Do you Write Paid Reviews?
As you probably know, paid reviews are all the rage within the blogosphere. For every blogger that is against writing these reviews, there are just as many who are attempting to cash in on them. How do you feel about paid reviews?
Personally, I have yet to give any of these programs a solid try. I signed up with PayPerPost a couple months back, but decided against moving forward because it would have forced me to take Google AdSense off this blog. With that being said, blogging is all about experimenting. So sometime in the future I may decide to compare my AdSense income against PayPerPost.
There are a lot of big time bloggers making big time money with ReviewMe. Of course, if you want to join them you are going to need a blog that draws a lot of traffic, and has good name recognition.
If I ever decide to offer paid reviews, I will more than likely do so on my own, without the help of a service such as ReviewMe. This will allow me to make the rules, while also keeping 100 percent of the revenue.
As long as paid reviews are disclosed to readers and honest in nature, I do not see anything wrong with them. They can be a lot of fun to write, and for many, a great way to generate some additional income via their blog.
October 14th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
I think paid reviews are a tough line to walk. You want to make it clear that you are being paid to do the review, but you also want people to actually read it. I find a lot of bloggers, in the interest of full disclosure and transparency, make it so clear the review was sponsored that they practically have a blinking neon sign saying “I got paid for this” which as a reader, makes me wary and annoyed. It seems like they’re desperate to let people know that they’re being impartial. Desperation is not entertaining or informative. If I didn’t think you were impartial, I wouldn’t be reading your blog in the first place.
I think if a blogger puts the post in a category called “sponsored reviews” or something similar, that’s enough transparency. Our readers aren’t stupid. We don’t have to hit them over the head with the sponsorship idea.
Also, while you want to make some money, you don’t want a blog that’s all paid reviews, all the time. A lot of bloggers have lost good readerships by doing paid reviews three times a week and then they wonder where everybody went. In blogging, like in all journalism, we need to be concerned about editorial angles and spin. If we keep our reviews on topic and relevant, and think about what our readers would want to know about whatever we’re reviewing, then I think we’ll be okay.
October 14th, 2007 at 11:05 pm
Paid reviews and other forms of paid posting isn’t a bad thing so long as it’s done in moderation. I’ve been doing the PayPerPost thing for a while and found that as long as we’re not stupid about it, readership will not be affected. The primary reason I’ve done the paid review thing, though, is just to recover the cost of hosting the site and maintaining the domain names.
Unless we’re serious about making money with our blog, we’ll never recover the costs involved with sitting down for an hour or two everyday. But there’s nothing wrong with recovering the $90 a year that we might spend to have it
October 15th, 2007 at 12:56 am
I do paid posts on my blog but I only accept posts that allows me to say that it is sponsored and I only do one or two a week. This works out to acceptable revenue to support my gadget addiction.
October 15th, 2007 at 11:12 am
Naomi - WOW! That was an extensive comment; thanks so much for your insight into this topic. You make some great points that I will definitely keep in mind as I move forward.
Jason, Jamaipanese - You two are thinking the same, and what you are saying makes a lot of sense. Paid posts are good in moderation. And of course, it is always nice to make some extra money from them…
October 15th, 2007 at 11:38 am
Would you have to stop running AdSense because of Google’s rules, or because of PPP’s rules?
October 15th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
Deborah - I believe I read that on PPP rules page; I’ll have to check for sure, but I’m 99% sure that you cant have AdSense on a sponsored post…
October 18th, 2007 at 2:19 am
Chris
I have a blog where I do PayPerPost - I just don’t include Adsense into that post. Easy…
October 18th, 2007 at 6:58 am
I do a lot of paid posts from networks such as PPP, Sponsored Reviews, Linkworth, etc. but I do it in moderation and then, I have 5 blogs, so it is easy to balance them.
October 18th, 2007 at 11:24 am
Jonk - Thanks for the input; that makes perfect sense to me!
Blogs Do Make Money - I agree. I think as long as you do not oversaturate with paid reviews they will work out just fine.