8 Comments

ReviewMe.com Launches With A Model That Makes Sense

Nov 9, 2006
by

Let’s get this straight right now. I could win $25k for writing this review (so can you if you sign up on their site and get accepted). (I misunderstood, they aren’t giving one person $25k, they’re paying out up to $25k to bloggers for reviews of their system. So like $30 at a time. This makes more sense anyway.)

Note: I was going to write this review anyway, but I wanted to be clear with you that by default I’m participating in their contest.

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So Reviewme.com launched tonight, from my friend Patrick Gavin from Textlinkads.com. I stopped by the TLA booth at ad-tech earlier this week and they were very excited about this system… now I see why. Techcrunch, ofcourse, already got the ball rolling with their review here.

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.

I’m not sure how important the Alexa and Technorati parts are to this. My blog here at ReveNews got accepted and came out to $60 for a review. Then I went over and looked at the technology tag and saw that the #1 ranked site was charging $250, called Blogskins.com, which is a site about blog design. In the business tag, the first site http://www.stuntdubl.com/, was charging $250 as well. Yeah, it’s early and launch was literally hours ago… so let’s take another look in a month or so, that’s fair.

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.

Rock solid. Perfect.

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.

Again, perfecto. The only problem with Reviewme.com in my opinion is that I didn’t think of it first. Assuming they can keep the quality of blogs high, and keep the scammers out, Reviewme should do well and be fair to everyone. I can really see this as a good alternative for small businesses of getting press and buzz. For a small fee, you could get your product reviewed on the right blog which could do wonders for your business.

To me, that’s value, without the deception, and that equals a good business model and a strong future brand in my book.

In an email exchange, a company spokesperson said “We are planning on burying PayPerPost.”

Agreed.

This was not a paid advertisment. Like I said, I was going to write this review regardless.

About Jim Kukral

You can find Jim on Twitter: @JimKukral.

Filed under: Online Publishing
  • http://bravenewme.com/blog Magnus

    "This was not a paid advertisment. Like I said, I was going to write this review regardless."

    well, probably, but since you already got paid that statement isn't worth much.

    Sure, this is great news for advertisers and mechants. But who knows if the "algorithm" will weigh in previous positive/negative reviews made by a site and adjust the commision, hence making bloggers make more positive comments?. With a journo background I am generally sceptic about these kind of deals from a consumer stand-point. It is virtually impossible not to get affected by being paid, so even if disclosure have been made, it's still tricky business. I also believe that a blog that starts to write too many of these paid for reviews, will soon loose credibility. At least among it's discerning readers.

  • http://www.revenews.com Jim Kukral

    Right, Magnus. But with the disclosure then, it's on the reader. If they see too many ads/reviews, then they decide if the value of the content outweighs the ads, etc…

    Without disclosure, the reader is the one who suffers. Actually, I think reviewme is better for the bloggers. I think you can/will make a lot of money on this from the blogger end.

  • http://www.affgoo.com Durk Price

    Great blog Jim. I just blogged in the last couple of days on PayPerPost and now I'm going to check out Reviewme. I remember scanning the TechCrunch posting but was obviously in information overload and missed the importance. Thanks for pointing it out- looks like a great "disclosure" model too.

  • http://www.bravenewme.com/blog Magnus

    I'm not to argue the value for advertisers. I've actually already brought it up on the office, as a possible way of getting quality inbound links for a seemingly low fee, assuming the blogs have a sound page rank. I'll definitely hang on to this link to see how it evolves.

  • http://www.computers.net Bob Caswell

    What I don't get is the all or nothing / black and white approach to this new idea. For example, one big complaint is that if most of your reviews are negative, then advertisers will no longer be interested in your site. This could be true but is assuming too much.

    First of all, are advertisers going to read through your entire archives to figure out what is positive and what is negative? And it's as if everyone who signs up with ReviewMe will stop what they were previously doing and only write reviews for ReviewMe. For my part, I post something nearly every day, sometimes multiple times a day. If a paid review with full disclosure is here or there, how would an advertiser know where to look without reading half my blog?

    I don't know if the business plan will work out, but I don't think it's fundamentally flawed. I think blogger and advertiser behavior is hard to define. The results will tell us how it works, not our over-simplified hypotheticals.

    I've reviewed ReviewMe here and think it's worth a shot:

    http://www.computers.net/2006/11/paid_blogging_r….

  • http://www.getthemblogging.com Dawn

    It looks like ReviewMe.com beat us to the punch. Less advertisement and more review, we just ask bloggers to register for our database and then PR people pay for the privilege of using said database to find blog reviewers. There's no pay for play in our service. For bloggers who are worried "selling out", Get Them Blogging might feel more comfortable. Then again, some bloggers might want to register for both and see how it all plays out. (We think ReviewMe.com looks pretty good!)

  • http://engtech.wordpress.com engtech

    I wrote my thoughts (and a short comparison) about the reviewme.com algorithm here: http://engtech.wordpress.com/2006/11/10/reviewmec…

    One thing of note, it looks like a few people were hit by a bug on opening day where there Technorati rating is listed as N/A so they have a lower valuation than they "deserve".

  • http://bloggingpoet.squarespace.com Billy Blogging Poet

    I tried ReviewMe.com and didn't get paid. http://bloggingpoet.squarespace.com/bloggingpoetc…