Apologies for the low posting this week, I’ve been too sick to write anything. 
When Florida-based PayPerPost launched with the idea of advertisers being able to pay bloggers to write positive things about them without giving any disclosures, it managed to stir a lot of controversy in the blogosphere. Now, ReviewMe (disclosure: a service owned by TextLinkAds, a rev2 sponsor) plans to bring this idea to a new light, where bloggers don’t have to write positively and providing disclosures are encouraged.
Unlike PayPerPost, ReviewMe has a different payment structure. Upon signing up, bloggers are evaluated through their Technorati links, Alexa rank, and estimated RSS readership, and given a a price ranging from $20 to $200 — that’s how many advertisers will pay to get their site reviewed. To start things off, they’re giving $25,000 to bloggers which in itself should create a buzz.
ReviewMe is an interesting idea, and certainly one which is more moral and ethical than what we’ve seen in the past. In such a system, I really think transparency is the key and ReviewMe lives up to it: its two small ‘modifications’ from PayPerPost’s existing de facto are indeed ones which make it more accepted by many.
On a personal note, I’m a pre-approved blogger at ReviewMe and was given a chance to try it out before its launch. I did signup and and to test it out, I’m getting paid to write this review. However, do note that I’m a strong believer in blogging ethics and one of the things these ethics won’t allow me to do is actively take part in such services. Maybe someday, co-incidentally if a service I was going to write about here anyway offers to pay me, I might accept it – providing a full disclosure in that post, just like this one – but that probably won’t ever happen and till then, this is the last post I’ll be writing and getting paid for through ReviewMe.
[tags]ReviewMe, PayPerPost, Blogging[/tags]
