Get Paid To Write Reviews

This is Part 4 in our series “How To Make Money From Your Blog”.

There are two ways to get paid for blogging, one is to write for someone else. However if you want to get paid for writing on your own blog there are currently three methods of doing it.

LoudLaunch

LoudLaunch is the newest entrant into the paid blogging market, and is paying us for this post.

How it works:
Publishers select which campaigns they wish to write on and issue what they call “a Micro Press Release” on their blog. It allows bloggers to be paid for helping advertisers distribute their press releases or whatever news they wish to share.
For example, LoudLaunch wishes to get news of their new site out and so have placed an offer that suitable blogs can accept. The type of blog that can accept is restricted to which category the blog is located in and whether that matches the category of blog the advertiser wishes to attract. The price paid for a review depends on their review of your blog and some undisclosed metrics.

If you have a new website, product, or a general press release, you can create an advertising campaign starting from $50. Obviously the higher your budget is allows more bloggers to distribute your news.

Entrance Requirements:
“Your blog must be in English. You must be at least 18 years of age. You must have a valid SSN or Federal Tax ID. Your blog must be at least 60 days old with a pattern of regular posting activity. Your blog cannot contain any offensive material such as pornography or other items deemed to be inappropriate to mainstream audiences.” You will also need to pass a discretionary review (that seems to take around 24 hours at the moment), which looks at generally whether your blog is worth reading or not.

PayPerPost

PayPerPost (PPP) is probably the most well known of the paid blogging sites.

How it works:
Advertisers post opportunities and an amount they will pay for a (usually positive) review. Publishers (you) can choose which opportunities to take as long as you meet any specific requirements the advertiser has, such as the subject of your blog being relevant to their product. The amount they pay varies from $4 to $20, of which you get all. PPP charge a 25% fee on top to the advertiser.

Entrance Requirements:
“You must be 18 to participate or have written consent by a legal guardian.
All posts must be in English on a blog written in the English language.
Your blog must also be at least 90 days old, verifiable by a third party index of the site.
The content of each post must be unique. You may not post the same thing on different blogs. You may not copy someone else’s post (except when specified by the advertiser).
We reserve the right to deny any post and cancel any account at any time at our sole discretion.”

ReviewMe

ReviewMe is a direct competitor to PPPand LoudLaunch but works differently.

How it works:
ReviewMe doesn’t allow you to select from a list of opportunities, but allows advertisers to choose blogs that they would like to review their product or website. The publisher can then still choose whether to accept the offer or not, but has to wait for opportunities to come to them. ReviewMe takes a huge 50% cut of the amount the advertiser pays for a review.

Entrance Requirements:
ReviewMe calculates whether to accept your blog, and the price charged for a review, based on a number of variables such as your Alexa and Technorati ranking. They also accept blogs not in English.

Overall

All sites require disclosure, that is to tell your readers somewhere that you are writing a paid post. PPP previously did not require this which caused some controversy, and they still have the “easiest” disclosure requirements.

Which one to sign up for?

If you decide to accept paid reviews then why not sign up for them all and see which one works for you? The prices vary from site to site, as do the quality of the topics that you can blog about. We have so far posted two paid reviews out of 138 posts, so its hardly overwhelming this site. John Chow dot com writes an excellent overview of PPP and ReviewMe, and there’s a nice comparison of the features here too. Both exclude LoudLaunch for the moment.

If you have any experiences of any of the three sites, please let me know in the comments below.

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