Another disgruntled John Chow ReviewMe customer
It seems like controversy follows John Chow around like a bad smell. Andy Beard today posted about another blogger who paid for a review from John Chow and then complained about the cost.
The blogger in question is Alvin Phang from Gather Success. Alvin had paid for a review of his site Atomic Blogging on John Chow (see JC’s review here). A day later he raved about the traffic he was getting from the review.
5 days later Alvin did a U-Turn and wrote a post called ‘The Most Painful US$400 I Ever Spend On A Review‘.
To save myself repeating myself, here’s what I wrote in reply to Andy Beard’s post.
If you look at this post you will see that he confirmed that he did get a lot of traffic.
He seems to be annoyed that he hasn’t turned that $400 fee into a profit. John Chow’s job was to do a fair review of the site and send traffic. Whether the review was fair or not is not for me to say however he did send traffic, infact, I believe he sends a lot of traffic to all the sites he reviews.
Why do I think he didn’t make money through it? I think it’s because of his sales page. I don’t know too much about the product but I know that the atomic website is a clickbank clone and I would close any page which resembled that. It just looks like a scam (not saying it is!).
Nothing against Alvin Phang but he needs to appreciate that when you order a review you can and will get critized. I got criticism in my review but the points were valid and fair. You should take criticism like that positively and look to improve what you can. Again, all you are assured with a paid review on a high traffic blog is traffic and he did get that so I don’t think he has any reason to complain.
Bottom line, when you pay for a review on a blog you are not guaranteed anything but a fair review.
There is a good discussion going on at Andy Beard’s site. I recommend you drop by and give your view on it 
Link : John Chow Slammed In Free Report
Simon | September 16th, 2007 at 10:53 am #
Two things strike me about this. Firstly, the sales page is awfull and, like you, turned me off completely. The layout is actually broken in FireFox (for me at least) which is unforgiveable. I think that if I was looking for an ebook on creating a blog, I’d want the sales page to be something I could aspire to. The implication is that reading that book would result in a page that looked like the sales page, and I can’t imagine many people being sold on that dream.
Secondly, John Chow said in his review that the ebook is full of very basic information. I’d guess that the majority of readers to his blog are somewhat beyond the “setting up a blog” stage. Seems like somewhat of a mismatch to me.
Diogenes | September 16th, 2007 at 11:43 am #
Your contact page did not work for me. Is there a problem or is it my computer skill? How can I reach you?
Kevin | September 16th, 2007 at 11:45 am #
should be working ok but if you have a problem you can just leave a message in the forums
Martin | September 16th, 2007 at 10:13 pm #
Hey Kevin - nice blog, I’m a first timer here.
Extremely good discussion going on at Andy’s blog on this issue.
Bottom line, imo, is what do you expect of a review. With a genuine review you should expect whatever the reviewer says - good or bad.
If you start dictating what you expect from a review then really I’m loathe to call it a review any more but an advertorial - and in a sense, that’s what ReviewMe is more like.
Once money changes hands, the review is (or can be) compromised. If I’m a paid-for reviewer and keep churning out negative reviews soon no one will want (and pay me) to do any reviews. Do you see the conflict that can come from this?
I love doing reviews (with no strings attached). Over at my blog, those who send me their products for review fully understand that the review could go anywhere. And if they have confidence in their product and marketing setup they should have no problems with that.
But that’s all because it’s not a “paid for” review - my revenue comes from traditional advertising and other sources which leaves me to be totally independent.
That’s going to be (or already is) a major credibility issue as there is clearly a “chinese wall” between editorial and advertising in blogging.
Dave Starr --- ROI Guy | September 17th, 2007 at 4:58 am #
Yep, there sure seems to be a lot of discord in the blogging world about just what constitutes a review. A review is supposed to be an honest appraisal of the reviewed item. If one just wants “traffic” one would be much better off in spending $400 on AdWords or some other PPC campaign driving targeted traffic direct to the sales or landing page desired. You can even by the PPClicks from specific web sites only.
I am re-purposing a nearly dormant site into a niche in the “make money” category. When I feel it’s good enough I may well pay for a review from John or some other A-list blogger. But the purpsoe will not be to “drive traffic” … I can drive traffic any time I want to, cheaper. My purpose will be to get the honest opinion of someone more experienced in this part of the game than I … I can’t hit a baseball. If I hired A-Rod to give me a “review of my swing” I’d feel pretty “bummed” if he just said, “Good work kid, keep at it”. I would expect, instead to hear, “Wow, you suck … if you want to improve, do this, this and this.”
That would be worth my time … platitudes would not.
Kevin | September 17th, 2007 at 7:42 am #
Hi Martin - Glad you like the site
If you check a lot of reviewme review blogs you will see that many of them always give positive reviews regardless of the site. I don’t understand how blogs don’t lose readers because of this.
Dave - I think your right. He would have got more value from an adwords campaign or even launching his own affiliate program.