ReviewMe

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Full Disclosure: The following is a paid review

As an active blogger, I have to find ways to make “a living” but not sell my soul. Well, truth to be told, there are very few bloggers who do make a living at blogging. For the majority of us, it continues to be a labor of love. But we persist, don't we?

When Google Ads and merchant carts don't do the trick, one has to go and seek out other revenue streams. Well, a couple of days back, I received an invitation from Patrick Gavin of Text Link Ads fame in which he mentioned a new venture called ReviewMe. Briefly, ReviewMe is an opportunity for companies to have their products and services, well, reviewed, by bloggers, for a fee. That fee is determined by how many people visit your site and some thing called an Alexa rating.

Based on the popularity of your site and how conscientious you are about posting your reviews in time [you usually have 48 hours after accepting a call for review], you could make a bundle. Paying off the year's subscription fees for TypePad [currently $120 for this site] is one of my goals. I think it's a target that I can hit. I enjoy discovering new websites, new programs, new things that will hopefully make it easy and interesting to lead our lives.

Far from being forced to review products, websites or services that one could care little about, the ReviewMe guidelines allow you to control what, when and how you review anything. This, in my mind, makes things fair. You aren't caught in an awkward situation defending or explaining what something is when you are indifferent to it or totally opposed to it.

Take this very review of ReviewMe, for example. I am writing about this website and service only because I think it is a great idea and I am open to using it as often as possible. I however promise that I won't review anything that won't make sense to you or something you won't find useful in some way. The rationale is very simple: If I find I will benefit from whatever I am reviewing, then my assumption leads me to believe it will help you as well. So, in short, I promise that I won't be a shill to just to pay off my TypePad bill.

“In the ReviewMe system, advertisers choose which blogs review them. So basically, sit back, and let the review offers come to you.”

As I said earlier, once you accept a review offer, you have 48 hours to complete and submit a URL link to that completed review. The review has to be at least 200 words long and should mention somewhere that your post has been sponsored [my full disclosure is up top, just in case you missed it.] If it all looks good, you get paid by the 4th of the month. On the ReviewMe site you can submit the name of your other blogs and post reviews on multiple sites as well [upto six sites, but I think more than two should keep you crazy busy]. The simple, bright user interface makes it a snap to use the site.

So, if you are blogger, check out ReviewMe and sign up for its services. Still not sure why you would want to do this? While you get paid, the company, product or service you reviewed gets a bit of a kickstart in the Internet. You become an integral part of creating a buzz about something that has caught your fancy. Years from now you can tell your grandkids that you helped make the zBox the hottest selling doo-dad in history.

So, you will have both the loot and the legacy in your back pocket. Time to go get some!