Bryce at Let’s Talk Music gave me the heads up on a new Wordpress plugin that allows you to bypass the paid review services, like ReviewMe, sell your own reviews and keep all the money.
Calling itself a “directory killer,” Wordpress BankRoll offers to help you cut out the middleman by allowing advertisers to buy reviews directly on your blog.
There have been a few companies that offered paid blog posts for this purpose. Obviously the bad choice with that is they take a cut of your pay. With the Wordpress BankRoll Plugin you keep 100% of the money! The plugin offers a very easy to use submission form followed by a quick payment process via Paypal. The backend is extremely powerful yet simple to configure. You have complete control over your submissions. With the payment tracking systems it makes it simple to review/edit/approve posts.
You can check out the frontend demo and see what the backend looks like here and here. Wordpress BankRoll provides the option to let the advertiser write the post. Now that’s what I call a time saver! They do the writing and you make the money! 
Wordpress BankRoll is available in three versions. There is a free license that requires a linkback and two paid license (one domain and unlimited domains) with no linkback.
Wordpress BankRoll looks like a neat Plugin but I’m going to pass on it because it doesn’t solve the main reason why we use 3rd party review services. Without ReviewMe, I wouldn’t have received even 10% of the reviews I’ve done so far. They provide the marketplace for advertisers. Unless your blog is extremely popular, advertisers wouldn’t know you exist unless you were listed with a 3rd party directory. If they can’t find you, they can’t buy from you.
While it’s nowhere close to being a directory killer, Wordpress BankRoll is free so if you want to download and try it, please let me know your experience. I’m sure it would make for a good blog post.
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(7 votes, average: 3.43 out of 5)
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Very good point about the marketplace John. Yes, bankroll may let you keep 100%, but you could look at review me as the fee for finding advertisers with publishers. So, unless someone plans on spending the differnce from bankroll and review me on advertising, it may not be worth it.
Exactly…Costs of advertising your service, and people deciding to go straight through you, instead of a “Review” site…
Definitely not for beginner bloggers.
For sure … and not only does ReviewMe attract people to buy reviews, it also serves as a 3rd party to justify the cost. If ReviewMe didn’t say John’s reviews are worth $300 (if that’s what they still are) they might be harder to sell for that amount.
The Bankroll plugin has been rolling about for a while, I may use it in the future ones I hit page 1 of Google for some juicy keywords
good luck with that.
Great plug-in. Perfect timing for me since I haven’t done any ReviewMe stuff yet.
I offered to let people write their own reviews and put them on my site for free a long time ago: http://www.markrobinson.ca/2007/03/forget-reviewme-review-yourself-for-free/
But you suggested this was a conflict of interest. So are these really reviews or just bought add space?
If the advertisers writes the content, it’s pretty much just bought ad space.
John, you’re the awesomest of all awesomes.
I just noticed your new “featured site” following some discussion on this post:
http://www.johnchow.com/make-money-online-post-level-text-link-ads/
If I could high-five you right now I would. That’s a truly intelligent response
Yeah, if you let someone else write the reviews it will be obvious (their style of writing will differ from yours) and you will loose creditability with your visitors.
Its a good idea but I like your reason why we use the third party ones. Though some people might find this usefull
Shoemoney, maybe? Then he can have the whole $2500
It might just be me, but isn’t $2500 a bit too much?
I think 750 is the max you can charge on Review Me, Shoemoney is really selective too. He turns down about 75% of his review me requests.
Shoemoney doesn’t link to garbage
hes smart!
Thanks for the nice review John. As for the “directory killer” part I put that in there because its originally supposed to have a free option (just like a free directory). But that wont be out until this weekend or early next week.
That being said the plugin will make your blog operate just like directory scripts. But the even better part is that it is a blog and can offer contextual links which is the downfall of directories. I could see people using this plugin to create directories instead of using the old same scripts over and over.
If you want to sell reviewmes directly to advertisers, there is in fact no need for bankroll at all. They can either contact you directly, or you can set up a contact page. 3rd party sites are better as promoting your site to a potentially larger advertisers.
John you make a good point about ReviewMe and the like actually providing you with the customers hence you don’t mind using them. That’s fine, but your blog is so popular why don’t you offer your readers the option to buy a review directly from you? This can run alongside ReviewMe.
Running these 2 at once would be kind of a stab in ReviewMe’s back..
I wonder if ReviewMe would even allow this. If they would, I would do ReviewMe for $X and Bankroll for
Not sure it wouldn’t work for you though John.
That is an interesting idea and the plugin would make it easy to do. I’m still working on getting traffic, till then, I am just doing reviews for fun.
I agree. It never hurts to try seeing how popular your blog is already!
I’m with those three.
You’re quite a big blogger John and chances are that these advertisers found ReviewMe through you!
You’d only need to get 50% of reviews to make up the cash.
Although Martin’s idea is probably best - run them side by side and maybe offer a 10% discount for those purchased directly through your blog. ($120 extra cash for you every time!) I’d still write the review though.
You’re forgetting about the other perks that John may loose from cutting out review me like that. Like Beta information on new products.
John Im pretty sure you could handle this though, I mean with your blog you could be using this as a nice little extra income earner.
Hey that’s me up there
Does ReviewMe take a cut of that $300? Because you could have ReviewMe as well as WP-Bankroll with a cheaper price and then you get 100% instead of giving some to ReviewMe - also then you get the benefit of being discoverable through ReviewMe
A very evil plan indeed…
Bryce, ReviewMe takes 50%.
if they were fair they would only take 30%
Review me looks like it takes a pretty significant cut. Just a quick glance through their site shows that they charge between $40 and $500 per review, yet they pay between $20 and $200.
I discovered this like a week ago and didn’t bother putting it up on my blog. I should have just told you about it and gotten the extra link back to my blog…note to self - tell john everything.
John - I was surprised that you weren’t interested in this plugin. It definitely wouldn’t work for a smaller blog, but I thought you could pocket the extra cash.
Yeah finailly got kontera woring on my site http://www.ourblogreview.com took me all bloody week to figure out how to do it. Just really happy and have to let everyone know… lol
Thanks for geting us in John I am sure we will make u lots of money off it.
I got into Kontera in less than 24 hours after I submitted my request through your evil deal. It took me another 5 minutes to apply the code to my blog..
You are limiting yourself and reducing your possible income , and you did not think enough on this.
What would John Chow the Dotcom Mogul would do ?
He would make more money will doing both ! In some evil fashion !
Now bought ad space is NOT a bad thing as long as your honest about identifying it as such with your readers , and you can charge 10k - 15k or MORE for it per day !! Its Your Blog , You pay for it , You set the price.
Now , how can you use both without depriving Review ME or underming it? Offer something a bit similar but priced twice or three time as much.
The John Chow personnal touch cost more , is exclusive and make you feel like a winner , but like everything exotic in life you must pay a high premium just to come near it !
Example :
With the limited time offer John Chow Review at such a good price you get :
Personnal assurance that John Chow himself will dedicate is own vital time to write something truly unique ! No guest reviewer Guaranteed in web writing !
You get twice the exposure ! one today and another one in 15 days !
You get the feeling that you also have donated to a charity , Because John Chow share the wealth with is fellow Human who are in needs !
You get prize support ! depending on your choice of offer John Chow will personnaly Include with your review a price offer to anyone who go see it and talk about it in there blog , It can be a grand prize like a WII console or many smaller prize like T-shirts , cigars , wine , watches , computer , TV , Free Trip to exotic destination , to help and promote your post , because John Chow , never under deliver he over deliver three time as much as any competitor can come close.
ETC …
Show gratitude and loyalty , but do not be dependant on only one supplier. Its business , you give the best , your entitled to the best.
My 2 cent CAD
[...] few people question why I didn’t choose to run the Wordpress BankRoll plugin or why I don’t sell my reviews direct and bypass ReviewMe. A few even suggested that I run [...]
Looks interesting and would only work best for the popular blogs who offer direct advertising programs.
Still, it’s a start of something new.
I’ve already been hearing good buzz about the plug-in. Hats off to you though for sticking to your strategy, John.
I could see this plugin being useful for people who can’t get accepted into the review me program as well.
Since it’s free, I guess people could have a little look-see, try it out for a while, and then decide.
Well the difference is people may trust ReviewMe more with their money than single blog owners. But it gives more incentive for the review.
Soon as I start reading the post, I thought about this:
with this pluggin is like, selling your product at home or selling it in a big shopping center where a lot of people would be able to see it, instead of just your neighbours. anyway.. its a good adition and if you can keep both options would be a nice touch.
[...] Chow originally posted about a neat new BankRoll plugin for Wordpress that allows users to accept reviews directly, bypassing the need for ReviewMe and other similar [...]
interesting idea… but i agree with john in that the marketplace is the main reason to use reviewme, at least until your blog is big enough so that you don’t need to…
the marketplace is key
This is a cool plug-in, but i like the fact that you mentioned the network behind review is the main reason you get so many reviews.
I wish i had enough traffic to make this worthwhile