I was totally against this paid to review thing, but has since changed mind and now a pro-paid-reviewer.

I’m a full time website content writer in a small company and I get very little time for blogging, forget about any promotion.

Once I reviewed several magazines that I have never heard about, which went into a great website that offers magazine subscriptions.

Similarly, I have also reviewed some software I have never used. See, my reviews appear in credible, professional websites with thousands of customers.

I know people buy products because of my review.

The money I get for writing those 500+ word reviews are too cheap to tell.

On the other hand, I get paid 5-20 dollars for a 50-100 word paid review post.

I think it does me at least better, in the financial front.

I’ve put aside the concept of credibility, a long time back. No website in the internet is that credible.

Whenever I write a paid review, I always make sure I include a line – This post is brought to you by – businessname.com

I think that line does better than the thousands of affiliate websites that pile up fake testimonials, reviews and pass them as ‘real’ thing.

Take it or not, it is the thing. But, bloggers are under scrutiny, because you know who the person is behind the blog.

And people tell at your face you can’t accept payment for writing something in your blog, but will head straight to the ‘professional review’ websites.

now, I don’t care.

I think that getting paid to review someone else’s blog is not an humane thing to do. We’re all bloggers, we should help each other.

-Mike

It would be interesting if the policy was that every reviewer is not only required to indicate that it’s a paid review, but also to disclose how much they were paid to write that particular review. I think it would be interesting to see the “he’s so cheap that he would write a review for just $2″ or “this product must be good that he’s willing to write a review for it for $2… almost free!” effects.

If their is no disclaimer about being paid for the review, I would have to build up trust of this blogger over time.

I’ve read many reviews on a variety of blogs, and what i notice is that the type and style of reviews varies wildly. John Chow does regular reviews on his blog, and he tells it like it is, and the advertiser is not going to lose in any way shape or form. Why? Because he brings in traffic for an advertiser, whether the review is positive or negative, it will fulfill its intention.

Some folks will gloss a product or company, while others will be more objective. Some will write one 1 a month, while others will write 20. Some will disclose, while others won’t, etc

Paid reviews vary alot by blog and blogger.

I hope to do it once I reach around 200,000 hits per month. It looks like I’ll be pushing to monetize it by late November or early December after I just reach the same amount of traffic as last month and its only the 9th of Nov!

Cheers,
Carlo

Even if a blogger is very creative in how they write the paid review, I guarantee they won’t be saying many bad things about it. As the old saying goes, you never bite the hand that feeds you.

Something is going on again in Googleplex?

I was cheking my Pagerank and all the datacenter was down!!!
Some are off… and others display PR N/A

Anyone knows whats going on?
I’m newbie here :)

For example, I’ve been tuned in to John Chow’s blog for the past couple of months and in the paid reviews I’ve read by him I haven’t seen him pulling any punches on the good, the bad, or the ugly of each site/product he reviews.

I liken it to a magazine or newspaper that has one of those ads that look like a featured article but are clearly labeled “Advertisement” at the top. Sometimes they’re interesting, other times they’re nothing but PR fluff. Either way, they’re paying the bills and as long as they are clearly labeled for what they are, it is up to the reader to read the piece or not.

The big difference between the two is instead of a PR person from the company the review (ad) is for doing the generic writing, the writing is being done by one of the blog’s major contributors and will tailor the review with the blog’s voice that the readership has come to know and expect.