Four Eight more posts just like this one and I will have covered the costs of “research” for the hostess bar episode WHICH I HAVEN’T PUT UP YET BECAUSE I’M A LITTLE ANXIOUS ABOUT IT. I will. It’ll probably take half a bottle of wine, but I will grow the balls to put it up. Soon.
Anyhow, as you may know, I’ve been wondering about how to make money off the blog, podcast and videocast without feeling like I’m whoring my family on one end and my listener/viewer friends on the other. (I really do think of you as friends, albeit imaginary ones who follow me around everwhere.)
There’s a site called PayPerPost that will pay bloggers to shill for companies. I signed up for it, but never participated. (“I did buy it, but I went home and flushed it down the toilet.”) Once I got to the place where they listed the advertisers, I was very turned off. Some will pay only for positive reviews. Even worse, some want positive reviews AND they DON’T want you to reveal that you’re shilling for them. That’s just plain evil, period. Not only that, if anyone ever found out that I was shilling unethically, my reputation would be ruined forever, and rightfully so.
So now there’s a new site called ReviewMe that REQUIRES bloggers to add a disclaimer to paid posts. AND, if the product you’re shilling for sucks, you can say so and still get paid. Will advertisers sign up? I think it’s a good idea, as long as they’re not selling useless crap. To me, it’s just the same as Howard Stern or Rush Windbag shilling for Bose or whatever a few times every hour. If I do jump on the bandwagon, I won’t do a paid post unless I’ve already put out a podcast or videocast. This way, I make money off ya’ll without ya’ll having to give it to me. It’s a win-win situation.
According to my rankng in Alexa, Technorati, etc., I get paid $30 $15 per post. (Edit: ReviewMe takes half.) The more popular I get, the more I make, which gives me an incentive to put out more stuff. And I PROMISE I will not give out any false praise. There’s only so much I’m willing to do for money.
Oh yeah, and if you sign up for ReviewMe today and blog about them, you’re eligible for a $25,000 prize.
So your first review for ReviewMe is ReviewMe? 😉
I say go for it! Any way you can get something to support your pod/videocasting and still be ethical is fine! (Though, please put “unethical” and “Rush Windbag” together in the same sentence next time!)
Rich,
Thanks for posting about ReviewMe, it sounds better than PayPerPost. I, too, signed up for PayPerPost, but flushed it down the toilet after not having gay sex.
I even went so far as to set up a blog on which I posted any random BS that popped into my head – the sutff that wouldn’t fit on Trans-Pacific Radio. It didn’t take me long to get my head on straight and figure out that making and maintaining a bogus blog just to pimp it out to advertizers was not exactly a profitable enterprise. ReviewMe sounds less. . . I don’t know. . . Shady? Dodgy?
Good luck to you. If it makes Herro Flom Japan pay for itself, it’s worth it – you’ll be living the (admittedly modest) dream.
I’m still kicking myself for giving those PayPerPost sheisters my social security number. When I saw their list of advertisers, I instantly realized I had done something really, really stupid.
Hopefully it’s just their clients and not them who are disreputable. How much could they do with your. . . Oh. Wait. Nevermind. Yeah, hopefully they’re not as bad as their client list.
Have you tried Revver? You probably have tried it already…
The only way you make money at Revver is if people watch the flash version of your videos and they click on the post-roll ad. Unless some place starts offering pay per view instead of pay per click, there’s no real money to be made. Far fewer than %1 of viewers ever click, and the payout is only about 7 cents.