Review: My experience with ReviewMe(both sides)

Recently, I decided to create an account on ReviewMe to review both sides(blogger/advertiser).

What is ReviewMe

It's a way to bring both advertisers and bloggers together. The advertiser pay the blogger to review a site or product. With ReviewMe, the advertiser can't ask for a positive review. The review must be available for at least 30 days.

Like a Blogger, writing for the very first time

After a few days(no offers), I finally decided to make a trial run on a $5 open review. The advertiser paid $10 for it. I took my time and it was almost 500 words(minimum is 200 words). For the advertiser, it was a real deal because I would had normally asked much more than that.

Unfortunately, I can't change what I want to charge for a review. That option is not available to me but it is for top blogs. I can't even find my blog in the blog search box. Again, it's only available to top blogs. I taught that once I would had written my first review, my ranking/options would had been updated. It was not. I did contact them about this but nothing was done so far.

A review can be positive or negative and the advertiser take a chance. Unless the site/product is a scam(should be filtered in the first place), I would suggest to offer constructive criticizing. This way, they receive some feedback and can act accordingly later. They may had the same review offered to many bloggers to get a wide range of opinions. Also, make it possible to them to contact you directly.

Finding open campaigns is not very easy. I must edit my site, change category and browse campaigns. So, if you have a blog that touch many subject, you have to redo those steps.

Tip for bloggers: Keep the review passed the 30 days because the advertisers may searched for your older reviews.

Advertise This!

To test the open campaign, I ordered 10 review at $30 each($15 for the blogger). I paid more considering it was on the MIS specification. I can't chose who will do the review.

It took 15 tries(slots) to get my 10 reviews and it lasted 15 days. The reasons were either passed due or rejected.

4 were flagged by me:

• The first one was cut and paste word for word from my description about the review except for 1 paragraph
• The second because the last line mentioned my product but the rest of the review was not related to my product. Plus, it did not mentioned it was sponsored.
• The third one because it look like it was process into a software to generate a semi-coherent review. That person tried 3 times that I asked to banned that person, at least from this campaign and hopefully from others.
• The fourth one because the link to my review pointed to my own product and it was accepted. I never saw the review or found the blogger

ReviewMe decided to make my review available again thus the 15 tries. I'm willing to give a chance but to a point.

Now then, what did I get for my $30/review

Some are better than others(I emailed them) and some did a few cut and paste from my description and my sites with some variations. Overall, they stick to what I asked of them. For the blogger, it was $15 for a review. Even in Canada, it's a good pay for 1 hour($16.55CDN) of work if it did took that long for some of them.

A new feature was added to rate the blogger. This will come handy.

How was the traffic?

Only 3 visits so far with 2 from the same site.

Conclusion

For me, this was a complete failure and lost of money($300) for my product. My only chance is that one of them start to be popular(Google PR4+) and people find that review and want to know more about it.

At the moment, I'm trying a $250 review(1 specific blog). It's not going well(waiting for ReviewMe) but this will be another post. So, stay tune!

What was your experience with them(advertiser or blogger)? Do you leave a comment in sponsored reviews?