I need to ask you your opinion on something. How do you feel about paid blog reviews for products and services? We review stuff all the time here on RIMarkable, however, until now, we are being paid for this very review of ReviewMe, we have never accepted payment for them.
Truth be told I am kind of on the fence as to if we should use ReviewMe. On one hand, it is just another form of advertising. On the other, it is about as obtrusive as advertising can get… Content, in essence, becomes the ad.
Review Me is a new blog advertising service from the creator of Text-Link-Ads. Advertisers can pay to have their product or service reviewed by bloggers accepted by Review Me as publishers. The one thing that has me considering monetizing RIMarkable with ReviewMe is that advertisers cannot require a positive review.
We do not allow advertisers to require a positive review. The vast majority of reviews are measuredly positive, although many do contain constructive criticism. We view this as a bonus: how else can you quickly and cheaply get feedback on a product or service from influencers?
Additionally, all reviews must clearly state that they are sponsored “in some fashion“. In some fashion is a bit ambiguous so if we decided to continue using ReviewMe, a decision that will be greatly influenced by your comments, we will clearly state Sponsored Post in bold at the beginning and at the end of each post. We may even create a category specifically for paid posts.
I guess what has be a bit leery of using ReviewMe to monetize RIMarkable is that I am concerned that I could lose some credibility with readers. I have been known to argue unpopular points of view, spread rumors substantiated by nothing more than opinion, and make some of the most outrageous predictions out BlackBerrys and Research in Motion that you could imagine, however, no one has ever accused me of doing so purely for profit.
ReviewMe’s policy of not allowing advertisers to require positive reviews goes a long to make sure that publishers can maintain their integrity with readers. I, however, want to here your honest opinions of how you will view what you read here on RIMarkable going forward if you know that some of the content is sponsored.
IMHO sponsored reviews try to be a little partial in anyway and may affect your credibility, however it is understable that you need some kind of income to cover the expenses. They say “You control what you review” and probably it can let you avoid conflicts.
I would vote against paid reviews. Cnet is a prime example of where paid means not as impartial.
I think it’s fine as long it’s clearly disclosed that it is a PAID review. I like your opinion on most products, but if it’s a paid one i’d like to know.
I have been reading your blog regularly for some time and one thing that I have noticed is that Rimarkable is more of an editorial or opinion blog than it is a news blog. So long as you don’t compromise your opinion just to make a few bucks I don’t see an issue with you getting paid for it.