Cameron Olthuis

In an attempt to get a piece of the $25,000 pie (I am being paid for this post) that ReviewMe is offering, the following is my review.

ReviewMe is service that pays bloggers to write paid reviews about advertisers who pay a pre-determined fee based on that particular blogs value. ReviewMe determines the value of each blog with an algorithm that is based off Alexa, Technorati and most likely a few other sources. Bloggers can decide to write either a positive or negative review, but they must disclose that they are being paid to write the review. ReviewMe splits the advertising fee 50/50 with the bloggers.

I know the guys behind ReviewMe (Text Link Ads) and I think for the most part they have done an excellent job on the execution. The site is well designed and the UI is pretty good, I had no trouble signing up and finding my way around. The one thing I noticed that could cause a problem is that you can signup with any blog. Just for fun I signed up a few popular blogs under my name just to see what their posts were worth, I quickly deleted them from my account. They should probably add some kind of security feature to make sure this doesn’t happen.

Overall I am fan of these kind of services. I think it offers a great revenue model for bloggers to make a decent chunk of change for writing. The problem I see here is that Google and the other search engines will frown upon it, since they are against people paying for text links. At least ReviewMe requires full disclosure for the posts and because of that I think they have a great shot of kicking Pay-Per-Post’s Ass. That and the guys behind this business know this market inside and out.

On October 25th it’s open season for anyone interested in joining 9rules. Round 5 will be the last submission round for 2006. So, if you want to join the best blog community in the world make sure you polish up your shiznit and submit on the 25th.

I’ve met a lot of great people up here at WordCamp and the one thing that I’ve come to realize is that anyone can become an expert on anything. I don’t mean that in a bad way like a know-it-all. Information is so abundant right now that if you pick the right niche you can become an expert, start a blog, and actually make money doing so. You don’t need to go to school and get a degree, all you need is a desire and a passion.

So find something you’re passionate about and start blogging.

I think TheWeblogWire, which launched today, is a brilliant idea. Mashable broke the news….

The idea itself is interesting: The Weblog Wire allows companies to submit press releases, and bloggers to subscribe to these releases via RSS. Submitting a press release costs $99, or $149.99 if you want The Weblog Wire to write it for you.

Two reasons why I think this idea is a good one..

1) Bloggers want to break the news as quickly as possible, they will signup to receive the feeds.

2) Marketers want bloggers blogging about their product, services, etc.

TheWeblogWire’s success will be dependent on their own marketing strategy, unfortunately getting a little buzz from some blogs won’t be enough for them. It’s just not the right channel to reach the people submitting through other news wires, such as PRWeb. I’m excited to see what else, if anything, they have up their sleeves for marketing as I would really like to see them gain traction.

After posting some tips for increasing blog traffic I received quite a few emails asking for recommendations on blog specific tools.

So here’s a list of some tools that I’ve come across that are helpful when blogging. They range from tools that help increase traffic to tools that make life easier as a publisher. Read the rest of this entry »