Reviews Get Another Boost, Or Do They?
By Craig Danuloff
Opinions and Reviews are in many ways the basis of Marketing2.0. Consumers now have a voice, Brands are not defined by the company, Etc. Etc. Etc. The reviews on Amazon.com and Epinions were the first wave, followed by affinity forums where the merits of just about anything is endlessly debated (my favorite example continues to be The Remote Control Forums) and of course the opinions-are-oxygen world of weblogs. New technology and services to foster reviews are emerging with BazaarVoice and others.
Fake reviews, or those posted by shills, have long been a problem in the world of user-generated content. From authors' friends writing Amazon reviews to completely fake blogs discussing the merits of products and companies, the utopian dream of helpful and unbiased information had long required a healthy dose of cynicism and fact-checking.
So how do reviews posted on blogs for which the writer is paid, but discloses this fact, change the equation? ReviewMe.com has opened a marketplace for reviews. Anyone with a product or service that wishes to 'buy' reviews from bloggers, simply says how much they're willing to pay. Bloggers who want to receive these offers register their website and are then ranked and rated to have their 'value' determined. ReviewMe then plays matchmaker and the opinions and the cash flow.
The reality, of course, is that most 'review buyers' will be more interested in the links that come from the posts than the reviews themselves. Buying links in blogs for one-time fees isn't a bad deal if the ReviewMe pricing system essentially values PageRank and Authority, which it does. The impact on word-of-mouth and actual click-through traffic will be considered a bonus and almost certainly be positive on balance, assuming that both most reviewers aren't too harsh (a truism) and particularly lousy products and services probably won't participate.
Over time of course, the Google-Juice from these posts could diminish. Given the disclosure requirement it won't be hard to for the engines to algorithmically discard these posts from having PageRank influence.
One of the paid reviews of ReviewMe itself calls it a "marketplace for buying influence." I think that's a pretty good phrase and concept. Why shouldn't someone who ads value to the sales or marketing of a product be compensated? (Isn't that the premise of affiliate marketing?) Adding reviews of the reviewers (Was this review helpful?) could further benefit both the readers and the review-buyers in sorting out the legitimate and valuable from those just BS'ing to make a buck.
Beyond the moral issues and logistics, there is the very real problem that most people probably aren't qualified to blog-review very many things, and won't be paid that much for each post - so will probably stop participating after the novelty wears off. Alternatively, if you blog-reviewed too heavily the opinions or quality would likely be suspect. I'm sure a few particularly opinionated writers will craft new paid-review blogs on which they dish out interesting and informative opinions and make a nice side-income, but they'll be the rarity. In the end I don't think the ReviewMe idea scales very far, but is another piece of the evolving landscape.
NOTE: This was NOT a paid review. I do however own the domain name influencepeddler.com (and have for years) so maybe I've gained some value there. Here are links to other interesting comments on ReviewMe, some of which were bought.
