Get paid to blog

January 3, 2007 4:38 PM

Get paid to blog Reveiewme.com is offering to pay you to blog. The site reserves the right to reject any submission but they do pay between $20 and $200 per each review taken. A new development or have we seen this before?
posted by MrMerlot (26 comments total)

Sorry, I can't comment on this unless I'm getting at least $20.
posted by davejay at 5:01 PM on January 3, 2007

Can I safely click the link without an inundation of spyware?
posted by Artw at 5:06 PM on January 3, 2007

you could turn a very high traffic blog into a low traffic one with a career in this.

thankfully, my readership of 9 people prevent me from even being tempted to sell out.
posted by dflemingdotorg at 5:06 PM on January 3, 2007

you could turn a very high traffic blog into a low traffic one with a career in this.

Agreed. The natural progression of posting good content, having an enlarging readership, then making money off of Adsense or the like is violated with this kind of thing, and one's post quality (or lack thereof) could very well deteriorate given incentivization. Or not.
posted by Burhanistan at 5:09 PM on January 3, 2007

I love how "blog" has become a verb. I also love how it has come to encompass everything from teen diaries to sell-out marketing shills. It lends "bloggers" so much credibility.
posted by Jimbob at 5:12 PM on January 3, 2007

No, it's not a new development. We have seen the general idea of money for blog entries before, although now the money is better. I stand by my earlier comments.
posted by Effigy2000 at 5:13 PM on January 3, 2007

you could turn a very high traffic blog into a low traffic one with a career in this.

thankfully, my readership of 9 people prevent me from even being tempted to sell out.
posted by dflemingdotorg at 7:06 PM

Amen Brother! Single Digit Readership is where it's at. I don't want to blog if I can't blog esoteric and disregarded. It's how I know I'm hardcore.

Besides, I happen to know there is a Mefite running a very similar business model.
posted by SinisterPurpose at 5:14 PM on January 3, 2007

Heh. I wonder if you make more money blogging for cash than if you were to just write articles for specialty product review magazines (AudioVideo, etc.). My guess is that eventually they should pay the same per word fee if the quality is the same, since potential contributors should be smart enough to write for the publications that pay the best.
posted by bhouston at 5:24 PM on January 3, 2007

Well you can get paid in money or for some people: laptops.
posted by jessamyn at 5:31 PM on January 3, 2007

thankfully, my readership of 9 people prevent me from even being tempted to sell out.

Your noble refusal to sell out has inspired me to become your 10th reader!

(As soon as I can get around to it.)
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:41 PM on January 3, 2007

That free laptop thing has been making waves. I like Joel's take on it. Thank God For Integrity.
posted by seanyboy at 5:51 PM on January 3, 2007

Some people, Jess? I would have thought you and Matt were sufficiently A-List to get the Vista Ferrari Whatever.
posted by wendell at 5:56 PM on January 3, 2007

I have found a different method of making money. My site has a number of nude women and I go to bloggers and people with known emails and tell them I plan to post pictures of girls and "dedicate" the photos to them...by their name. They end up in the Google storage bin. If, though, they would prefer to be an anonymous donor, via Paypal, I will use only the first letters of their names.
posted by Postroad at 6:17 PM on January 3, 2007 [1 favorite]

"The suspense was suspenseful, and the comedy was funny...but Movie Guy says, read the book instead. THE PHONE BOOK, that is, because it has less characters than this movie. I mean, what is it with these English movies?"
posted by Smart Dalek at 6:26 PM on January 3, 2007

I'm totally doing this. I'll let you guys know how it worked out for me, but I'm not sure you'll be able to hear me over the MOUNTAIN OF CASH that I'll sitting in.
posted by jonson at 6:29 PM on January 3, 2007

It's blog
blog
it's better than bad
it's good!
posted by Holy foxy moxie batman! at 6:42 PM on January 3, 2007

Um, what's wrong with paying writers to write? The articles we discuss here tend to be written for pay, because otherwise no one would have the time and money to do the reporting and because without pay, writers are often lazy and imprecise.

Publications like Salon and Slate make lots of money, but the freelance writers on whom the site's traffic often depends make virtually nothing. And the best bloggers are now generally being hired so that they will produce consistently-- or they are making money from their own ads.

Information may want to be free, but someone's gotta pay at some point for people to edit and analyze and make sense of it-- otherwise such people won't have time to do it since they will have to make livings otherwise.

-- signed, freelance writer.
posted by Maias at 7:15 PM on January 3, 2007

And the best bloggers are now generally being hired so that they will produce consistently-- or they are making money from their own ads.

it becomes very hard to judge who genuinely likes a product and who likes a product a little better because they're getting paid to review it. it would be fairly unlikely a company would pay for a bad review of their product and thus truth has been compromised if that's the case.
posted by dflemingdotorg at 7:22 PM on January 3, 2007

I'm talking about people who blog about news and get paid to do so by journalistic entities, not companies. And who use Google ads if they are techbloggers, so there's no need for them to take money from reviewed product makers and every incentive not to do so (ie, because you wouldn't be trusted).
posted by Maias at 7:50 PM on January 3, 2007

9 readers?!? holy fucking jesus man! what sort of traffic building are you doing?!?!?
posted by jcterminal at 8:51 PM on January 3, 2007

it becomes very hard to judge who genuinely likes a product and who likes a product a little better because they're getting paid to review it. it would be fairly unlikely a company would pay for a bad review of their product and thus truth has been compromised if that's the case.

As a better man than I'll ever be put it: "Ball-less, souless, spiritless corporate little bitches, suckers of Satan's cock, each and every one of them. Gnorr!"
posted by Ufez Jones at 10:02 PM on January 3, 2007

I'm talking about people who blog about news and get paid to do so by journalistic entities, not companies. And who use Google ads if they are techbloggers, so there's no need for them to take money from reviewed product makers and every incentive not to do so (ie, because you wouldn't be trusted).

and very few people, myself included, find any problem with making money for writing, just as long as your review is as guided as it would be if it was free. in short, if you can maintain journalistic integrity and still make a paycheque for it, few people will have problems with it.
posted by dflemingdotorg at 4:33 AM on January 4, 2007

There was a wave of excitement about ReviewMe a few months ago; lots of people signed up to claim their X bucks (more bucks for bigger sites) for writing a review of ReviewMe itself, which did not have to be positive (and seldom was).

I signed up too, in November last year, intending to do the same thing. Dansdata.com commands a hefty fee according to ReviewMe, so I was looking forward to articulating my own version of the widespread "They're doomed." opinion, taking the money and running.

It looks as if they'd run out of money, though, and they also seem to have no clients to speak of, or at least no clients that're interested in a review on my site. They've never offered me a single gig.
posted by dansdata at 6:42 AM on January 4, 2007

I love how "blog" has become a verb.

OK, maybe you weren't there at the time, but it was a verb before it was a noun. (English grammatical rules more or less imply that a "blogger" is someone who "blogs", just as a "runner" is someone who "runs", etc.)

also love how it has come to encompass everything from teen diaries to sell-out marketing shills.

The term was broad to begin with.

It lends "bloggers" so much credibility.

I hear that "writers" such as Hemingway and Fitzgerald hid their heads in shame because people "wrote" advertising copy. What the hell are you on about?
posted by dhartung at 7:02 AM on January 4, 2007

don't you lose property rights on your writing if you do this?
posted by Doorstop at 8:44 AM on January 4, 2007

I write for PayPerPost. I've made about $450 doing so since mid-October. I've mostly stopped though, it wasn't sitting well with my self-perceived integrity - but I did manage to buy myself a whizbang new 80GB video iPod with the earnings.

I tried out ReviewMe a couple of months ago. After you write your initial review of the service (are they still offering that?), you have to sit back and wait for advertisers to come to you. Which they don't, for the most part.

PayPerPost is better because it puts the activity in the hands of the blogger.
posted by etoile at 9:19 AM on January 11, 2007