Comments on: Why You SHOULD Buy Paid Reviews!

By: Comment Competition Winner-Make Money Online With Snowboardjohn

Comment Competition Winner-Make Money Online With Snowboardjohn — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 02:33:01 +0000

[…] came across my blog when someone submitted my article about “Why You SHOULD Buy Paid Reviews” to Stumble Upon. As you can see the comment Mihaela left didn’t neccessarily agree […]

By: Mihaela Lica

Mihaela Lica — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 08:23:36 +0000

This is probably one of the best “pro but do it the right way” concepts I’ve ever stumbled upon (well this is how I found it).

There’s a lot of debate in the blogosphere about whether paid reviews are ethical or not, but what people seem to forget is that everyone uses an advert of a kind to make a business known. All businesses pay for buzz, one way or another.

Now, about your other entry I couldn’t agree more: the icon is fun, but it’s not really professional to display it on a page, although it is honest… It’s a disclosure of sorts, you know…

I am experimenting pretty much with sponsored reviews. I think I have accounts with all possible services offerers and I post enough sponsored reviews on my blogger blog, just to know how much is a company willing to pay for a contextual link. Because, in the end, this is what most of them want: links.

They do not care about what the blogger has to say (well, they start caring as soon as you post a negative review - LOL), they just want the link juice.

Or what would they base their choices on PageRank?

You said it yourself: “educate yourself about nofollow” - but guess what: people are not bots. They follow.

My opinion is that the advertiser shouldn’t look about follow and nofollow, but about authority, experience and full critique. Only this way they can actually benefit from a review.

By: SBJ

SBJ — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 22:23:28 +0000

Cheers for stopping by Andy - yeah - I’m not a huge fan of Kubrik either, and if I get the time I’ll update the blog to something clean, but more functional.

By: Andy Beard

Andy Beard — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 20:57:29 +0000

I certainly don’t get things perfect, but the one thing I do try is give a little value on reviews, and I will refuse them if I don’t feel I can do that.

Some people thank that paid reviews shouldn’t give someone value, that somehow giving value is unethical. I feel if you can’t give value then you probably shouldn’t be writing the review.

A review can give value in all kinds of ways and still be highly critical. Sponsored Reviews requires that any criticism be constructive.
Ideally I always want to contact anyone who orders a review. With PPP this is almost a necessity because I want to claim all links are editorial, and the interface doesn’t allow for that.

Even something simple such as price - if something is good value, it is good to mention it.

If something is slightly higher priced than some might want to pay, and the site has a long form sales letter before mentioning the price, maybe it is better to give the sales letter a chance to do its job.

As to your blog, I am not a big fan of Kubrik - I think you could benefit with a sidebar on the single pages if only to give you space to encourage people to subscribe. Links you provide in the sidebar don’t have to be followed.