Earlier this week I reviewed PayPerPost. Now it’s Sponsored Reviews’ turn.
The low-down
Sponsored Reviews has quite a few opportunities to choose from when compared to PayPerPost, and all are categorized for easy selection. Unlike PPP, however, the amount of money you can make from the opportunity is shown by how little and how much the advertiser is willing to pay for reviews.
All you do is enter an amount within that range for how much you’d like to be compensated, choose the blog you’d like to place the review on (you can have more than one blog, which is cool), and wait for the advertiser to approve or reject your bid.
Your blog’s worth is determined by Alexa, Technorati, and its page rank. Based on that information, Sponsored Reviews suggests how much of a pay range you should be asking for on your blog. You cannot place a bid lower than your minimum range for your blog or one that exceeds the higher end of the scale. So choose your range wisely (although you can change it later) as it can affect how an advertiser considers your blof.
Sometimes the high end of what an advertiser is willing to pay is $500. Not too shabby — IF you have a blog with excellent rankings. So you bid on the opportunity and wait for the advertiser to approve or reject your bid. Or as is more often the case, you wait and wait…and wait some more. In my case, I placed a bid on May 23 that’s STILL pending. I’m not holding my breath that I’ll be writing that review soon. 
What I love about Sponsored Reviews
Clearly, the potential income is quite an attraction. The variety of offers is good, too. And I have to say they have excellent customer service. Every time I have sent them a message, they are quick to return with an answer and do so professionally.
What’s not so good
A few months ago when Sponsored Reviews first started and I signed up, it was a lot easier to get approved by advertisers. My blog has a much better ranking today (4 out of 5 check marks) than it did back then and it was still easier to get approved. I surmise this is due to the success Sponsored Reviews has enjoyed over these past few months what with more blogs joining. With more blogs, it’s harder to get noticed.
As I mentioned earlier, some advertisers don’t even take the time to make a decision on your bid, leaving you hanging. And if they do reject it, you don’t know why.
Features I’d like to see
- Force advertisers to make a decision on bids in a timely manner. In fact, I think it would be worth looking into enabling bloggers to set an expiration date on their bids. This way an advertiser might pay a little more attention because they would not only lose a blogger to review them, but the price to pay them might increase if they don’t act in a timely manner.
- When a bid is rejected, give a reason. I think this is crucial to providing bloggers with what they need to make their blogs better. Bid too high? Okay, then I might knock it down. Blog not appropriate to the opportunity? Okay, if that’s truly the case, why? Don’t need anymore reviews? I’m cool with that; just tell me that it’s not my blog you have a problem with.
- Blogs are ranked; why not advertisers? Let bloggers have the ability to indicate to other bloggers if the advertiser is worth the trouble to bid on them. PPP allows this with their flags.
- They have a “Remember me on this computer” option when logging in. So why is it that I have to log in everytime I return?
All in all, Sponsored Reviews is something I recommend signing up for.
[tags]sponsored reviews,payperpost,reviews,blogging,money[/tags]
{ 6 comments }
I’m SO with you on having advertisers responding in timely manners. I have 7 pending reviews and they’ve been pending for probably two months now. Geez.
I’ve been told by their support team that advertisers simply walk away without cleaning up their queue. For me, it’s the equivalent of leaving someone hanging. Just looking for a little closure.
That’s probably the biggest complaint I have. Of course, if you happen to have a more popular blog, I bet they’d respond fast. I haven’t bid on any new ones yet as I’m waiting for the PR update. I might get lucky and have a higher fee
Me greedy?
I’ve often wondered if the higher priced blogs actually do get more business. Some charge quite a pretty penny, but I do understand the benefit to doing that though.
I have signed up forever ago with them and bid a whole lot, but never get a response, so quit bidding.
I’m sorry to hear that, Jennifer, but I understand why. I wish I knew more about how the advertiser went about deciding on which blogs bids to approve. I know quality counts, so blogs should be rewarded for that. But when you have so many of the same quality (i.e., equally ranked among Alexa, Technorati and PR), then I suppose it could be just luck of the draw.
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