Disclaimer: I’m being paid to write this review

It’s pretty easy to predict that ReviewMe is going to get a fair amount of marketing buzz over the next week or so — or at least until the twenty five grand they are ponying up to pay bloggers to review their site runs out. Doing the math that tells me that at an average of say $50 per review that $25,000 will buy them 500 reviews. That’s 500 links in Technorati in a very short amount of time. That’s not even counting the money they’ll make from the 50% split they keep for paid advertising or the free buzz they’ll get, especially if it fuels antagonists like PayPerPost has done recently.

TechCrunch Michael Arrington is already out saying TC doesn’t endorse it, adding:

we do note that ReviewMe has removed the most egregious aspects of the PayPerPost business model: no disclosure requirement, and a requirement to write a positive post.

Unlike PayPerPost, I signed up for ReviewMe. For those preparing to stone or label me some kind of sellout please consider that I have a long history of signing up for sites and services of all types including affiliate programs. Some things I sign up for work out, but most don’t. I love to get in and check out things early because that’s generally the most exciting time.

Why I signed up for ReviewMe
1. I can choose to accept or decline any review request, which means I’m not required to review websites/products/services that are outside my field of interest. Although I have pretty broad interests.
2. I’m able to offer my raw, honest feelings and opinion, none of that only paying for a positive review BS.
3. Because I like and agree with the ReviewMe disclosure policy which requires that all bloggers must disclose they are being paid for the review (emphasis mine):

At ReviewMe we are going to bypass this entire problem (opportunity?) and require that bloggers disclose posts that are paid reviews (in whatever way they are comfortable with and that is appropriate for their blog’s audience). These sort of disclosures are very common in all forms of media. Business as usual (for us, at least).

Any review I write that I’m being paid for will have the disclosure prominently located and be put in our seldom used adfeed product or services category, this way readers will always be able to tell which reviews we’re being paid to write. Regular readers are used to us identifying affiliate links already, so I don’t expect this will be a problem. Heck, there are ads on this site so in a sense I’m being paid to write anything seen/read here already.

4. Been there, done that. I’ve written reviews in the past on third party sites like epinions which paid significantly less (17 reviews on that site only generated a little more than $5 USD — slave reviewer wages!). I’ve also been paid to write articles and a monthly print magazine column (fortunately for good pay), so ReviewMe is very similar to other paid professional writing gigs. At least for this blog.
5. The amount being paid is fair and reasonable for both advertiser and reviewer. $250 USD for a 200+ word review with my cut being half that. The average number of words for all posts here is around 300 words, so ReviewMe’s minimum word count won’t be a problem. Similar to Text-Link-Ads ReviewMe uses their own algorithm based on Alexa rank (easily gamed, unfortunately), Technorati linkage, a guestimate of number of RSS subscribers, etc to determine how much to charge advertisers.

$250 and four stars was the highest I saw for advertisers, but I’m sure they’ll go higher for a five star reviewer. I saw it going as low as $30 (advertiser, $15 for blogger) for no star sites, so blog mileage, advertising and payment definitely varies.

How to sign up your blog
The company signup form requires the following standard fare fields: first and last name, email, mailing address, PayPal or check payment option. Signing up a site requires: blog name, RSS feed URL, a chosen single category, up to six tags to define the blog and a short description.

I noticed that Hmm didn’t show up for all the tags chosen, only the “Technology” top level category which perhaps stays that way until somebody looks at and verifies the site? Makes sense.

To my surprise, at least for MakeYouGoHmm, there wasn’t any sort of manual approval process — which could lead to splog city for them if they don’t have somebody manning the gate. Upon hitting submit it gave Hmm four stars and said ReviewMe was ready to accept reviews from advertisers. Bloggers can add up to 6 sites to publish reviews on. I clicked on the $25,000 banner and ended up choosing this site for the ReviewMe review offer that you are reading now.

I was given 48 hours to write this review. As it turned out, I didn’t need anywhere close to that generous amount of time, but I am curious how they “know” I’ve written the review? Do they spider the RSS feed and look for a link back to them in a new post and then count the number of words in the post to qualify or disqualify? I don’t see anywhere inside the ReviewMe blogger area where to tell them the post is there so my guess is this is how it works..

Update 9:34pm PST: Doh! After publishing I see there is a spot to copy the URL of the published review. They have two buttons “complete” and “done” which is a bit of a UI mystery. Should there just be a “submit” button? Whatever the case, when you are done fellow ReviewMe bloggers, don’t forget to enter in the review URL.

Depending on the site/service/product I’m reviewing I might need more than 48 hours to look things over. I’m not usually in a race to be the first to write about something. I would rather spend some time looking things over and thinking about how it might fit into our businesses or home life. Some things I can make a faster determination on like ReviewMe but others require more time. I hope that 48 hour figure is flexible. I can see advertisers expecting to see a review sooner rather than later, but I would look more favorably toward 7-10 days for review turnaround. That is, if the advertiser would like a more thorough review for their money. I sure would if I was paying for one. What do you think?

Site design / UI
The site is laid out cleanly and easy on the eyes as the screenshots show, they don’t clutter the pages. There is no third party advertising.

When do bloggers get paid?
Until I actually see money, I’m leery to recommend any money-oriented program, but this seems like a legitimate service. I’ll be coming back to this entry or updating from a future post once I see the money in our PayPal account. They promise to pay on the first of every month.

Good deal for advertisers?
It’s way too early to call if this will be of interest to advertisers on a wider scale but I know it will be useful if it’s targeted properly. Advertisers should read through the archives of blogs they are interested in and look for reviews written by the blogger to help with their buying decision. I like how ReviewMe offers the most recent blog posts, but if they could also provide live published review samples that would be very useful to prospective advertisers.

If any potential advertisers are reading this and wanting additional review samples, then conduct a Hmm search for review and you’ll find hundreds of reviews I’ve written on a wide variety of things over the last 3+ years.

Will there be enough advertising demand?
ReviewMe gets points for marketing creativity and the best launch promotion I’ve seen in awhile. The question is will there be more blogs than advertisers/companies wanting to buy paid reviews? Honest, useful reviews can be helpful to companies so they can make improvements so there is an additional benefit. ReviewMe just launched today and it’s very much a time will tell scenario.

ReviewMe improvements needed
1. they need a privacy policy and terms of service on the site post haste.
2. Add a way for bloggers to share/link to past reviews. It’s too bad that review quality isn’t a criteria in their algorithm. It’s not just about eyeballs if the review quality sucks. I realize that’s a totally subjective determining factor, but making advertisers do additional research might send them elsewhere instead when the price is the same between two blogs, there needs to be something to separate the two. Review quality.
3. a contact form as the only means of contact blows. Yes, they have an official blog but I’m not sure that will cut it either for a business. Heck, our company is essentially a one and a half (wo)man operation and we have a business telephone number. Get a live chat with manned hours or at least use Skype with a presence indicator. Money is involved here, customer support shouldn’t be an afterthought.

All in all, I think ReviewMe is off to a slightly better than average start. They’ve built it, now they need to focus on improving their service and generating advertiser interest. Grade: C+

Update 11/10/2006 9:45am PST: Received notification (pictured above) that this ReviewMe review was accepted. Took them about 9 hours to approve, I wonder if they are slammed?

Update 2/28/07 2:49pm PST: ReviewMe has added an affiliate program where if an advertiser buys a review (from anybody, not just your site) through your affiliate link you can earn an additional $25 USD. You’ll see any link to our ReviewMe listing in this post has been changed to this affiliate link and the ReviewMe Roy affiliate image link is shown to the right as well as an example.

Update July 4, 2008 10:12am PST: Earlier this year, MakeYouGoHmm.com stopped doing paid reviews.

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