In this light, I don’t know why some people bash paid reviews and bloggers who do them. Would it be any different if we all posed in a billboard promoting google?

Bloggers are the web’s endorsers of services and products. We blog about our daily life, and we use (or may use) things in our daily lives. Is it so bad that we endorse these in our blogs?

This concept is the closest I’ll ever be to an image model. LOL. I like it, personally.

Although there are a lot of opps available, I can’t write a review for gambling sites, online pharmacy, plastic surgery or anything that I don’t believe in.

I think doing paid reviews is not bad as long as you don’t overdo it.

Besides that, how many reviewers are going to write their honest opinion about what they’re reviewing and (maybe) not get paid for having just spent a couple hours writing it?

Bloggers are desperately searching for ways to monetize their blogs. Google is squeezing us with the text-link-ads fiasco… but, again – it’s a case of being transparent about what you’re actually recommending and why. Some text links are bought and not revealed as ads. That’s gotta be wrong.

Hopefully a lot of new ideas in the works for monetization strategies… I’m getting to the point with my blog where I’d better start doing something about them as traffic is finally coming thick and heavy!

Good luck to everyone out there… Vern

Writing paid review gave me free knowledge of knowing what’s the best product out there in the market.

It gave me something new to look forward to everyday looking at the amount of money comming in.

Writing paid review gave me free knowledge of knowing what’s the best product out there in the market.

It gave me something new to look forward to everyday looking at the amount of money comming in.

John Chow get $200(his cut) per review and so he can take more time to give a good review about it.

Take the same review but for $5: would you get the same in- depth review? I don’t think so. But you will get a basic ideal of it.

My point is that advertisers should take a real look at the expected time it would take and pay for that. Factors like possible traffic will cost more too.

btw, it was a nice example

I do write occasionally about services or products, which I feel are relevant for my blog…and guess what, I was doing it all for free :)

So between doing these things for free, or getting paid for it…well, what do you guys think? Should be an obvious answer….in most cases, why give away free advertising?

BUT

I think it is better to have an AYE or NAYE poll here. Are you against, or for – paid reviews?

I didn’t think of it in terms of consulting, with public results. I guess my thing is if the reviewer getting paid actually gets the product or service to use to adequately test it, cool. Otherwise it may be misleading. And I agree that a complete blog of paid posts probably would not work after looking further into the subject.

I know for the company I work with, to have a product reviewed in our industry print magazine is good, but generally costs $$ – send the product and pay for the review and a typical magazine cover will cost about $10,000 – $20,000. We have actually had one product the magazine liked so much they did a cover feature without the cost. Did the readers think or feel any different? Sales volume results didn’t indicate it, so I would say probably not.

I did a trial run, and quickly realized that my readers didn’t particularly enjoy a “sponsored” post, as many of the posts say that they require a positive bias tone.

Therefore I have never done it, specifically because my readers are more important to me than making some extra money.

Maybe I will write a paid post one day, apparently it’s a great way to make money. But anyhow.

Enjoy your weekend everybody!

Paid reviews – bad idea. Money, yes, but your credibility takes a serious hit especially if you’re not up front about it. If you are up front about it, it may be better, but you’d better not be homer about it or people notice.

Have you done them? Do you still do them?
Yes I have done them, and I haven’t done them in a while. The reason I stopped is because of the whole paid links issue. I think I may do some in the future just until I start making a little bit more money through advertising.

Why?

Because I need money and I can make money this way. I am not going to be a hypocrite by denying this fact. To me it’s a paid job, which pays relatively good.

If google or for that matter few people have problem with it, so be it!

It’s not like I am doing some thing illegal or some thing to be ashamed of. But instead of calling these paid reviews, I would term them as advertorials. Which almost every type publication (newspapers, televisions, web sites) indulges in.