Make Money Online With ReviewMe
Whenever a new ReviewMe review gets posted on this blog there are always comments asking if people actually read them. The answer should be obvious. I wouldn’t be getting new ReviewMe orders if the advertisers weren’t making money on them. What may surprise you is how much money advertisers make off these reviews. Here are four ReviewMe case studies to show how advertisers make money online with ReviewMe reviews. If you’ve ordered a review from this blog, and would like to be featured in a future case study, then send me the results of your ReviewMe experience.
Interspire SendStudio NX
My guest blogger, Mitch Harper, recently ordered a ReviewMe review for his SendStudio NX software. He wrote a post on how well the review did.
I got home at 1am on Saturday night and saw John had posted the review. Now, for $250 that review has been read over 7,000 times. That equates to 3 cents per reader. It’d be fair to say that at least 70% of John Chow’s readers would be savvy to Internet marketing and would therefore find a review on SendStudio NX useful (based on the comments under the review, everyone loved it).
That’s incredible value and readership for $250. I can’t report on the conversion rate from the post on his blog but within 2 hours of the review going live we had received 50+ pre-sales emails about SendStudio. I’m confident at least 25% of them will convert, so that will be a return of at least $2,868 (12 x $239 – the price of SendStudio). Not bad right?
Mitch is so impressed with ReviewMe that he plans to spend $10,000 to buy more reviews over the next three months. That’s a pretty serious commitment but it’s also an endorsement on the power of ReviewMe for both the advertiser and the publisher.
Auction Ads Network
My review of Auction Ads started out as a regular post. Shortly after posting the article, I received a ReviewMe order from them. Now, some would say Auction Ads got ripped off because if they hadn’t made the order, they would have got the post for free. However, let’s look at the number.
Auction Ads signed up 73 new publishers from their review. That works out to $3.42 per sign up. If Auction Ads cannot make back the $250 with 73 new publishers, then they deserve to go under.
I Help You Blog
Philip Liu of I Help You Blog ordered his ReviewMe review during last month’s 50% sale and got his review for only $125.00. Here’s what he had to say about it.
I bought a ReviewMe review for I Help You Blog from John Chow who gave me an awesome review and gave me some constructive criticism. That brought a flood of visitors as well (around 700 over two days). A large number of those visitors subscribed to my blog (around 85).
As a result of that John Chow review, many people gave me their comments on my posts and participated in the discussions. I was thrilled! It was the best $125 I spent!
bla.st
bla.st was another company that tested ReviewMe during the 50% sale. They had 699 bla.st cards on the day their review was posted. Within 24 hours of the review going live, bla.st founder, Tim Bromhead made this post on the bla.st blog.
The review was awesome. Very thorough, accurate and honest. The results have also been very good, with 67 new cards added as a result so far. The review cost $125 thanks to a half price special at reviewme.com. It didn’t take long to pay for itself.
bla.st sold enough cards to fully recover their cost, and more, in less than 48 hours. bla.st now has 1,021 cards on their site. I noticed that 31 cards have joined the John Chow Network category.
Going Mainstream
I believe sponsored reviews are going to hit mainstream this year. You can expect more review networks to pop up and more publishers offering reviews. The advantages to the advertisers cannot be ignore – permanent backlinks for SEO, traffic, exposure to a targeted audience on both the blog and RSS feed, sales, etc. The extra online income sponsored reviews offer publishers are hard to ignore as well. PayPerPost is the Most Profitable Ad Network For A Low Traffic Blog.
ReviewMe has become a big part of this blog’s income source. However, I plan to use ReviewMe as a source of promotion as well. I have ordered two reviews already and plan to do more in the future. Whether I’m an publisher or an advertiser, ReviewMe will help me make money online.
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Certainly sounds like it has been worthwhile for them. Maybe next time the 50% coupon comes around we’ll go for it too.
Yeah…the 50% coupon will entice me as well
I’ll definitally start to think about this deal
Im confused, whose paying for this review, reveiewMe
Isn’t it the one who asked to be reviewed?
This is a good post John, I am sure you will get more orders now.
I was wondering to if it was worth the $ 250, but now I know it really is.
Since the 50% coupon is gone, are you sure it’s still worth it?
Oh yeah, it’s worth it Gary – if you sell something online or want decent traffic to your site, that is
It’s certainly worth it if the resulting traffic can be monetized (selling a product), like bla.st or AuctionAds. If it’s “just” traffic to a personal blog, it might take a while to recover the $250.
Its worth $250 if you have a good product, its a complete waste of money if you dont.
There are a few of these reviews which have gone down badly…
Even if you don’t have a good product, and all you need is the traffic/exposure, it’s still a good bargain.
It’s definitely nice to see that ReviewMe is doing well for others. I unfortunately don’t have the budget to have John do a review on my site, but I am sure it would help me become a better blogger. Perhaps one day!
same here, would love one though
Does it have to be John Chow?
…..ummm
Okay! …it has to be John Chow!
“One day” is the same as “some day”… it’ll never come. You should set a firmer goal!
I agree. Once you’ve settled on your conversion and/or monetization process, you should see what kind of traffic John can give you and see if you can afford it then. Brick by Brick!
Agree with both Michael and Gary. As I mentioned in one of my reply at the bottom of this comment thread, T. Harv Eker would change this kind of mind set and definitely they would make a big jump once they change their mind set.
check out nice4rice.com, he’s reviewing blogs for free!!
You can then vote on the best blogs, get link backs for voting and being the best blog, its not been live long so, if your quick you can probably get “spud” to do one for you, he has done both of my blogs and they were good reviews…
I just got reviewed by nice4rice, completely unexpectedly. A nice site he’s got there… so I reviewed him for free in return. Underpromise and over-deliver, right?
Yeah Ive promiesed to review him as well, will do it later this week, Im not sure how he’s planning to keep people coming back to his site though, I visit a few times a week, but its more of an RSS site IMO… hope he does well with it, he seems a good guy.
That is some good results arising from the reviews, John. Looks like this should entice more advertisers to get theirs reviews. However, I do hope that it wouldn’t be compromised content-wise. Guess I’m summing up what some of the others are thinking.
He already has compromised content wise, if he was being open and honest, in private, I am sure he would tell you he thought some of the products were a waste of time.
There is NO WAY some of those reviews would have made it anywhere near this site if there was no money involved.
This blog is a money making machine, everything elses is secondary, and the only time I see John holding off on reviews is if he starts to lose readership and money, but with his new google campigns he will have an endless supply of new readers to replace any that move on…
$250 is a small expense considering what it will earn you. Great post John!
This totally depends on what you’re selling and what the eCPM is for your site. I have bought a text link ad from john’s site once and the demographic just did not match the product, so i took a loss on the campaign.
Yeah, it definitely depends on the demographic. Trying to sell car insurance on a video game site isn’t going to do you much good.
The review truly made wonders for Tim at bla.st
I learned about bla.st through John. You should have seen what it’s like a couple of days after the review.
Look at bla.st now. Is it worth the $250?
Yeah IF you have a good product….
This is great…thanks for the proof John.
Very useful and informative post. Now, if I only had a product …
Seconded
Having all of the traffic would be great, but I’m not set up to convert them into anything that will make it worth the cost for me at the moment.
Convert the traffic
It’s on my list! I’m just not there yet
Ever since I seen you blog about ReviewMe I had the same doubts. Interesting to see what it does for the company though. People must still realize that you are just being paid to put their link out though. I guess it is an impulse type of thing though.
I recently did a few with another company (I’m still too small for ReviewMe) that pays $5 for a 60 word post with a specific keyword link and I even thought that was a ripoff.
The power of a blog is very impressive indeed.
Are there any others that people could recommend for the smaller bloggers.
Sounds like PayPerPost or Blogsvertise.
John your ReviewMe articles are great. But for my small blog $250.00 is a bit high. is there going a 50% ReviewMe again?
I have no idea. But honestly, I hope they don’t do another one anytime soon. I don’t want to get swamped again!
it would definitely back you up again, however i dont think everyone will wait til the end again
Come on John, you’ve got staff writers now
You can handle the load.
I don’t think they’ll do another 50% off anytime soon. I think they caught a lot of people’s attention with that promotion and are now pulling in more sponsors.
would it better to spread out your 250 dollars to smaller sites (like mine, ed lau, jeff kee, and saman’s)? You could get 4 reviews instead of one!
At the same time, you’ve got to wonder if your level of exposure would be equivalent. It’s hard to say without trying and doing a “case study.”
It depends what you want out of the review, if you want a big bang then JC is the place to come, if you wanted to get better SEO, then 4 reviews would be better.
JC has a low page rank for a site of this size and link backs, though I am sure it will rise in time….
John is anticipating PR7 at the next update.
PR7 would be more appropriate, I was really surprised at PR4
PR 7 would be an impressive jump. Only time will tell, but John has been getting a ton of backlinks.
Would love to get in with ReviewMe, but they consider my blog too small at the moment. Hopefully if I keep following the excellent advice that you post here I can get that changed.
I’ve been accepted by ReviewMe, but I’ve only received one order thus far. Most blogs probably don’t get the same level of volume as John.
Remember, he used the word “swamped” by requests
Ive only done one, I was really pleased to be offered one, but, they got a bargain…
Yeah, I’m still on 0 myself. ReviewMe seems to be a big blogger’s marketplace. For the time being I’m dredging in the lower markup and payout market places.
Hello John,
I remember when your site was an infant. I just want to say congrats and job well done on everything. Your post are of high quality and I enjoy coming back to your website and making you even more online revenue. It must be fun.
I am signed up for ReviewMe as well. I haven’t taken any reviews as yet, but am very much looking forward to it. I do use Payperpost as well as four other like it and from what I have encountered your comment on PayPerPost is 100% correct. I’ve been blogging for about five years now, and only just started paid posting six weeks ago. Thus far I have made ~ $1500.00 most of it with PPP.
I just started with PayU2blog this past week as well and it seems like it will also be a great source of income, just don’t know yet if that will equal what I am making with PayPerPost.
Does PayPerPost work with the smaller bloggers as well? I’m just a PageRank 1, but consistently get traffic everyday.
That’s the idea. PPP is much more lenient as to who they accept (pretty much anyone). That said, lower PR blogs will not be eligible for certain opportunities.
so your earning $250 per week?
That’s quite a few sponsored posts if the majority are in the $5-$10 range.
I know, that seems a good income from PPP,
That is good income, but not unheard of. You can submit more than one blog to them and since segmentation there are a lot more posts that are well above the $10 range.
I have made money reviewing other folks’ sites, and have had no problem with pay outs at all. I wanted to review John Chow Dot Com for money, but was too slow, and not popular enough, oh well.
I like ReviewMe more than PayPerPost, because PayPerPost seems to be much more finicky about the posts, and whether they like the format of your web site. I have made more money from ReviewMe, than I have from Adsense, easily. I like it.
No I wasn’t paid for this either
–C8j 
Thank Goodness someone is routing for the small guy’s! We need someone to help us grow!
Hi Jack,
Just left a comment on your blog, if your interested in trying to boost your blog a bit have a look at the front article on my blog, also mentioned in my comment to you….
Man
I wish I had the money to fork over for ReviewMe with John. I have been working hard to getting my blog up to quality content and looks. Just wish if John could run a contest for a FREE (or cheap) ReviewMe on his site. I would definitely be a part of that. Although, I’m not sure if John Chow readers would read a blog that is specific to a Microsoft product, or would they? What do you think?
As my site, SharePointBuzz.com needs the mainstream appeal that John Chow can provide.
You need to learn the evil way John taught us here.
Why don’t you spend little time (in exchange for no money) and visited other site to build your own network. Eventually it would grow. Good luck.
I’m slowly working on building a network. Maintaining and running a blog is a full time job. Not sure how John does it with all these posts and running his tech company… my !dol
Like what I’m doing.
My site is no way related to Making Money Online but I’m here, comment whoring the night away.
I got to know some nice people, Saman Sadeghi(speedlinker), Alex Shalman, Jason Neuman, Bryan Baker and looking forward to know more.
I have to wait till my blog is three months old before I can sign up w/ reviewme.com to start reviewing sites
I have been running the auctionads.com ads on several of my sites since the end of last week, the CTR is still very low, I’m going to get it go at least another full week to see what the results are. I will say that the interface is extremely easy to setup and customizing the ads is very easy.
I found the same. The CTR on AuctionAds is pretty poor, even when compared to Adsense.
Wow… that really make money ^_*
I need to increase my traffic before I can start Reviewing
You can start reviewing right now, you just won’t be paid for it.
ReviewMe advertisers seem much more hesitant to spend the $40 or $60 on lower traffic blogs than they are to drop $250 on blogs like John’s.
Not always. If someone has a high PR site that they haven’t updated for 3 months, there are a lot of people who would spend the $40 to have a review at the top of the site–especially if it will stick around for a while.
That is my strategy for Review Me. Find the sites that have a lot of organic traffic, but aren’t updated often and buy them cheap.
Comment like a maniac in here, that should do the trick, youll spike your alexa and technorati ranking in a month they should accept you….
When I say maniac, I mean maniac, like stay on the top commentors list, for that you need to be completely devoid of ethics and have fingers of steel
The people that stay at the top of the top commentators list are DEDICATED, especially now that it’s set as a rolling five-day count.
Dedicated maniacs
it does take time you have to persist 
Devoid of ethics… and how! It’s the only way to make it to the top of the evilest blog in the world!
10K! That’s what’s going to keep the review gravy train rolling. ROI will get bigger and bigger players involved. Hopefully it won’t cut out the smaller bloggers though.
I think it will be the opposite, I think it will cascade down to smaller sites, however, this will be for SEO. I have only done one review. That blog is niche targetted with PR4 and good placement in some search terms, the company I reviewed was well within that niche, making my review very good SEO, it only cost them $40, I think they got their moneys worth on the SEO, if not the traffic…
That is true, there is tons of SEO value in the smaller blogs. Mine’s like that. While I may not be able to send the hordes of traffic that John can, my links still matter
So you’re pretty much suggesting people to order more reviewme reviews right? It’s sad to see one of my favorite blogs losing a spot on my short bookmark list. Not that anyone cares. You’re well on your way to turn into a complete sellout.
Bring the quality posts back!
I suggest no such thing. This is nothing more than a case study. This isn’t the first one either. I show how to make money online from both a publisher and an advertiser’s stand point. A lot of publishers are also advertisers. Very few blogs get big without advertising.
I like what your doing John, and lots of the time you write quality posts about quality start up sites
Hmm, its a very one sided case study.
There have been a couple of howlers amidst your reviews, its not all cash and glory…
If those advertisers would send in their results, I’ll include it in the next case study.
Hah, yes Ok
TBH I think you did your best with all of them, its innevitable that some will be better products than others…
I’d love to see the results from that 2000 word monster that was written by one of your guest writers.
If anyone buys a single review and expects it to suddenly make them money, they are going to be disappointed. Buying reviews is somewhat trial and error.
In my case I didn’t get quite the amount of participation I had hoped for, but I learned that John Chow readers are going to be more motivated by links than by a chance to win a free iPod. Good info and now I move on. I’m trying a few slightly different things now and I know more about how to setup a Review Me review.
Not everything is easy–and from my perspective that is a good thing.
So John, are you the top ReviewMe reviewer? Or is there someone even more
evil 
?
I don’t think I am. Unlike these sites, ReviewMe hasn’t featured me in a review yet. http://www.reviewme.com/review_me_examples.php
Actually, regarding my comment below.. I saw some of the review me examples in that link you posted. Maybe you are not featured because you don’t start your post headlines with “Review:”?
I checked out some featured reviews, I don’t think anyone of the has done more review than you or command the readership you have. I think you should maybe try what ilker suggest, and see what happens
The way your going youll own them soon!
I have to say, with your popularity why do you still go with them, I would have thought you could deal direct??
That was an amazing effect of your review John
a 50% saving is such a great idea
One idea is to start ReviewMe post headlines with “ReviewMe:”?
I got the review for $250 – but then I also had the opportunity to guest blog AND now John’s just linked back to my blog in THIS post. Talk about value
Underpromise and over-deliver.
Yeah but you had a good product people were interested in, other advertisers have been ripped to bits in the comments and are, strangely enough not discussed in the post.
You used your brain before ordering your review, and, I believe chose the most appropriate of your products. Surprisingly, others dont seem to have taken your approach…
Guest blogging is very under-rated in my opinion.
Wow I just noticed your #2 on Google.com for “make money online”. Congrats Johnny boy. Time to fly over to Canada and shake your hand. Very well done.
This is great. Now if only I could afford to pay for a ReviewMe order for my blog.
Anyways, congratulations on the successful rise in the SERPS. I was glad to be a part of it.
Every time when I read the sentence like “if only I could afford to pay”, the first thing that came to mind was that millionaraire mind guy, T. Harv Eker. Check his book or tapes and you’ll find the money.
I can’t afford to pay right now because I have no plan in place to capitalize on the results of a JohnChow.com review.
Thats it, not good sending hundreds of users toward a malfunctioning website is there
Think that makes us even
I’m in the same boat Steve, though Jez is egging me on to get off my duff and do something about it.
If you don’t yet have the money to pay for a review, there are probably other places that will give you better return.
If someone has run across your site several times and then sees it on a review, they will probably think much higher of your site than if they see it on a review first.
When it’s 50% off, then it’s time to up the ante to $500 John if ReviewMe lets you..
yea sure it does, it just part of his evilness
He’s not that evil…
Oh yes I am!
I really have difficulty in understanding comments that criticize factual information on making money … on a blog that is specifically about making money. I guess maybe people read to see if there’s a hidden massage against making money? Hmmm.
Being paid for reviews, affiliate programs, advertising links, etc. is _not_ “selling out” in my book. The world is built upon commerce and each of us depends upon someone making a profit in order to eat our next meal (unless you’re living in daddy’s basement, of course … and see how the quality of the cuisine drops if daddy loses his job
)
There is no need to blog for money … the Web is full of philantropic sites that never make a dime …. isn’t it? Just like all the newspapers, magazines and TV shows we consume that aren’t driven by advertising. List follows:
………….
Oh, well I guess I lost that list. If your interests are not inclined toward making money, that’s great, but why read on the subject and then drop negative comments? Doesn’t make much sense
Frankly I find the reviews of income opportunities such as reviewme extremely useful. I find very few others in the problogging field bother to actually spell things out for their readers. Many will mention services and even offer opinions but seldom give dollars and cents facts to base decisions on.
I vote: press on with a useful service.
Well said Dave. John’s blog started out as miscellaneous ramblings but has very quickly evolved into an invaluable source of information for making money online. You can’t expect him to talk about it and not actually do it, right?
There is a whole subculture about blogging being against the business establishment and such.
On the other hand, I wonder how we would feel if we could pay the television station news for a “review”
Once my new game gets released this summer I WILL be paying John the big bucks to do the ReviewME action on it!
With the current $250 price tag I’ll only need to sell 20 copies to recoup the expense!
Hope it will stay at $250 til your game is out.
But do you really need John to sell your game?
YES!
John said that he’s going to keep it at the $250 level (for now), even if ReviewMe wants to bump him to $500.
That’ll be intersting, I hadnt realised you were working on one, good luck with it!
No it’s not selling out. No more than an article about Agloco or any other affiliate program.
It is a lot more honest than just putting a site up to plaster Adsense on it.
As long as it is an honest review it is honest.
For anyone interested, check out the alexa spike from the john chow review of bla.st:
http://www.statsaholic.com/bla.st
According to Google Analytics, I had just over 1000 visitors johnchow.com.
The conversion rate for those that actually tried out bla.st was really good, I think about 120 cards went on over a couple of days, so 12%.
Interestingly I had 22,000 visitors from Digg over a couple of days at one point earlier in the year, (visiting a blog article) however this didn’t show on alexa at all.
http://bla.st/referral-programme/
That is strange. Ever time I’ve gotten traffic like that from Digg it always shows up on Alexa. I wonder if something was down.
ReviewMe is definitely mogul-worthy. It’s done so much for John, everyone wants in the success — here’s to great partnerships!