ReviewMe Advertiser’s Case Studies
written by John Chow
I admit it, the first few ReviewMe reviews had me wondering; do the advertisers see a return on their $100 post? Some people would say, “Who cares? Just take the money!” However, I’m an advertiser as well as a publisher, so this kind of stuff interest me.
As luck with have it, one of the sites I did a review on posted their ReviewMe experience. Back in December, I posted a review of PubIncome.com, a blog own by Jason Rodriguez. At the time I did the review, Jason’s blog had just seven posts. Since the review, Jason has added only three more. However, one of the new posts is a recap on what happened after I reviewed his blog.
According to Jason, I sent him roughly 500 readers in a little over 24 hours. Jason didn’t provide stats after 24 hours, but judging by the graph, traffic dropped off tremendously.
$100 for 500 readers works out to 20 cents CPC. This really isn’t a high rate. I’m paying as much as 35 cents CPC for visitors from Steve Pavlina’s blog.
The problem with the above case study is there is no way to tell if the $100 Jason spent was profitable. At the moment, PubIncome has no income sources. Therefore, the only way to measure success is to work out the cost of each visitor and compare it to what it would have cost using other advertising methods. If Jason is happy with 20 cents per visitor, then the review was successful.
ReviewMe For Affiliate Marketers
When Aaron Wall asked me to review his SEO Book (aff), I signed up as an affiliate before posting the review. Signing up as an affiliate allowed me to track any sales that may result. It also allows Aaron to measure the effectiveness of his advertising efforts. Aaron made this blog post a few days after the review was posted.
I have not tracked sales from most of my ReviewMe reviews (because I do not generally track that granular), but John Chow put up affiliate links in his review of my ebook, and I can tell you that his review paid for itself the first day.
The review of Aaron’s e-book has sold eight copies so far. At $79.00 per book, that works out to $632.00 in gross sales. After removing $240.00 for affiliate commissions and $100.00 for the review, Aaron is in the black by $292.00.
Here is the exciting part. The review is still on the blog. Google has indexed the post so it will continue to generate sales. Aaron has received a permanent link, which helps his SEO and ranking. And to top it all off, he made money on the deal!
Because I have been involved with ReviewMe, many people have told me that they thought ReviewMe was just an SEO tool, but I realize that links / rankings / SEO in general / brand building / trust building / sales are all just a side effect of getting exposure and satisfying market needs. The benefit of reviews from a network like ReviewMe is that you get exposure in active channels that people trust and are paying attention to.
The SEO Book case study provides an extremely compelling reason for affiliate marketers to try ReviewMe. Many advertisers think ReviewMe as just an SEO tool, but as Aaron has shown, it can be far more than that.
I’m starting to think I should charge more than $100 for a review.
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(1 votes, average: 2 out of 5)
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It’s a win-win situation for both parties. you can ask them if you can charge more
For the right product it is the right tool. The advertiser can pick the platform (here: your blog, John) and if he does appropriate research it works out like in this case for Aaron.
Christoph
$100 to get a review here 1000 + feedburner readers and countless more passer bys is peanuts. If I had something worthwhile for you to review, I’d gladly part with that.
How bout I pay $100 option for a review that can be exercised within a year?
Well analyzed, I think you should stay at the $100 rate at first, then once the word spreads about how much influence JohnChow.com has, increase the price.
For 500 unique visitors I think $100 is a bit much. Especially considering that most never came back. That also has something to do with content. Lack of content to be exact.
It definetly seems like ReviewMe and PayPerPost will offer a good return to companies that are selling products - but for individuals who run advertising supported sites I think it is much more questionable. How much money does a webmaster make for each one thousand visits they receive? $3-$5?
For link-building / SEO, TLA links probably offer a better return on investment.
For CPC type of deal, it appears that ReviewMe could actually be a good deal. Thx for sharing John.
I’d be interested in knowing what Rodriguez did to bump his traffic back up to 200+ on the 28th.
Oh. Just did a Google search on pubincome.com and noticed he submitted his own articles to Digg, Netscape, and reddit.
Even with only a couple of upvotes, it seems to have worked. I know that if you’re going to submit your own stuff, you should do it sparingly, though.
I would say at this point $100 looks okay. Personally I think you need a couple of more data points before you make a choice.
It does seem that there could be nice opportunities for people with affiliate products to sell. For sites that are trying to monetize with CPC ads only, I am curious what the actual CTR would be for visitors as a result of a review.
But $100 is a reasonable price to pay for experimentation, even for beginning bloggers. While I’ve tried to limit my out of pocket costs, this might be worth investigating.
I agree with Chris, a win-win situation for both
Oh absolutely - its the affiliate marketing aspect of the ReviewMe system that is pretty much the only part that interests me. Perhaps one day I’ll test it out myself.
Matt
$100 for a review seems very reasonable. However, I can’t say I would pay for it. It may provide some temporary traffic but the real value is the front-page link. And if that’s what people are going for, they might as well just buy ad space here.
For those who suggest to raise the price; ReviewME’s script generates the price, you’ve got hardly any influence on it yourself, so raising the price can only be done by getting higher rankings.
I just ordered the SEO Book through your affiliate link yesterday. I’ve read 50 pages so far and it’s very informative. I’ll give you an update when I’m done in a few days.
Leftblank - ReviewME hasn’t updated my stats since they started. They still have my Technorati ranking at 201,162. I’m really 1,313.
So John,
You walked off with the $50 ReviewMe payout, as well as a sweet sweet $240 extra for affiliate links to the product itself? Not too shabby for a days work.
Stew
Lousy ReviewMe still hasn’t approved me, dammit.
I’d love to give ReviewMe a whirl, unfortunately my blog is new and clearly doesn’t have enough integrity to be of much use to any advertiser. As a publisher and an advertiser as well, I may put a little bit of my advertising budget aside to pay for a post, maybe here
Stew
Hey John:
Just got a $100 promo coupon from review me. Im starting a blog and guess who I want to review me.
Really, I got approved within 5 hours
[...] I guess my ReviewMe Advertiser’s Case Studies post paid off. After reading how well the review worked for Aaron Wall of the SEO Book (aff), FloristOne has ordered up a ReviewMe review of their affiliate program. [...]
Mubin - how’d you get a promo coupon?
$100 is very reasonable to ask for. I can see you get an influx of people asking for reviews once the word spreads on the network of people that follow you. It can add a big boost to anyone’s site.
John,
Do you think Review Me would be a good place for a custom research paper site to advertise in? We’re interested in direct sales. We are not an affiliate site. Besides the EDUCATION section, would other categories of blogs be good places to get a review in?