Review of ReviewMe
November 11, 2006 Posted by Tyler CruzThe following is a sponsored review for which I was paid for. Although I’m being paid, the review below is completely my honest view and not influenced by money:
Text-Link-Ads launched a new site on November 10th, 2006 aptly called ReviewMe.com. I had received an e-mail from them a few hours after they launched which stated that my blog was pre-approved and that I was invited to join. Normally I’d delete such an e-mail, but since I knew that they were the same company as Text-Link-Ads, I decided to give give them a shot.
ReviewMe is not your standard everyday ad network. They don’t offer CPC, CPM, or CPA. In fact, there aren’t actually any ads involved at all. Instead, ReviewMe pays blog publishers to write reviews of different products or services.
They rate and pay blogs based on rankings, which is based on Alexa, Technorati, and RSS subscribers and recalculated monthly.
Getting Started
Signing up is extremely easy, taking literally one or two minutes to fill out a small form. You are then automatically logged in and ready to go. The next step is to submit your blog. This is done by entering basic details of your blog such as Title, Description, RSS URL, Keywords, and of course, your URL. Your blog is then either automatically approved or declined. This is based on Alexa ranking, Technorati ranking, and RSS subscribers. Publishers may have up to 6 different blogs attached to their account.
If approved, you’re completely set up and ready to go. ReviewMe is very similar to Text-Link-Ads in that it uses a clean Web 2.0 style which utilizes fast and simple navigation. There is very little to actually read in terms of instructions on the site, but a FAQ section is there to help answer some of the questions you may have.
Reviewing
Reviewing is quite simple. ReviewMe’s system works by advertisers choosing which blogs they’d like to be reviewed by. This is most likely determined by what topic and niche your blog lies in. You get to decide if you’d like to review them or not, the choice is completely up to you and you’re not forced to review anything you don’t want to.
What’s even better, and perhaps surprising to many, is that reviews do not have to be favourable. As long as they are honest and truthful, that is all that matters.
However, there are a couple of minor rules. You must disclose that the post is a paid post in some way, whether it be designated by “Sponsored Post”, “Advertisement”, as long as it’s clear. I actually prefer this; before ReviewMe I sold private paid plugs on my blog and did this anyway! Secondly, reviews must be at least 200 words. That is not very long, only about 2-3 decent paragraphs. Not bad for an easy $20-$50!
You have 48 hours to complete the review. You are reminded by the actual amount of time left in your account manager so you do not forget.
Once your have finished your review and posted it on your blog, you simply return to ReviewMe and submit the URL of the post with the review and you’re done.
Payment Details
Publishers are paid 50% of revenue, which may sound high, but is pretty standard. Also, ReviewMe’s prices to advertisers are somewhat expensive so publishers are really getting paid quite well. My blog at the time of this writing is currently set at $60, which means $30 per review for me. Some blogs cost as much as $250 to advertisers, but the majority seem to fall in the $40-$60 range.
Price is automatically recalculated monthly, based on factors including theme, estimated traffic, link popularity, and estimated RSS subscribers. This is one potential flaw of ReviewMe, as some of this could not be accurate and/or taken advantage of.
Publishers are paid the first of every month via PayPal or check.
Additional Information
Publishers may publish an unlimited number of reviews.
Reviews do not necessarily have to be in English. ReviewMe asks for reviews to be written in the Publisher’s “normal” language. If their blog’s category is German, for example, advertisers will generally expect the language of the review to be German.
Summary
ReviewMe is brand new (only 24 hours old at the time of this writing) but it already has my vote.
The are only a couple questionable issues, such as the question of there being enough reviews to go around and made available to publishers. If publishers don’t see enough interesting things to review about, the system is basically pretty useless. There is also the question of how ReviewMe will handle quality. Why, for example, should Blogger Joe write a great, well-written, review, when Blogger Pete writes a poor one for the same price? These questions will be answered as ReviewMe ages.
While there are some uncertanties, I believe ReviewMe to be an awesome resource for both publishers and advertisers. Bloggers who have been having difficulty monetizing their blog in the past now have an answer: ReviewMe.
