My Experience with ReviewMe
ReviewMe is an online advertising service that pays bloggers to write about advertiser products. Although an advertiser pays for a blog post, there is no guarantee that the review will be positive. I can verify this from experience.
The first review that a ReviewMe blogger wrote for one of my sites was negative, to put it lightly. I was told by ReviewMe support that it had been “canceled either by the blogger or because the offer was not completed within the 48 hour time limit.” However, I discovered later that the review had in fact been published on another site, which looked to have been scraped in via RSS feed. The best way I can think of to describe the post would be to form a hybrid word from these: diatribe, invective, jeremiad, tirade, vituperation. And after reading my rejected ReviewMe review, I discovered all sorts of interesting things about my web site that I hadn’t known. The reviewer pointed out a few errors on the site for which I honestly was grateful to learn and correct. Other statements were, if not inaccurate, certainly in bad taste. This of course, seemed a reflection on the maturity level of the individual blogger rather than ReviewMe. I do question ReviewMe’s screening tactics because I have a friend whose blog was rejected by ReviewMe, even though in my opinion, her blog is of higher quality than many of the reviewer blogs I saw listed in ReviewMe. Perhaps that will change over time, I thought. The company is new, after all.
Call me what you want for giving them another try, but I did. I asked a second blogger to review my site. I really liked her site and it seemed to have good organic search standing. This second review was really not that exciting but it did do a good job of explaining my product/site and its purpose. I was happy to see a big fat organic link to my site in the article. Or was it an organic link to my site? To my dismay, the reviewed URI was canonically a different URI than the one I listed in my account and certainly for SEO purposes was incorrect. Despite the fact that a visitor technically landed on my site, it was not the page I wanted them to land on or rather, that I had paid for them to land on. Moreover, the URI was not the URI I had listed in my account for review. When I politely asked that the link be corrected, I was told that RevewMe “cannot make changes to the blogger’s review.” I followed up and asked ReviewMe to please credit me for the error. It has been a week after my last follow up email and I have not heard back from them. I may still decide to cancel the transaction with my credit card company, but I don’t plan to at this point.
So, then I thought, why don’t I just contact the blogger directly and explain my situation and ask that the link be corrected? It would ony take a few seconds for anyone with even mild traces of HTML resident in their bloodstream to fix the link. The blogger would be glad to help out an advertiser, wouldn’t she? Unbelievably, there was no method of contact available at the blog who published this wonderful review.
I don’t mind that my review is disclosed as a paid review. In fact, I like that aspect of ReviewMe. But, the blogger who reviewed my product placed the words “Sponsored Review” in the title and URI. Kind of blatant and could have been done with a bit more modesty.
Some ReviewMe bloggers are using the Google “nofollow” attribute in their review links so that “they’re not buying my link juice along with their review” as this blogger states (I don’t suppose I will use the nofollow attribute on my link to him).
Famed TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington states sums up his review of this better PayPerPost service in his The PayPerPost Virus Spreads post:
While we applaud the fact that ReviewMe requires disclosure and prohibits advertisers from requiring a positive post, we still think the very act of paying bloggers to write about a product is a very bad idea. Frankly, we’re not happy that one of our sponsors has launched this type of service, and we’ve notified them that we will not allow promotion of ReviewMe through TechCrunch.
Out of curiosity, I spent some time looking around ReviewMe.com for an “About Us” page. It ain’t there at the time of this writing. I think that it might serve ReviewMe’s interest to post this type of information, especially since they have their WHOIS record iprivately registered.
I really wanted ReviewMe to work and perhaps it will one day. Right now, it’s not. I hope to hear back from ReviewMe support with a solution to the problems I’ve encountered. I understand that Patrick Gavin of TextLinkAds is behind ReviewMe. I have listened to interviews Patrick’s podcast interviews and have followed his work with TextLinkAds since it’s inception years ago. I certainly respect the man and hope the best for him.
If you have had an experience with ReviewMe, positive/negative/neutral, please comment.
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