In an earlier post I wrote about my experience with PayPerPost, a sponsored posts program. At the end of that post I recommended Text Links Ads (TLA), an online link advertising system. Today I received an email from TLA, announcing their new blog advertising system, Reviewme.com.
We have just launched a brand new blog advertising system called Reviewme.com. Your blog has been pre approved into the publisher system! Please note that unlike TLA, Reviewme works on any blog including: Typepad, Blogger, etc because no ad code is needed (if your site is not a blog my apologies for this message as this network is for blogs only).
Please visit Reviewme.com and also check out our promotion where we are giving out $25,000.00 for bloggers who review Reviewme!
So I went over to ReviewMe and easily signed up. Since this blog was preapproved, I was automatically accepted into the system.
Thanks for signing up to be a ReviewMe member! Your membership allows you purchase reviews, as well as submit blogs for publishing. You also will receive special discounts and breaking news on issue[sic] pertinent to your membership.
Then I went back to accept the the review of ReviewMe for which I am supposed to be paid $30!
You have accepted an offer to review ReviewMe. You have until 11/12/2006 to complete your review.
I am disclosing that this post is a paid review and that any paid-for-review that I accept will be placed in the sponsored post category, as is this post.
Do you have to do a “puff piece” for an advertiser to pay you? Here’s what ReviewMe says in their FAQ:
We do not allow advertisers to require a positive review. The vast majority of reviews are measuredly positive, although many do contain constructive criticism. We view this as a bonus: how else can you quickly and cheaply get feedback on a product or service from influencers?
From the other side of the fence, if you are a new player, you can pay an established web author (BinaryWolf Blog dates back to 2004), to review your product or service.
Here’s the part where I disagree with ReviewMe. They claim that many publishers have noticed their contextual ad click through rates and earnings drop over time, because, people ignore ads. In of itself, that statement may be true, especially since they qualified their claim by using the term, “many”. However as someone who has been in the game for some time, that is not the case for me. They use that claim to setup their proposition that 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. Well, that remains to be seen.