I was surprised yesterday when a friend of mine asked me “Al, there is a buzz about something called paid reviews. People are talking about making an earning out of it. Can you shed some light on it?”

Paid reviews are one of the biggest and best income sources for bloggers and this friend of mine who has been running a blog since past 2 months had no clue what it was all about. So, I decided to focus today’s article on Paid Reviews and it’s workings. I am not going to bore you with bygone history, but get you familiar with the practical concepts so by the time you finish reading, you will be bumping with a new and unfound zeal to take part in this exciting industry.

Alright, Paid reviews are reviews that are paid for by the advertisers to the publishers/bloggers to create buzz/attention to their product/service/website.

That’s it. That’s exactly what it is. To give an example, DoshDosh.com gets 100,000 visitors a month to his blog. I have a product that I want to create buzz about. My choices are to pick up a targeted visitors package, banner ads, and Google adwords for related keywords or Paid Reviews. I go with Paid review. I will explain the WHY later.

I contact Maki from DoshDosh.com and tell him “Maki, I wish to advertise my product in your blog through a review done by you, wherein you can talk about my product, its features, good and bad, etc. I will pay you $300 for it”. Maki takes the order and writes a review about his product. He talks about it in good length explaining it to his loyal base of readers. Maki gets his fees, My product gets the attention it needs.

The Why:

Why did I choose paid review over other forms of advertisements? I could have opted for Google adwords or a good banner ad campaign. The reason why I didn’t go with them is because they are static forms of advertisement. People will look into my banners and may or may not click at it. My ads may show up in Google, but depending on the competition, there is no guarantee whether my ads will be viewed and clicked on.

With paid reviews, it is different. The author of the blog is holding a conversation with his loyal readers, is explaining to them the benefits and drawbacks of my product, and is taking them on a virtual trip to my product. In addition to that, a popular blog like doshdosh.com will have 1000s of RSS subscribers who receive the blog updates to their reader or email. It is an un-asked bonus for me as I get additional potential buyers.

Where do I start?

Of course, not every blogger is as popular as Maki. How do you get to your advertiser? How do you tell them you exist? Well, it isn’t easy if the efforts are your own, but it isn’t difficult if you were to leverage somebody else’s efforts for a cut in profits. Ok, here is what I mean. There are paid review brokers today that connect bloggers with advertisers for a piece of the action. The cost is anywhere between 35-50% of the fees that the advertiser pays the blogger. Some of the popular brokers are reviewme.com, sponsoredreviews.com, payperpost.com and smorty.com. Your first step is to signup with them, and then submit your blog for approval and inclusion in their network. You can signup with one or all of them. Their staff will manually look into your blog and depending on the traffic, Alexa Rank, PageRank and Technorati authority; they will set an “Advertiser cost”. From thereon, it is their job to promote your blog in their marketplace and get you orders. Usually, the advertisers will be related to your niche, but occasionally you may get un-related orders too. If you are fine with it, you can take them. No harm.

Conclusion:

Paid Reviews can be a very good source of income if your blog is getting good traffic and is popular. In any case, it isn’t good to put all your eggs in one basket. So, let this be a part of your monetization strategy and not “The monetization strategy”.