Sponsored post: Review Me

This is a sponsored post about the Review Me service. It's not like I need the $15 USD I'm getting for this or that it's even adequate money for the sign-up effort and writing the post; I'm doing this simply because I think this is a great idea. I came upon this via GameProducer.net.

The problem is that old-fashioned mass marketing or even targeted marketing like Google AdWords is just not cutting it for some products. To get that community interest you need to engage people. Review Me features products which need community exposure but don't work well with mass marketing. They pay bloggers to discuss their products: it's essentially a global media agency for reaching bloggers.

Of course I'm thinking here that videogames could work very well in this context. I know I can rely on Penny Arcade's coverage of the games they play. Even at the risk of sounding much more influential than I am (and I really have no illusions: I've got a total of 2'000 visitors), it's the old ethos of reaching the opinion leaders.

Take the online RPGs I discussed earlier today. You can use banner ads to reach potential customers for Eve Online and D&D Stormreach, since they have popular imagery and USPs you can throw at the audience. But what about the real niche games, like A Tale In The Desert? Games which are too out there to be explained in a single sentence? You can't tell about them if people don't talk about them. Review Me might be just the thing to help get the word out there about these more obscure games without excessive PR efforts.

So there you have it, a way to get bloggers to discuss your product (or site, or service, or...). The only requirements for the sponsored reviews are to write 200+ words (this post is 444 words) and be clear about the fact that it's a paid-for post. There's no need to be positive about the reviewed thing.

As a blogger, I feel good about this. The products it's good for are the kind of stuff I'd likely write about anyway, and since the advertiser hand-picks the sites they want to feature in, the content I'm proposed should fit my line well. Since writing a post is a relatively big effort anyway, I don't think this is "easy money" - it's a bonus, sure, and if you've got a popular site, you can make $50 USD per review.

Now, this is all theoretical. I don't think I'll see many propositions from the Review Me advertisers, but I just want to be clear that I wouldn't categorically say no to them.

Update 15/11/06: We broke the 50 visitor threshold yesterday. Nice, that.