ReviewMe.com — Too Good for DeepJiveInterests!
by Tony Hung on November 9, 2006
Well, as soon as ReviewMe opened up this evening, I had planned to sign up and test it out. ReviewMe is another service, like PayPerPost, that allows advertisers to match up with bloggers so that they can get blogospheric coverage — at a price. However, the prospect of a PayPerPost competitor is intriguing — especially one that:
a) forces its bloggers to disclose
b) has an open marketplace for advertisers to pick up bloggers to post for their product
c) is potentially much more lucrative for bloggers
d) the bloggers can post what they like about the product
Apparently, it uses an engine to try and determine a blog’s “worth”, and assign the dollar amount that advertisers have to pay per post. Fascinating!
At any rate, I was stoked to try it out and let you all know what I thought about it (perhaps winning $25k in the process?).
Unfortunately, the temporary blog that I set up was denied because there wasn’t enough inbound links and traffic.
Fine – I decided to submit THIS blog — and lo and behold … Denied again!
Well, after doing a bit of digging, their algorithm, whatever it is, is baffling. How? Well, a simple comparison shows that there are a battery of other sites which have a worse technorati and alexa ranking as this humble site does.
Maybe they also take PageRank into account, because being pagerank purgatory, I’m still saddled with the scarlet “zero”.
At any rate, it seems like ReviewMe.com is too good for this site — if you’re interested in reviews on it, I’ll be posting up some choice ones that are newsworthy in the upcoming days.
Post Script: I wonder if LoudLaunch will have a similarly elitest attitude?
[UPDATE: Mike Arrington is good enough for ReviewMe (no surprise) -- please see his review.]
19 comments
I wrote some tips for bloggers who are interested in reviewme.com
by engtech on November 10, 2006 at 12:24 pm. #
That’s too bad. Are you going to complain or continue with them?
I registered and tried adding three sites (to see what rate they would have given me). First my PetLvr site .. but I would never review anything on this site. Then my 1800HART site .. I hope to review software in 2007 and I though, if I signed up maybe software opportunities might come, and I could be paid. In both they assigned me as $40 rate, gross. I then signed up my call HART crazy blog – and like you they rejected me. Yet, this is the one site I do all my crazy like it or dislike it posts .. and probably where I would want to try this, if I did .. So, I deleted the other two sites. I get rejected by better sites I think and don’t think I have anything to prove myself – or them – in a couple of months.
by HART (1-800-HART) on November 10, 2006 at 6:17 pm. #
Complain? I would never do that! :D
Actually, as someone else has mentioned — maybe the ranking has to do with the same algorithm that is on Text-Link-Ads and their crunching of one’s “blog juice”. For some reason I have “zero” people subscribing through bloglines, although this is clearly not the case from my own blog’s logs, and this skews that down somewhat.
Of course, I still have a PR of zero, and that may have something to do with that as well.
Anyway, it doesn’t seem like they have an institutionalized or formalized complaint process, and you’re right — I would never do an actual paid “review” on this site anyway.
But from a process point of view, I’m glad to hear I’m not the only one — makes one wonder, though, since the process of crunching “acceptability” is not transparent, whether or not they have a black list or something … ;)
Always great to have a fellow SOB’er drop by (and Canadian!)
Cheers
t @ dji
by Tony on November 10, 2006 at 7:08 pm. #
That’s a fact .. nice to see other Canucks around~ But, even if I don’t drop by that much – you already know I never delete my Bloglines, right? :) I eventually read everything. Most of the time. Anyway, you’ll see me again.
by HART (1-800-HART) on November 10, 2006 at 7:17 pm. #
Thanks Hart … and if not, there’s always open Mic Nite ;)
by Tony on November 10, 2006 at 10:37 pm. #
[...] Bloggers have a set “rate” that is calculated by an algorithm based on inbound links, traffic and so on (and is broken, in my opinion), and then from that list that is broken down by that “rate”, advertisers can select which bloggers they want a review — and inbound link from. And because the rates are set so high relative to PayPerPost, its an incentive for both high-ranking (and page ranking) bloggers to sign up, and ReviewMe to aggressively market it to high ranking bloggers, since it gets a huge cut of that post. [...]
by Deep Jive Interests » How Advertisers REALLY Benefit from the ReviewMe “Revolution” on November 11, 2006 at 11:11 am. #
[...] Here’s how it works, in a nutshell – you create an account, you submit your blog, and you get it approved. ReviewMe takes your Alexa rating, Technorati rating, estimates your subscribers, and mixes in some special sauce (probably PageRank, as Deep Jive Interests points out), and comes up with an out-of-5 rating for you, which determines how much you’re paid and they’re paid. (This is no doubt quite manipulatable, but as long as there’s a little human oversight, they’ll do alright.) yardley.ca is a 3-out-of-5 site, which means advertisers would have to pay ReviewMe $100 for a post here, of which I’d get $50. More popular blogs get more money – 4-star blogs (like TDavid’s) go for $250 / $125, and 5-star blogs go for $500 / $250. ReviewMe’s shelling out $25K to buy itself some reviews and seed the service – hence this post. Of course you’ve got the option to reject any offer – I don’t plan on writing about anything I don’t have any insight into. And you don’t have to write anything positive. [...]
by yardley.ca » Optimizing your ReviewMe purchase on November 11, 2006 at 1:31 pm. #
Well, we’d love to have you! We don’t pay for reviews (doesn’t seem ethical to us) but we have a database of bloggers willing to write stuff up. We let PR/marketing people decide who’s worth sending a product to and we hope to serve niche markets — smaller businesses interested in getting their word out to communities and not just in search engine rankings.
That said, I think savvy bloggers will sign up with both and see which works out for them best!
by Dawn on November 11, 2006 at 9:32 pm. #
Dawn — what do bloggers get in return for talking up a product? You can answer that question, or not … I’m signing up anyway to let everyone find out. ;)
Cheers
t @ dji.
by Tony on November 11, 2006 at 9:51 pm. #
[...] I read over at Deep Jive Interests that he tried to submit his blog to ReviewMe and was denied. I thought this was baffling because his blog should get in with no problem. Just for the hell of it, I submitted Deep Jive Interests as one of my blogs and it was accepted! [...]
by ReviewMe Teething Problems « John Chow dot Com on November 11, 2006 at 9:55 pm. #
Actually, it looks like on people who reside in the US can sign up — shucks, turfed again!
Dawn, if you’re willing to make an exception, let me know.
Cheers
t @ dji
by Tony on November 11, 2006 at 9:58 pm. #
Sorry .. but I can’t help myself to laugh at those last two posts :) Me Bad.
by HART (1-800-HART) on November 11, 2006 at 10:30 pm. #
Hart, can I get a “Hell Yeah” for well-intentioned companies giving Canadians the screw-over? (BlogBurst, I’m also looking at you)
t @ dji
by Tony on November 11, 2006 at 10:41 pm. #
I don’t fault them for it, going international is always harder. At least it was on the second page of the survey and not the 5th. :)
by engtech on November 12, 2006 at 2:50 am. #
I suppose that’s true — but it *felt* like the 5th man … it felt like the 5th … ;)
by Tony on November 12, 2006 at 8:14 am. #
[...] John Chow: Web Detective! (Or, How I Discovered ReviewMe’s Busted Algo Was to Blame) November 12th, 2006 at 11:35 am by Tony Many thanks to John “Dot com Mogul”, and fellow Canadian, Chow who took my whiny braying to heart, and decided to do some investigative blogging to sort out why ReviewMe was giving me the metaphorical middle finger. [...]
by Deep Jive Interests » John Chow: Web Detective! (Or, How I Discovered ReviewMe’s Busted Algo Was to Blame) on November 12, 2006 at 11:38 am. #
[...] It was brought to my attention yesterday, and perhaps yours, if you hiked your pants and waded into the comments of my posts section, particularly the one on ReviewMe.com As far as I can tell, it acts as a go-between companies and PR firms who want to create Buzz for products or services, by getting bloggers to blog about their products. Like ReviewMe.com it doesn’t put stipulations on what you write, so you’re welcome to write positive, negative, or neutral reviews. However, unlike companies such as ReviewMe or PayPerPost, bloggers get no financial compensation. What they do get is a chance to review and test products they otherwise wouldn’t (swag per post?) [...]
by Deep Jive Interests » Don’t Like Either ReviewMe.com or PayPerPost? Here’s an Alternative (That Your Grandma Would Probably Like) on November 12, 2006 at 3:17 pm. #
[...] ReviewMe: Too Good for Deep Jive Interests (a good blog that inexplicably was rejected by ReviewMe) [...]
by OK now how did that make you feel? at Sparkplug 9 >> bizhack on December 15, 2006 at 11:44 am. #
Title-1 Mozilla Firefox Blog
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by Bill McIntosh on February 6, 2007 at 12:41 am. #