Somnia Memorias

About Paid Reviews On This Blog

May 30th, 2008

Nischal Shetty’s comments on my recent paid-to-review post inspired me to create this post.

Before I started joining those paid-to-review companies; I created my own personal “Terms and Conditions”. Why? So I can write a review that is relevant with my blog and interesting enough to be written here. This is a personal blog, and I only write about things that caught my interest and stuff that is good enough to share with everyone.

So yeah, this is my personal “Terms and Conditions”:

I will not pick ads that are beyond my ability to review.

Think about reviewing some health ad that provides some services for major brain cancer surgery, or some medications for Crohn’s Disease. Or ads like cheap airplane tickets, credit cards, business loans, SEO e-book and stuff. I never had any experience with similar products, I have no reliable sources, I don’t have enough accurate information, I don’t know how to contact the customer support and the most horrible part is the website itself is not even user-friendly and provides enough data. To make it worse, the company’s location is not even in the same continent with my country!

To advertise products like these, products that I don’t even understand… it doesn’t seem right for me. It’s just so irresponsible to give positive reviews (I’m aware that some advertisers want us bloggers to give them positive comments, not the brutal truth for their own feedback) while I myself didn’t quite sure about the products I reviewed. Think about it. Recommending something for your blog readers about things you don’t understand, things that didn’t drive you to at least make a little research about the ads. I’m talking about responsibility and honesty here.

I only pick ad that’s relevant with my interests.

If I’m not interested with the ads, I won’t sweat myself to create a review about it. Why? It’s not fun. Since pay-to-review companies give the bloggers freedom to choose their own ads -to-review (and also whether you want to write a review or not is not quite a big deal for them), it is not my duty to post every type of paid reviews. I write paid reviews just because I LIKE it and I WANT to do it, not because I HAVE to do it. That’s why I love their slogan, “Review all the things you like, and get paid!”

I love visiting lots of sites, I love browsing through online shops and catalogs, clicking interesting ads (OMG the spywares!), I even love to buy things from the internet! If I found some ads that is relevant enough with my interests and, well, interesting enough to be mentioned on my blog, of course I’ll place a bid ASAP and wait patiently.. hoping that the advertiser will approve my bid

Maybe a lot of people think that I’m too picky about the ads. But don’t forget, the paid-to-review companies and advertisers are very selective too. We have to wait for a long time until our blog/review/bid approved by them. Sometimes they rejected our treasure a.k.a blog, our brain (for calculating the profit) a.k.a bid and our hardwork a.k.a reviews (with their ads already posted on our blog :(). I know the process is not complicated, but actually it’s not that “easy” to earn money through paid reviews program. There are many simple methods to earn money, but I don’t think that money is that easy to get.

About that famous “Disclosure”, it’ll be much better for me to write a review if the advertisers asked me to mention that my post is a paid review, or at least it won’t hurt them if I put some “this-is-a-paid-review” words. Why? Well, I also create reviews about some websites and products for free, simply because I like their site/products. And I don’t want to give any impressions to anyone who read this blog that every posts and reviews I made are all paid-to-review posts.

I know I may sound too idealist for some people. Or maybe naive. Maybe you’ll ask: why bother if you can write reviews for all the ads? Well, this is a personal blog, a place where I can express my opinions, hobbies and interests freely, and I want this blog to remain this way. I am not planning to change this blog into a full-time commercial blog. I don’t want to lie and then become an irresponsible person just to post some paid reviews about irrelevant and uninteresting ads. I don’t want to recommend any products/sites that I am not familiar with.

And next, about Pagerank. I don’t give much attention to it. Why? Because I don’t understand the math and I don’t know how it works and like hell I know the exact way to increase it. Some people said that a blog must have a high Pagerank in order to be approved by the paid-to-review companies and Pagerank also increases the review payment. But my site’s already approved by many paid-to-review companies and AFAIK, ads with high prices are ads like credit card, SEO stuff, insurance, loans, etc. Well, I’m not really into that stuff. Anyway, I guess I must ask Uncle Google about this Pagerank thing.

For me, paid-to-review program itself isn’t the real problem. The idea about this business isn’t bad, either. We all try to make some money with our own unique ways here. And paid reviews program is one great opportunity worth to try. The main problem is the attitude of some irresponsible and dishonest bloggers who’s trying to create paid reviews even though they know that some of the ads they’re going to review are like untouchable alien brands from a galaxy million miles away.

Well yes, I’ve seen some blogs with nice, high quality paid reviews and relevant ads. I’m sure if you have enough enthusiasm with the product, you will write your own natural opinion about it. I bet the advertiser will like it and give you money for your review. I’d love to see blogs with relevant and good paid reviews because I think they deserve some dollars for creating such a good posts. I hope I can see more blogs like this. Well, isn’t it weird if you stumbled upon a blog that mainly talks about education, but somehow on the same page you also found poorly-written reviews about casino or poker and some brand new software about architectural design? No wonder many people commented on that particular post and saying things like “By reading this post, I assumed this is a paid review. I think that you are not really interested with the product/site itself, why are you saying XXXX about XYZ? I created similar products before and I’m sure that XXXX should be YYYY” or “OMG puh-lease, diz is a paid review, isn’t it? Hell yeah it is! *lulz* I bet u dunno anythin’ about ur own post. Har har har!”

Anyway, my post here is just my opinion about paid reviews, because recently I’ve seen a lot of people are complaining about this program. I really hope that people can notice the difference between the good quality paid reviews blog with the low quality one before they judge that all blogs with paid reviews are just the same plain business blog, money-oriented people, liars, OMGYEAHMUNNYROXORZZ!, irresponsible, yadda yadda. I’m sure that blog with low quality paid reviews won’t get much profit and the readers will easily get bored, thinking that “Oh. This is just another ‘full time’ paid reviews blog”. On the other hand, I believe that by creating good paid reviews (and of course by selecting nice and interesting ads) won’t drive the blog readers away. In turn, they might be giving you some thanks for reviewing cool products/sites. Plus, you get money from the advertiser: D

I know maybe people will think that as a newbie in this paid reviews business, I’m such a Ms. Know-It-All-About-Paid-Reviews. But that’s fine with me. This is just my 2 cents. I’m sure other people have their own thoughts about this program, and I respect their opinions. I also realized that many people are trying to make much profit from this paid-to-review program. I’m sure they have their own reasons; I know their objectives are different from mine, and once again, I respected them.

Wow. I guess I’ve talked too much. And please excuse my grammar

Well, I hope this entry didn’t scare the advertisers away and the paid-to-review companies didn’t banned my account for this post

Entry Filed under: Daily