ReviewMe.com Launched, Should I Use It?

If you're a blogger and you're looking to make a bit of extra money, there's a new site out there called ReviewMe that you'll want to check out. Here's what the site says about itself:

Get paid to review services and Web sites that are of interest to your readers, and reap the benefits of conversation with advertisers.

I know, kinda vague. Basically, you submit your site and advertisers ask you to write posts about them (along with a stated fee for the post.) The post can be positive or negative (so at least in theory it's an honest review), and once you write it, you submit the URL and get paid. Not, bad huh?

Personally, though, I'm not sure how much I'll use this. It is good money (for instance, I get $125 just for writing this post about the service. Yes, even this is a paid for post.) And since I give all my revenues to charity, that's $125 to help out some needy people. But still, it's kind of cheesy -- being paid to write reviews. It seems like it's a built in conflict of interest. Then again, I get paid whether it's a positive or negative review, so what's the problem?

So I'm asking you readers -- what do you think of the idea? Should I use it? Why or why not?

Comments

[Nick]

It is to a blogger's benefit to give positive reviews in order to encourage repeat business and new customers, so I don't believe for a bit that such reviews can be unbiased. As soon as you do a negative review, advertisers will see it and pass you buy for someone who always gives positive reviews. If bloggers give enough negative reviews, ReviewMe won't be around in a few months because advertisers will take their money elsewhere.

I admire greatly the fact that your revenue goes to charity, but at the same time I wouldn't want to see FMF, MBN, or any of my favorite personal finance blogs become tainted with biased paid reviews.

[Blaine Moore (First Time Homeowner)]

It wouldn't really bother me if you did or didn't. I don't see anything inherantly wrong with paid reviews, especially if they are disclosed as such. It shouldn't be something that takes over a site, but now and again does not hurt as long as the reviews are at least relevant to the website.

My plan for Run to Win is to make the site available, and if somebody asks me to write a review that I would otherwise have written anyway (assuming that I knew about the product and the thought would have occurred to me) then I will write it. If I really do not like a product then I might tend to reject the review.

Same thing with Pay Per Post. They had some opportunities on there that I wrote about because I had something that I could say. Most of the recent ones that I see there, though, are either completely unrelated to my site, underhanded in some way (and automatically disqualified from my consideration), or I just don't know enough about the product/site/service and they aren't offering enough for me to look into it. One site that I reviewed was full of (constructive) criticism for the site, but the owner read the review and then made changes based on what I wrote. How is that bad?

[Adam]

I really don't see anything wrong with it. People need to be skeptical of everything online. If they worry about unbiased reviews, well, that's they're problem. Especially considering minus some black-and-white issues, an unbiased review to one person will look like a biased review to another.