Posted on Saturday 11th of November 2006 at 13:10 in Blogging

ReviewMe - getting paid for blogging?

It has recently come to my attention that certain services are available for "bloggers" and other webmasters to be paid for their writing on a pay-per-post basis. The notion is that you're provided with a product or service to review, you do so, submit it back to the service and get paid. A nice and simple solution for bloggers to make money? Well there is some variation on these services...

PayPerPost will take on any blogger - which is an advantage if you're in the "unproven" category. However, the downside to the "accepting everyone" model is that you need to write your posts based on the advertiser's requirements, which then need approving before any money changes hands. Which of course is fine if you like the product/service, but if you don't you may find yourself biting your lip for the sake of $5.

However, a new player has changed the tides a little... ReviewMe has brought a new model to the Pay-per-post world.

How it works
You sign up - providing sufficient information for paypal payments to get to you (name, address, email etc). Once done you're able to submit your blog to the ReviewMe system - where it uses an algorithm based on your Alexa traffic rankings, RSS subscribers and some other gubbins to check whether your site is worth including. Don't be too offended if it is rejected because no advertiser is going to pay for reviews that no one is going to read, are they?

Minimum requirements
Well, they aren't exactly broadcasting what you actually need to do to qualify but taking Seopher.com as an example - I've had around 21,000 unique visitors this November so far and I've been ranked as 2/5 - dictating that I'll be paid $30 per post. I get ahead of myself, why is ReviewMe any good?

Well, is it?
In an initially confusing step, upon acceptance your first task is to write a review of the ReviewMe site itself - which is less confusing when you think about the Pagerank implications of vetting your applicants and then ensuring they all provide inbound links (which is what this article is by the way, if you hadn't worked that out already). The process seems simple enough, you write the article, tell them where it is, get paid, wash, rinse, repeat. The advantages of ReviewMe are already clear - because they're vetting blogs you're not stuck in the PayPerPost realms of constriction. You are allowed to write negative reviews if you so wish - it doesn't affect whether you get paid or not, what matters is that the review is accurate and honest.

So what is there to lose?
From this vantage point I see no clear downsides - you aren't being forced to adhere to advertiser specified niceties, you HAVE to make mention on the blog that the post is a sponsored one (or words similar to those) and you're going to get paid for writing your two cents on the product or service. Although, quite how far this model will extend is questionable - reviewing online services is simple enough but what about physical products? A limited model it is then, but an attractive one for those whose website qualifies.

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