Sponsored reviews, paid reviews and paid posts is a popular way to make money blogging. In fact, it is the easiest way for bloggers to make good money from blogging as in the last few years, the launching of sites like PayPerPost, Sponsored Reviews and Review Me has popularized sponsored reviews writing as a blog monetization method.
However, not many are making fortunes from this type of blog monetization method because of the various problems that sponsored reviews writing can bring about. Last week, I got my first direct sponsored review request from SEO Meter and the below is the testimonial I received after the review is being published.
Wayne did a great job reviewing our site. First of all, his review was well phrased for the target audience (i.e., bloggers) and that makes the sponsored review much more effective.
Overall, the review was quite thorough and extensive. I’ll be happy to come back to his blog to order more reviews.
From the testimonial, I am glad that I have completed a good sponsored review.
Make Money Writing Sponsored Reviews Problems
Inability to find advertisers
Photo by: Ryan McD
You have a great blog, with great traffic but for some reasons, you are not being approached by advertisers requesting for a paid review. You think that your blog is bad enough and it may be the reason why you are lacking interested advertisers. You continue building your blog but still, advertisers don’t show up.
Blog –> Splog
With the boom of sponsored reviews broker sites like I have mentioned in the opening of this article, many bloggers are so engrossed to make money writing sponsored reviews and have completely neglected the purpose of their blog. Their blog will soon turn into a complete sponsored reviews blog with some crappy posts in between just to abide by the terms and conditions needed to write sponsored reviews.
Advertiser vs Readers
Some advertisers have absurd requests such as total praise for their products and services even though they sucks as a whole. Also, some advertisers might have wanted you to be dishonest to your readers in a way by offering you a higher pay. Both scenarios will give you the "advertisers vs readers" dilemma. Which side will you fall for?
12 Tips for Sponsored Reviews Monetization
Paid reviews monetization after strong establishment
First time readers don’t stay if they have the feeling that what they are reading on your blog is a paid review because they have the fear that they might be misled with the information that you are providing.
Build up your authority status and a solid reader base for your blog before venturing into paid reviews monetization. Avoiding blockages to the growth of your blog will be one of the benefits and having the opportunity to charge the review for a premium will be the added advantage if you have good stats and authority status to show to your advertisers.
Source for advertisers brilliantly
Advertisers don’t come to you automatically, especially if you just opened up advertising opportunities on your blog. There are a few ways to seek for advertisers and I should say that there will always be advertisers for every niche.
Photo by: x-eyedblonde
- Sponsored reviews brokering sites. PayPerPost, Sponsored Reviews and many more sites of such kind are places where advertisers look for bloggers to write about them, their products and services. If you opt for using such sites to source sponsored reviews advertisers, you will earn much lesser since a portion of the advertising revenue will go to the brokering sites.
- Forums. Webmaster forums like SitePoint and Digital Point can also be a trading place for sponsored reviews. Hop over to the advertising sections of such forums and you will find yourself some interested advertisers. You will then need to price yourself competitively and those who are more specific with their stats will normally get the deal done fast.
- Fellow niche blogs. When you bloghop, always keep your eyes open and don’t skip reading a blog just because it is having a sponsored review as a post for the day. These advertisers that have bought a review from a blog which is in the same niche as yours might be interested in buying a review from you as well!
Some other ways like monitoring press release sites for announcement of newly launched sites, offering discounts for a review on your readers’ blogs and dispatching e-mails to sites selling products and services relevant to your niche will work as well.
Only accept relevant advertisers
Some blogs tend to have stats or the bloggers have reviewing skills that are good enough to attract a lot of advertisers at one time. Choosing will become difficult as money undoubtedly, is a great "motivating factor".
Pick your advertisers for upcoming sponsored reviews closely and you will find that among them, there will be some offering products and services that are not quite relevant to what you are blogging about. Weed these offers out and in the end, you will not be chasing your readers away with irrelevant sponsored reviews!
Take your time with advertisers
Advertisers, when they are motivated to spend on sponsored reviews, they will normally have a few offers to consider. Submit your quote for a review and wait patiently for their response. Don’t show them that you are desperate to make money off them.
Photo by: kalandrakas
Yes, you might be good with your reviews but being pushy shows that you are not confident of yourself and your offer. Keep this in mind that if your blog is suitable for the advertisers and your quote is reasonable for them, they will come back to you even if they have over 100 offers.
Uphold integrity and principals
At times, we might come across sponsored review offers that will challenge our integrity such as honesty and principals highlighted within our disclosure page.
Stick to what you have promised to yourself and your disclosure. Being authoritative also means you will not be easily persuaded by money. Upholding integrity and principals when rejecting such offers shows that you stand by what you write on your blog and this will establish a stronger credibility for your blog.
Blog availability for paid reviews
Sometimes, an acceptance from you or the advertiser for a sponsored review comes at a time when your blog posting schedule is full. Which will you give priority to? Giving way to a sponsored review or stick to your blog posting schedule?
Photo by: midorisyu
Set aside your chances of needing to make such decisions by setting things outright when you are negotiating a potential sponsored review offer. Notify your advertisers during your communication with them that they must provide a period of time (for me, 5 days) which you think you are able to free up your blog posting schedule and for the writing of the review. Of course, rejecting an offer can be way if no space can be provided for a sponsored review.
Inquire advertisers about required main aspects of reviews
You might not know that you are reviewing the wrong aspects of your advertisers’ services or sites. Sometimes, you might not even know where to start your review as some advertisers have a lot of features on their sites and it is impossible for you to cover all of them.
The best way to write a sponsored review that is promoting the right feature of your advertiser’s site is to inquire them about the features of the site which they wished to highlight. They will be more than happy to tell you as I don’t think advertisers will pay money to buy an off-tangent review which is attracting the wrong type of visitors.
Encourage discussion on blogs
Look back to my blogging tips on how to increase blog comments as blog comments show advertisers how influential and the level of interaction going on your blog.
Also, advertisers like the sites, products and services being discussed and it will be great if your sponsored reviews manage to get some comments from your readers. They will definitely be very happy if they pay for only one review but in the end, got a few more from the comments by your readers.
Write in usual writing style
Some blogs disclose their stand on writing sponsored reviews and some place a small portion of text showing their readers that a particular blog post is a sponsored one. Disclosures are good to show transparency and honesty to your readers.
Photo by: Maryam S.
However, some bloggers tend to write sponsored reviews awkwardly, without their usual writing style incorporated into the reviews. This is like edging your sponsored reviews in a way that will persuade readers to skip that particular post. Loyal readers will read what you have written for the day, provided that you maintain the consistency of your writings. Thus, stick to your usual way of writing when it comes to writing sponsored reviews.
Avoid being one-sided
By offering a review, unless you have agreed to certain terms offered when signing up for sponsored reviews brokering sites, you are not obliged to write on only the good side of your advertisers. A one-sided positive review will not bring your advertisers effects, as good as a neutral review because this will only show that the "positives" are being bought.
You will also harm the status and the trust of you readers in you if your reviews seem always to be aligned to the advertisers’ side. Losing your credibility in blogging is the last thing you want. Thus, start being neutral on sites that you are currently reviewing.
Earn more than money
When you are reviewing a site, don’t just write the review for the sake of money. With a sponsored review blog post, you can actually show your expertise in sites reviewing (getting more advertisers in the future) and publicize your knowledge in a niche.
Photo by: Neubie
Try to provide contributing information to your advertisers via the sponsored reviews and back them up with your knowledge that you have on the niche they are in. This simple add more value to the reviews you are writing and readers are able to learn something out of it rather than reading a plain endorsement article.
Ask for testimonials
For those of you who have written sponsored reviews on your blog before, do you ever know how good your reviews are in the eyes of your advertisers? I doubt that many knows. Writing sponsored reviews need skills, which can be very different compared to writing your daily blog post.
Improve that skill of yours by asking for a testimonial from your advertisers. If it is a bad one, you can learn from what you have done wrong so that in the future, you can write better sponsored reviews. If it is a good one, congratulations, you can either publish the testimonial in your blog’s Advertise page to attract more potential advertisers or stick to that writing style for your upcoming reviews.
Your Experience with Sponsored Reviews Writing
What tips do you have to share in order to foster sponsored reviews writing as a main blogging income for bloggers out there? Do you have some interesting interactions with advertisers in the past which you would like to share?
Last but not least, how much does sponsored reviews account for your total blogging income? Actual figures will be appreciated but comparisons with other blog monetization methods will be good enough though.
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February 22nd, 2008 at 6:30 am
Sponsored reviews can be a great source of income for bloggers, but we all need to be aware that we may lose our Google PR if we are caught. With no PR, the reviews would pay much less, so we would make less money for the same amount of work.
February 22nd, 2008 at 9:59 am
Agreed on that !
February 22nd, 2008 at 4:24 pm
I normally give contextual links to other websites through my posts. These are not sponsored reviews, just sharing information to my readers regarding great websites and articles around the blogosphere. I’m curious if this affects my PR. How do Google robots determine if a post is paid or not?
Thanks for answering my question.
February 22nd, 2008 at 7:47 pm
@ Simonne
Page Rank demotion is a punishment for blogs set up solely for sponsored reviews purposes. Stop yourself from writing excessive sponsored reviews and your blog should be OK with Google.
@ keeyit
I think your blog is doing alright with sponsored posts although they seem to be not getting comments. This is because the participation on your real blog posts is still getting tonnes of comments which is very good!
Congratulations.
@ Fitz
I don’t think you will be penalized. I do link out often to provide more resources to my readers as well and I will sit on this.
Google robots think a post is paid or not by looking at the backlinks build up for a site. If a site is getting a sudden hike of, say, 1000 backlinks in 5 hours, it clearly shows that the site is using paid posts to build links. Thus, all the sites giving the suspected site links will be placed under moderation. If it is found out that your link to the site is not relevant to other parts of your blog or is clearly praising the site in an excessive manner, your site will be labeled as writing sponsored posts.
I hope the above explanantion helps. Just ask if you have more doubts on this issue.
February 22nd, 2008 at 10:06 pm
“Page Rank demotion is a punishment for blogs set up solely for sponsored reviews purposes. Stop yourself from writing excessive sponsored reviews and your blog should be OK with Google.”
Sorry, but I must disagree with you. I had just 7 paid reviews from about 100 articles on my blog when Google set my PR from 2 to 0. But all of them had a label “This is a sponsored review.” I’ve removed that label now, since they are old post, and I’m curious if Google will give me some PR to the next update.
February 23rd, 2008 at 12:36 am
Thank you Wayne for that very simple and straightforward answer. Now I can stop holding my breath.
February 23rd, 2008 at 10:12 am
A truly excellent post about writing sponsored reviews. So many that I have seen are one sided, “love it or hate it”s. It’s nice to know that there’s somebody out there who has found the middle ground of good quality and good money.
February 23rd, 2008 at 7:56 pm
@ Diana13
Hmm, maybe Google decides that we should be dishonest with them. However, I think Google has made a bold move during the Google Page Rank wipe across the blogosphere, which I think some blogs like yours which is not necessary a splog for paid reviews to get hit by it. Also, there might be some other factors, such as the sites you are reviewing for got a ban because of their rapid link built with money, that influenced Google’s demotion on our blog.
You should submit your blog for a reconsideration via Google Webmaster Tools.
@ Fitz
Glad that my answer does help out. Thanks again for visiting.
@ Troy
Give the advertisers value and when other advertisers come by, they might look at some of your reviews written. If they like it, you are on your way to get another business.
February 24th, 2008 at 4:24 am
Last January, my blog’s PR 2; at this time my blog was 3 months ols so I submitted it to PayPerPost and Smorty.
I wrote 1 sponsored review for PPP (disclosed) and 3 for Smorty (undisclosed), I made sure I had at least 2 unsponsored posts between 2 sponsored posts (even the undisclosed ones) but my PR still dropped to 0!
Now I don’t get any new offers from PPP; there is one I could take from Smorty but not in my niche so I am leaving it.
So I don’t make much money from those websites.
I did get a free $100 coupon for advertising with PPP; I applied today and should get 14 reviews advertising using my keyword and giving me 14 links from other blogs! (If you can’t beat them, join them).
February 24th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
I think that taking relevant advertisers only is a very important point. Not only will advertising someone who’ll be useful to your readers make your readers happy, it will also make your advertisers happy as they will get more reaction.
February 25th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Big-G owns the Cyberspace.
Why even risk getting oneself on the bad side of Big-G? -_-
Not worth it. -_-
February 25th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
@ Internet Junkie
Well, after a few statements on the Google Page Rank demotion, I think disclosures do help Google to identify which posts are sponsored and which are not.
Anyway, do tell me the results of such advertising method and if you blogged about it in your blog, do let me know about the URL.
All the best!
@ Ruchir
This is true. Also, when we review something irrelevant to the niche of our blogs, we might not have the necessary expertise to do so. For example, a blogger who blogs about food might fail miserably in reviewing cars.
@ Deimos
Sometimes it is worth it. Look at John Chow wholived next door.
February 25th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
@Wayne:
He already established a very strong foot hold there. -_-;;;
The rest of us are still at Big-G’s mercy.
February 26th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
Thanks for the great tips. Very useful info. There are a lot of beginners who would benefit from the guidelines. Blogging is not only about creative writing but you can even earn through it.
February 27th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
It depends on how we look at ourselves on the cyberspace. I try not to become dependable to search engine since I started my blog, but I also practice SEO, building up community, looking for other sources of traffic. In case one of the doors is shut, the others still open
February 28th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
I use most of these methods. By far the best way for bloggers to make money is by using sites such as PayPal etc and get paid
for their posts. The unfortunate downside is that Google in their infinte wisdom has decided to penalize thes bloggers by
removing their PR.
March 3rd, 2008 at 11:09 pm
No doubt you have done a great job in writing the paid post. haha~
March 5th, 2008 at 12:35 am
Good info you have provided.
I have put up the PPP badge on my blog not long ago. PR is out and I didnt have any on my blog. I am thinking is it because of the PPP badge.
March 5th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
@ Chris
Make money writing is somehow a new boom on the blogosphere but the sad part is that Google is against it.
Anyway, if the supposed guidelines are followed and a blog does not become actively engaged with sponsored reviews writing, I don’t think Google will be harsh on the blog.
@ Louis
It is not good to be dependent on one thing. Being interdependent is the best choice as apart from using other resources as a stepping stone, our ability will determine whether we fair in one field or not and blogging can work that way as well.
@ Finnea
Did you got your blog penalized by Google for sponsored reviews writing?
I am glad that you are making money online. Wish you will make more from it. Keep on blogging. Cheers!
@ Sean
I spammed my old Blogger blog with paid posts by I will not with this blog.
@ Kissmi
If you think that the reason for the demotion has already been removed, try to contact Google via Google Webmaster Tools for a reconsideration.
March 6th, 2008 at 2:48 am
Nice post mate!
I haven’t done many paid reviews so far so I guess this should help me in getting started! Bookmarked for future reading.
March 10th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Making money via sponsored reviews is easy compared to other methods. However, you must not get obsessed with it.
March 15th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
I just don’t like paid posts in blogs. I think it pollutes the blogosphere with so many blogs just full of sales pitches, rather than actually expressing the author’s own opinions. I’ve seen once good blogs screw themselves up by overdoing the paid posts. I’d prefer they didn’t exist, can tolerate the odd one now and then in a blog thats otherwise good, but van’t stand blogs that are just paid post after paid post.
March 20th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
I have seen bloggers turn their back on the readers since they failed to resist the temptations offered by these sponsored reviews companies. Anyway, for new bloggers, this is a monetization that can earn them quick and easy money.