Sponsored Reviews


Today, I'm going to talk about a new paid to post company - Sponsored Reviews. There are NO affiliate links in the text below and this ISN'T a sponsored post.

If you're a brand new blogger it sometimes takes a while to build up your contextual ads clicks to a decent level of income each month. What most people tend to do is register with paid to post type advertising companies to earn a few dollars while their contextual ads increase in popularity. I'm sure most people have heard of companies like PayPerPost, Blogsvertise, Blogitive and, the newest kid on the block, ReviewMe. ReviewMe is the highest paying of these (I get a minimum of $30 per post I do for them), but they're the most selective about which blogs they'll accept. Advertisers like to use blog posts because it gives them 'organic' backlinks surrounded by relevant keywords - very important in the search engine optimisation stakes. Traffic isn't usually much of a consideration for the advertiser, so even if you have a low number of hits per day you can still enrol in one of these paid to post programs.

This morning I got an email invitation to join a program called Sponsored Reviews. I have read about them before on TechCrunch but for some reason, unbeknown to me, they've decided to target my mini-network of blogs by personal invitation. I signed up because it would be rude not to, wouldn't it? It seems very similar to ReviewMe, but I think the sign-up requirements are slightly less stringent. The concept is very similar - you register your blogs, which are automatically approved or rejected in about 20 seconds. If they are approved a price per review is recommended depending on your link popularity, Alexa ranking, Technorati ranking and Page Rank. They claim that you can earn up to $1000 for a single review if you've got a TechCrunchesque blog. The blogger gets 65% of the fee, which is significantly better than ReviewMe's 50% share. Sponsored Reviews pay by PayPal on a biweekly basis. Another advantage over ReviewMe is that blogger can go searching for advertisers in their niche and make an offer directly to them. This means you can target the most relevant advertisers for your blog if you so wish.

An important point to note is that they are still beta testing the program and they aren't sending offers out to bloggers just yet. I anticipate Sponsored Reviews will offer a serious, well-paying alternative to ReviewMe. I'm sure it'll prove worthwhile signing up because their advertiser base is sure to increase.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Tom - yep I signed up for these guys to, and have submitted to a couple of advertisers. Will be interesting to see how it pans out, the site seemed to flow nicely anyway - very professional.

Tom said...

Nice of you to drop by Rob - you're always welcome as you know. I've been keeping up to date with things over at your place but I've had comment-leavers block!