November 21, 2006 08:40 AM (L7a63)

8 RE: update... The reason it takes so long is because all the submissions are reviewed by hand. Add that to the fact that the amount of publishers joining the program and writing that first review *far* exceeded what was expected, I am not surprised that they are currently a bit short staffed with review readers... That said, I expect soon they will have more people hired on. I know that they have spoken before that they aim to have a quick turn-around time on review approvals...

Posted by: Caydel at November 22, 2006 11:39 AM (+H/yX)

9 As long as they're working on it, that's fine.

Posted by: Harvey at November 23, 2006 08:43 AM (L7a63)

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