Doing Sponsored Reviews the right way

Sponsored review sites like PayPerPost, ReviewMe and Sponsored Reviews are becoming part of the blogosphere and are proving popular with both advertisers and bloggers.

Brian Heys gave his thoughts on sponsored posts yesterday and made some very good points. He has decided to stick with adwords and stumbleupon for now but i reckon that he would have some success with it if he chose the right blog to advertise on.

Kumiko is going to review BloggingTips next week on her blog. I do plan on doing reviews here myself in a few months time and once the blog is a bit more established.

Sponsored Reviews - The Right Way

Bear all of the points below and im sure will have a lot of success with sponsor type advertising.

Bloggers

• Review Good Websites - Try and only review sites which are related to your blog and ones which are of genuine interest to readers. If you blog about movies then don’t accept an offer to review a garden equipment site - regardless of the money, it isn’t worth it. You need to remember that any review you make will be read by your subscribers so don’t piss them off by reviewing garbage.
• High ratio of regular posts to sponsored posts - The ratio of regular posts to sponsored posts should be high in opinion. Most of your readers understand that you want to make money and if you choose the right webite to review they should also enjoy your reviews. However, the heart of your blog should still be your regular posts. There may be times when an established blogger gets a lot of reviewme requests at the one time however you should do your utmost to keep the vast majority of posts un-sponsored.
• Don’t undersell yourself - Don’t waste your time doing reviews for $5. If your blog is new and you aren’t being given a decent advertising rate then bide your time and wait til you have more traffic on your blog. It allows you to work more on content for your site and when your blog is ready you should get a decent price.
• Take the time and write a good review - A poor rushed review might lose you a lot of potential advertisers so take the time to give a good review. Don’t be scared to criticize the website - your under no obligation to give a 100% positive review. If theres something you dont like or think the site is lacking in some aspect then say so in your review. Just remember to be constructive - being negative for no reason isn’t good for anyone. I also strongly believe that constant 100% positive reviews on your blog will frustrate your readers as the reviews come across as advertisements.
• Do a sample review - If your struggling to get advertiers it might be worth doing a few sample reviews on related websites and products for your blog to show advertisers what they can expect.

The most important thing to remember is your readers. Without your readers, your blog is worthless to you and advertisers.

Advertisers

The majority of work the advertiser needs to do involves researching which blog is best to advertise on.

• What kind of quality are the blogger’s other reviews? - Check the blog review section for previous reviews. What kind of quality can you expect for your review?
  • Do they add a lot of links to your site or just one at the end of the post?
  • Does the reviewer include a lot of images and screen prints of your site in the post?
  • Are posts generally positive or negative? Are criticisms fair?
  • Do they take the time to do a good review or do they just copy your about page and post that.

  The quality of previous reviews is a perfect example of what you can expect for your purchase so take the time to read what they have wrote before.

• How popular is the site? - You should really be looking for a blog with posts which get a lot of comments. Pay close attention to the volume of comments ’sponsored reviews’ get on the blog in particular. Regardless of the blogs traffic level and page rank status, if posts are getting little or no comments then it’s doubtful a review there will give you much bang for your buck.
• How many subscribers does their RSS feed have? - Assuming two blogs are identical except for the number of subscribers to their feed, then you’d get more value from a review on a blog with 1000 subscribers than two blogs with 400.
• Is the review worth it? - ReviewMe allow bloggers to set the value of their reviews. Some bloggers have got greedy and have bumped their price up to ridiculous levels. Browse the marketplace and narrow your choice down to a few blogs before you make your decision and see which blog offers you best value for money.
• Prepare for your review - The whole point of a sponsored review is to announce your blog or website to a whole new audience. Once they know about it, give them a reason to hang about. Put a little more effort into your posts in the run up to the review and perhaps launch a competition giving away a prize a few days before the review. This not only gives the reviewer something to talk about when he visits your blog but increases the chance of readers liking your blog - which is the point of this whole thing!
• Make sure the blog is suitable - A bit of an obvious one but one i thought was worth mentioning. Pick a blog which is related to yours. Regardless of the traffic and subscribers a blog has, if the blog has nothing to do with yours you are not going to get many new readers from a ’sponsored review’ there.

If you rush in and order the first blog you find you may get very little return for your cash. By spending a little time researching a good blog you can make sure you get a lot of exposure from your investment.

Overview

Whether you love them or hate them, this type of advertising is here to stay. Bloggers should watch that they do not alienate and piss off their readers with too many reviews or reviews that are unrelated. The most important thing advertisers need to do is research the blog they want a review on and decide whether it’s worth their while advertising there.

I’d love to hear readers experiences so far with ReviewMe and PayPerPost type websites.