Should I Accept The Review?
I know that many of you don’t offer paid reviews or haven’t had the chance to do any paid reviews yet. Paid reviews are quite common in the blogosphere and can lead to several leads for the advertiser. The issue that comes to my mind is what happens when you come across a review that you’re not sure whether you should accept or not. I’ve had it happen twice already and I’ve had to say no. Heres how you can decide:
1. Niche Relevance – Sometimes you get review offers that are for credit card offers or airline tickets and you just can’t accept those types of offers. I know that its hard to resist the temptation of money but you really don’t want to lose your readers for the price of a review. Your readers want to see reviews that are in your niche and are relevant to the topic of your blog so accept review offers that match your blog topic.
2. Unique Concept - If you find that the review is for a website that is relevant to your niche then you should think about whether the concept is unique enough. I would dislike reading a review about a product that already exists or has no new upgraded features. Its like reading about Comment Relish being “modified” and sold for an exorbitant amount.
3. Reader Benefit – If the review has no benefit to the reader then its not a useful review to begin with. To write a review for the sake of writing a review is not a good idea. You should only write a review if you feel that the service or product being offered is genuine and can truly help your readers. This should specially be considered if readers have to pay a certain price for the service or product.
So there are my tips regarding whether you should accept a review offer or not. The point is that lots of times I see bloggers that are reviewing a product that will cost more than usual (typically $100-200) and the product being offered is already available for free and isn’t any different from the free product. Sometimes, there have been issues of advertisers not being genuine and the product being a scam. I always check the domain registrar and get a whois report on the websites that I review to ensure that they weren’t created just for the review in order to scam my readers.
Well, I hope you enjoyed my tips about reviews. i’m sure that this topic strikes close to home for some of you specially after having to deal with some odd reviews on blogs so I’d like to hear your side of the issue on it. Have you rejected a review before? Also, have you come across a review thinking that it was a waste of your time or that the product offered is a duplicate of a free product?
Great post, as always! I know many people who have blogs in the MMO niche and they accept offers to review gambling sites.
that is one way you can distinguish who is really serious about their sites and who is not.
it is really a matter of self integrity. you have todecide wisely and based on the main foundation of why you blog. sometimes there are crossroads really.
I tend to reject alot of reviews specially some people who want to advertise their crappy sites. To get reviewed on Balkhis, you must have something related to webmasters.
I am coming up with a new MMO blog, would love to get it reviewed by you and syed.
Great tips! I don’t do reviews typically (paid or not) on my blog. But I’m developing a new site (launching shortly) that will definitely review sites, products, you name it, at a specific niche. And I will definitely be following your tips when it comes to paid reviews on that site in order to stay “true” to the niche / readership.
Great tips man, especially about checking the whois info! I haven’t done any paid reviews on my site, and if I do, you know it will not be some random stuff that’s irrelevant, it has to be useful to my community.
Thats good news man. I’d like to a video review by you, that would be great.
In my opinion, it’s all about reader benefit. If it can’t do any good for my readers, I don’t accept a review.