Enkay Blog

Paid Reviews, Are They Worth It?

Hey guys, Enkay is finally back after being bogged down with school for the past few days. I still have exams coming up but since I get a little time off I figured I would get the ball rolling. So, most of you are familiar with ReviewMe, Sponsored Reviews and PayPerPost. If you are new to blogging then its important to understand how these services work.

How Do These Work?
The basic idea is that you are “paid” or “sponsored” by an advertiser to write a blog post about their product, service or website. Sometimes you may be required to write only about the benefits but other times you can write a full critique. According to me a full critique is the best way to go for an advertiser because they can find out what they are doing right as well as what they are doing wrong so they can improve upon the negatives.

Are They Worth It?
Paid reviews can be a great source of income for your blog and if you remember they contributed a large part of my income during my first couple months blogging however, over time I realized that reviewing products or services that were not related to the theme of my blog were not a good way to keep readers interested. If you ever decide to sign up for ReviewMe, PayPerPost or SponsoredReviews you need to remember that if you are a start up that it may not be the best idea to talk about unrelated topics.

One of the mistakes I made was to accept reviews that were unrelated to the theme of my blog and even though I received payments for these reviews, I was unable to acquire new readers and that wasn’t helping my blog in the long run. So hopefully you can learn from my mistakes and know that reviewing other blogs or products/services related to blogging are probably what will help you the most as you can connect to your readers and give them something they want to read about.

Hopefully you see that being paid for a review is one thing but using that review to your advantage to gain readers is another. Hopefully you will take my advice and if you guys have any questions or need help just leave me a comment and ill get back to you.

Thank you!
I want to thank everyone who supported me during my 3 days of hiatus from blogging due to school work. Thank you to TheKingKongBlog, Adsense Tracker, Simon, RomanDock & Blogging The Movie. Here is a video that will help you relieve your stress in case you are dealing with work-filled days!

ThePrizeBlog - The Original Contest Blog

If you have been in the blogosphere for the past two months, you will notice that the number of contests have just kept rising over the past month and after a while it gets almost difficult to keep track of them. Its only ingenious that someone have a blog about contests and that someone is The Original Contest Blogger or Brian Aldrich (seen to the right). The Prize Blog was one of the first contest blogs that I had come across mainly because it was the ONLY contest blog at the time that I started blogging back in May. When Brian sent me the request to review his blog, I was more than excited to do so. Brian also owns Blog Duck which, unlike The Prize Blog, is focused on giving people blogging tips and ideas. I am currently a guest blogger for Blog Duck but I really hope I can contribute more in the future to that blog. Lets take a look around The Prize Blog, shall we?

Design
Brian has done a great job recently by changing the design of his blog. I have stressed several times that branding is one of the best ways to reach through to your audience and by having a character designed to represent The Prize Blog, its only fitting that he has made the right move. As far as design goes, the blog is very easy on your eyes and doesn’t use annoying flashing graphics or neon colored text for that matter either. I felt that the theme works well for Brian as the navigation menu is easily accessible at the top of the page along with a search bar. The RSS button is on the top fold of the page and is placed in an appropriate position which is also two things that I have stressed several times.

As far as color schemes go, I think it has been intelligently designed. If you notice, green and blue are the two colors prominent on the website. The same two colors are seen in the title of the blog on the page and when you move your mouse over the title of a post, which is in blue, it turns to green. I really like the way it is set up and my hat is off to him in terms of blog design and meeting all the requirements of being a successful blog. I also decided to see the improvements that Brian has made to the blog over the past 9 months and here is how it looks and if you are like me, you should be more than impressed by the changes.

Content
I have always been a fan of The Prize Blog and even though I have been familiar with it since the end of May, I decided to look back in time to see the type of content that The Prize Blog has delivered over time and to my surprise he has always been consistent in delivering information about contests the same way. In almost all of his posts since the beginning, he has mentioned the URL of the contest, the prize involved, the end date and if necessary, a picture of the prize. I think his combination of including the critical information in the first few lines of the post itself is a major plus. I think that it has become a standard for him to post contests in that manner and it is makes it very easy for a visitor to know what a contest is about just by glancing at the post. It should also be noted that Brian personally screens the submission of a contest before posting it on the site only to make sure that he is leading his readers in the right direction.

Pros:
There are quite a few things that work in favor of The Prize Blog and I think you would agree strongly with these.
1) Great Design Integration
2) RSS Feed Button Placement
3) Consistent Content Over Time
4) Easy To Obtain Contest Information

Suggestions:
Now for the suggestions, there were a few things that I think need a little attention but they aren’t any major issues but they can certainly help The Prize Blog quite a bit.
Note: Clicking on the images on the side will enlarge them.

1) Fewer Categories - If you notice on The Prize Blog there is are about 32 categories and at times, it becomes a problem for the reader to decide which category to pick. I have to agree to one thing that most of the categories cannot be consolidated but there are some categories that could be done without because of the few number of posts in that particular category. For example, “Information”, “Musical Instruments” and “Perfume and Cologne” are a few of the categories that only have one post in them so if the contests have ended it would be good for him to remove the posts until another contest in that category comes about.

2) Move “Submit A Contest” Upwards - On the sidebar you will notice that the space dedicated to submitting a contest is located towards the bottom of the sidebar. I do know that a button to submit a contest is present in the top navigation, but it would be a good idea to move that sidebar item towards the top, preferably under the RSS button, like so. I think that moving it upwards will help bring more attention to it and because Brian offers an upgrade to “Featured Contest”, this could also mean more sales for him in the long run.

3) Submit Contest Font Mismatch - The submit contest form on the contest page has a little font mismatch going on and it was a little difficult for me to figure out where the input boxes were to enter my information in. I figured that if Brian was able to get one of these two plug-ins I am going to mention that would be able to solve that problem. The first is the Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form and the other is Enhanced WP Contact Form. Both of those plug-ins help you integrate a better contact form in your blog and that could tremendously with the issue I have seen in the contest submission form.

Conclusion
Overall, as I said earlier, I have always been a big fan of The Prize Blog, and I really hope that Brian will be able to keep some of my suggestions in mind. I also am going to offer to help him implement some of the changes if he needs it. If you haven’t checked it out already, now would be a good time to visit the site and subscribe to the feed! Also, do let me know your thoughts about The Prize Blog and how you liked my first direct review!

Get Reviewed!
This was my first direct review offer through the blog and Brian was smart enough to take advantage of the 50% off full-site review offer I have going on. If you would like to take advantage of this offer and get a full site review for only $20, you will also get a free 125×125 ad spot on The Wall of Blogs! So what are you waiting for, get your full site review and a spot on The Wall of Blogs for only $20!

Note: Please include your email address in the notes or description so that I can contact you regarding the website, product or service that needs to be reviewed. Thanks!

Can You Bank on ReviewMe?

For starters, this isn’t a paid review by ReviewMe and I just wanted to get that out there. If you own a blog, then most of you are familiar with ReviewMe. For those of you who aren’t stick around for a little background info. Basically, ReviewMe is a website that allows advertisers to create accounts and get their product, service or website reviewed by bloggers based on a rating scale. Advertisers pay the bloggers an amount that is determined by the bloggers themselves. The blogger’s are rated on a few things: Technorati Rank, Alexa Rank and RSS readership. My blog isn’t rated so well with only 2 stars and a suggested asking price of $60. The next Alexa update will be bump me up to 3 stars with a suggested price per review of $100. According to me $100 is far too much to charge and my price will remain at $40 even as my rating rises.

Either way, I have been with ReviewMe for about 2 months now and I have noticed that ever since my start, I have received no review offers aside from a few campaign offers that I pick. It makes me wonder if some of the other popular blogs are seeing any review offers. With my rank closing in on 3 stars, I begin to wonder whether ReviewMe will help my blog in earning any money or not. As for JohnChow, he has seen high ReviewMe requests costing $400 each and ReviewMe makes up 20% of his monthly income. I have completed several campaign offers and in my first month, earned $15 and in the second month, jumped to $70. The payments for last month have shown a significant drop and campaign offers for this month are pretty much depleted.

Can You Bank on ReviewMe?
As I noticed over the past couple of months, you really can’t expect ReviewMe to be steady unless you are a highly popular blog. JohnChow gets several review offers mainly because of his high popularity. Also, lets not forget that ReviewMe charges the highest commission which stands at 50%, compared to 35% of SponsoredReviews and PayPerPost which doesn’t seem to charge any commission. Overall, I would say that even ReviewMe’s campaign offers aren’t stable aside from the fact that most of the review offers are directed towards the highly popular ones. I want to experiment by keeping my review price at $40 as I come into the 3 star range. I wonder if that will make any difference.

Dont Put All Your Eggs In One Basket
I have to mention that you can’t expect ReviewMe to be the only source of income on your blog. You have to diversify your sources of income and you need to be sure that you have atleast 5-6 sources of income. Relying solely on Adsense or Kontera or even ReviewMe will lead to unsatisfactory results. Remember, the average money making blog has about 6, so having that many won’t hurt you. Personally, I use Adsense, Kontera, ReviewMe, SponsoredReviews, Text Link Ads and PayPerPost. Also remember that you won’t start earning money instantly and that it will take time for you to start receiving offers on paid-t-blog sites.

Hope that this will help you realize that ReviewMe can definitely help you make money, but you have to establish yourself in the blogosphere to really start rolling in the review offers and raking up the cash! Thanks for reading!

How Do You Spend Your Money? Charity?

I always wonder how the top bloggers such as John Chow, Problogger and ShoeMoney spend their money. I wondered if any of the top bloggers actually gave away a portion of their earnings to charity. This isn’t to say that you HAVE to give to a charity if you have a lot of money, but it would be nice to do so. I am sure that once I start earning a steady income from blogging, that I will be donating a portion of it to charity. This is a lead in post to a review offer I recently received by Tej Kohli who has put $150,000 of his own money to help kids in Costa Rica break out of their poverty stricken lives.

The way the offer was described, I decided to accept the offer but also made special considerations for it, in terms of the amount. The person behind the review is Navtej Kohli who is a philanthropist and a business owner. He wants me to spread a little link love to a favorite charity of my choice that will help enlighten my readers about giving back. We all don’t realize that aside from our busy lives, there are people who don’t have a fraction of what we have today. Navtej has a foundation of his own and the website Charity Navigator is an excellent resource for those looking to share their wealth with others who are less fortunate.

I have picked The V Foundation which is rated as a 5 Star foundation. I have never seen a website like this and I promise that once you see the website, you will be in awe too. The details page for The V Foundation contains their balance sheet showing their revenue and expenses and their history. The V Foundation was founded by ESPN and Jim Valvano back in 1993. They are an organization that is researching the cure for cancer and spreads awareness among Americans regarding the importance of the fight against cancer. They have helped raise more than $60 million for research and I wanted to help bring more awareness towards organizations such as this one.

I know that a lot of people donate their time and money for a charitable cause and I wonder how some of you spend the money you make from blogging, if you are monetized. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t accept any money for this review but I was able to reduce the offer amount to reduce the cost of this review. Personally, I use the money that I make from blogging to pay for expenses related to pursuing a college degree. How do you spend your money?

Vcars.Co.Uk Reviewed!

I talk about a lot of cars that I test drive and lately I have been waiting for a good review request for an automotive website and my wish has finally been granted. Vcars.co.uk has requested me to review them through Sponsored Reviews which marks my first review with them and I have to say that I was very impressed. Vcars is a comprehensive source of supercar wallpapers, motoring news and a search engine for used cars. Lets take a look at each portion of the website a little closer.

Motoring News
You have to realize that this is a website based for the UK and although some may say “Oh, I only worry about cars that are made for the US” you may want to reconsider mainly because newer technology usually hits the UK before it gets to the US and thats specially true of European cars. All portions of the website are designed very well and content on the motoring news section is updated more than a few times a day on some occasions meaning that you will always have new content to read!

Used Cars
The used car section is all well designed and I did try it out with a UK post code and it worked really well. Everything is organized well and design integration across the board is great. When you first look at the used car page you will see links to the motoring news and wallpapers section which is a great way of self-promotion. I like the idea of integrating the used car search into the website because it really does create a one-stop-shop for visitors.

Wallpapers & Screensavers
If you look at the header image for this post, you will see how well designed these wallpapers are. The screensavers are based off the wallpaper and all of them are just fantastic. There are many times when I come across a car wallpaper and think to myself “I wish my car was here” and because of the large selection that is offered, you have a better chance of finding your car here. On another note, the wallpapers themselves are excellent and I wonder if the man behind the website has designed them all because they are nothing short of amazing. The only thing that may disappoint is that all the cars are blue in color with a blue background, except for a few but other than that its a well designed site.

Conclusion
Overall, I liked the way the website was put together and I liked the fact that all three portions of the website were well integrated to build viewership. The motoring news section was probably the best for me considering the fact that I am a car enthusiast and that reading about the technology and development of cars across the ocean, is informative and entertaining for me. I hope that you liked the review and do check out the vcars.co.uk website!