I accepted before a ReviewMe offer of $5 per review at the ReviewMe campaign and published my review with criticism of the reviewed site at “How To Removed Spylocked Spyware, Reviewed” post. If you are the sponsor of it, I’m sure you’ll be pissed by what I was saying there because I was not just criticising the Adsense ads placements but also the way the Firefox referral ad button is used on the page. And not only that, I also suggested that it’s better to use those PC Security softwares I mentioned in securing your PC.
Well. What I did was just right based on the policies of the ReviewMe. And the sponsor didn’t give some restriction on what to say as long as the link is published on that post.
However, if you’ll really think the advantage of my way of reviewing that site, you’ll find it useful because some readers of that review-post will be curious about the site I am criticising and most likely will check the site to verify my criticism.
Talking about the sponsor, Thor Schrock (got another love link from) is pissed off the way his $150 was spent at ReviewMe campaign:
http://techreckoner.com/ (Computer Related - Valid blog with readership)
http://www.broadband-voip.net/ (MFA Splog with no readership)
http://www.bsnl-broadband.com/ (Clone of broadband-viop.net Splog)
http://techstuff.goboardz.com/forum.asp (Decent site, Good PR and Related to topic)
http://www.softwaredriverdownload.com/ (MFA download site, no readership)
http://dazeee.i.ph/ (Brand new site, not related and no apparent readership)
http://pinvader.blogspot.com/ (Decent Blog, good related content)
http://ishawn.net/ (Made for ReviewME - all paid posts, some in Chinese)
http://www.techtreak.com/ (Good related content - legitimate blog)
http://neverblog.net/ (legitimate blog, loosely related)
http://www.5zcool.com/ (Legitimate Blog, related and well written)
http://starsdigital.blogspot.com/ (Legitimate Blog, related content)
http://woip.blogspot.com/ (Legitimate blog, related content)
http://www.selaplana.com/ (Legitimate blog, related content)As you can see, nearly 1/3 of my total reviews are from worthless websites that are either not related to the tag I selected, devoid of readership, or just a pure splog, plain and simple.
If you are an advertiser that is interested in generating any kind of buzz or bringing any real traffic to your website, forget about the ReviewME marketplace. It may work great for A-list blogs, but for anything under $200 a review, your money is better spent on toilet paper.
And he considered the 1/3 of those sites as useless or splogs. Hmmmm! Is my blog a splog (Spam blog)? Whatever…. Okay let’s just consider that my blog is one of those blogs he considered splogs. And the splog is giving him another lovelink through this post as my way of thanking him for sponsoring one of my post for $5.00.
Thor’s reaction made me realized that from time to time or even once a month, I will give lovelinks to all my sponsors, especially those sponsors at the TextLinkAds and they are:
Charged Period: 2007-05-01 - 2007-05-31
Web Link: Download RingtonesCharged Period: 2007-05-01 - 2007-05-31
Web Link: Bluetooth | Wireless Headsets
Charged Period: 2007-05-01 - 2007-05-31
Web Link: Ringtones
Charged Period: 2007-05-01 - 2007-05-31
Web Link: Forum for Google AdSense UsersCharged Period: 2007-05-01 - 2007-05-31
Web Link: wedding bands (wedding)
Charged Period: 2007-05-18 - 2007-05-31
Web Link: Security Cameras
Charged Period: 2007-05-09 - 2007-05-31
Post URL: http://www.selaplana.com/2006/08/21/bleach-anime/
Post Link: Free Manga Download Bleach, Naruto, One Piece, Death Note, and more
Charged Period: 2007-05-18 - 2007-05-31
Post URL: http://www.selaplana.com/online-store/
Post Link: Credit Card Processing Get a business merchant account today and you can be accepting credit cards for your physical or online business business in minutes.
So, my TextLinkAds sponsors will be receiving lovelinks once a month or anytime I want. If they haven’t received any traffic from the links posted at our sidebar, then at least they will get few traffic from this post. And not only that, the links posted here will stay here forever.
| 2.8 |
SELaplana, 19 May 2007 at 
May 19th, 2007 at 8:51 pm
Thanks for the SECOND backlink. You were perfectly withing your rights to write the review you wrote. In fact, you raised one concern regarding ad placement that I elected to correct.
We can go back and forth about the need for the referral buttons (SpyLocked only infects IE, hence instructions to install FF, and the new Google Pack comes with Spy Doctor, which CAN prevent reinfection) but I never said your blog was a splog.
In fact I said that your blog was good, related content. You might notice that I rel=nofollowed the splogs and left legitimate backlinks to the real blogs.
You can’t deny that just under 1/3 of my paid reviews were a complete waste of cash. And at $15 dollars a link (my cost, not the blogger’s cut) that’s a pretty hefty price for a PR1 / PR0 backlink.
In this case, all I wanted was backlinks. But the whole point of ReviewMe is to drive traffic. So getting a review on a blog with no readership is a bit like bait and switch IMO.
Granted, I don’t expect John Chow or Shoeney to snap up a $5 review and roll with it, but I did expect REAL bloggers (like yourself) to write a review - and just over 70% of them did.
With that aside, I am DISGUSTED with ReviewME’s internal systems, and I hope you and I both get paid for the reviews we each completed.
May 26th, 2007 at 10:33 am
thank you again for dropping by.
Anyway, I read your comment, however I will only reply the ones in the bottom.
With regards to the reviews made at the ReviewMe, I was already paid for some of the reviews and I believe I will still be paid for the others just like what they did at the TextLinkAds. They pay me by check.
June 14th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
[...] like what we’ve realized last May 2007, I need to give permanent lovelinks to all my sponsors. But this will only be applicable to those who purchased our text links through [...]