A review of ReviewMe?

Well let me start by getting this out of the way. I’m being paid to write this.

I’ve been debating writing about all the pay per post services that have been popping up over the last few weeks (perhaps longer, but it’s been buzzing the “blogosphere” for the last couple). The idea is interesting in that at times I’ve been asked if I was getting paid when I wrote an article about true type fonts or one of the other possibly “ads” type posts. And though I hadn’t… when trying to work out how to keep the bills paid, and also find an interesting subject to write about I’ve debated it. But the main issue was the fact I didn’t want to feel compelled to only post positive reviews, or have to hedge my review. Well after all the ruckus of payperpost (and it’s eventual shakeup) I was pleased to see a post on TechCrunch about a new site called ReviewMe:

ReviewMe, which is a PayPerPost-like service that pays bloggers to write about advertisers’ products, just launched moments ago. The company is backed by TechCrunch-sponsor Text-Link-Ads, which was recently acquired.

ReviewMe has a somewhat different model that PayPerPost. Where advertisers on PayPerPost set a single fee that is paid to all bloggers regardless of their size, ReviewMe uses an algorithm based on Alexa, Technorati and other statistics to determine the importance of a blog and charges a different fee for each blog based on the calculation. Blogger payments range from $30 – $1,000 per post.

Also, Bloggers must disclose that the review is a paid advertisement. They can do this in anyway they choose, ie “The following is a paid review:” “Paid Advertisement:” etc. This is another improvement over PayPerPost, which is heavily criticized because it does not require disclosure.

Finally, advertisers can purchase posts, but they cannot require that a post is positive. The blogger can choose to write their honest opinion without fear of not being paid. The only requirement is that the review must be a minimum of 200 words.

[Techcrunch » ReviewMe Launches: A Better PayPerPost]

Now the things that caught my attention was the fact that:

1. You HAVE to note that the review was a paid review.
2. You aren’t forced to write positive reviews.
3. And splogs can’t be created with just the idea of abusing this… and hope to get paid.

So I’m getting a small chunk on the $25,000 that they put on the table to prove the idea can work. And I looked over the layout. First impression: It works. They make sure to state the requirements and also suggest starting phrases so that you know that each post is paid. Plus they give a fairly reasonable deadline of 48 hours.

Now the negatives: With any review service, the reviewer has a tendency to write good reviews in the hopes of getting more swag to review. And as time goes on a blogger may start writing only good reviews in the hopes of getting better paying products to review. To counter that I just hope that ReviewMe will start downgrading such blogs, but it’d be hard for any such service to do that for 2 reasons:

1. What’s to say a blogger doesn’t just pick products that they already like to review?
2. What’s to say advertisers may release a piece of junk that stinks higher then a politicians excuses… and gets turned off and drops ReviewMe.

So those are going to be issues dealt with. But ReviewMe does have a pretty convincing why use us:

Why ReviewMe?

• PROBLEM Typically, large companies get their products/services reviewed by other Web sites/blogs benefitting from the traffic, viral nature of reviews, and valuable feedback, while new market players find it hard to get the word out about their products.
• SOLUTION ReviewMe’s marketplace of web authors will review your product or service on their Web site sending your site traffic, viral buzz, and invaluable feedback.

• PROBLEM Creating, prototyping, testing and bringing products to market are time consuming and expensive.
• SOLUTION Product demand and feedback can be gauged early on in the prototyping stage to help foster an environment where it is quicker, cheaper, and easier to create and test ideas.

• PROBLEM People ignore ads. In much the same way that banner blindness set in, many publishers have noticed their contextual ad click through rates and earnings drop over time.
• SOLUTION Because our reviews are not formatted to look like ads, publishers are able to deliver more attention and value than through advertising via any other marketing channel.

• PROBLEM Due to a wide scope of interest many ad systems show exceptionally generic ads that are irrelevant and annoying, hurting the publisher’s ability to monetize the attention asset they have built.
• SOLUTION Our writers review what they find interesting. If the writer finds something interesting the odds are it is going to be well in tune with what readers of that channel like.

• PROBLEM Connecting with many bloggers who would be interested in talking about or reviewing your products and services could take a long time. Worse yet, even requesting a review from some of the wrong bloggers might inspire them to call you a spammer of some sort.
• SOLUTION By letting the authors choose you they are more inclined to give a deep, receptive, and insightful review. The ReviewMe network means that you are not stuck trying to track down 100 different bloggers.

Tags: Interesting, Internet, Paid Post