22 paid review networks for bloggers to earn money online

Posted on 18. Aug, 2008 by Roy in Advertising

What Google thinks about paid reviews (almost similar to selling links) is a different issue but this is one of the best ways to monetize your blog. There is no doubt about that.

What does it have for the advertisers?

You can create a buzz easily around your product in the blogosphere.
Buzz helps you in brand development.
You create the buzz within a very short period (just think about how some of the renowned bloggers are promoting a premium WordPress Theme recently – don’t know if those are paid promotions or not but as soon as they started talking about the theme – it moved beyond any ordinary row of WP themes).
You get great quality and content based one way links (targeted) to your website

What does Bloggers get?

Easy money by writing a review

Some Problem Areas:

In most of such paid review networks, advertisers restrict the bloggers to write only good things (positive review) about their product or website. Thus, the website owners miss out valuable comments from a blogger that could help to improve the product. I understand that there is a chance of negative marketing but if you directly communicate with a niche blogger, he or she may guide you before publishing the actual post. There comments are worth more than the link or buzz you get.
Advertisers usually ask not to disclose that it is a paid review. They often say that, their competitors would be aware of their marketing tactics if the blogger disclosed it as a paid review. In addition, relatively smaller bloggers cannot argue with the advertisers and eventually deceive their readers by not disclosing the nature of the post.
Advertisers often want a certain number of links (normally 3 links with targeted anchor text) from the blog post. However, in most of the cases all these three links point to the same URL with different or similar anchor texts. This is simply wastage of opportunities. I would recommend the advertiser to ask for one targeted link and two general links to other pages of the website along with three or four other links to trusted and non-profit sites like Wikipedia. This would make things more natural from Search Engine’s perspective.
Allow the bloggers enough space to talk. Ask them to write freely – if necessary preview the post that the blogger is planning to publish. This would help you a lot to develop the product.

Here are 22 paid blog review networks to check out: (this is simply a list and we do not endorse anyone)