Some of you may be wondering why I have priced the ReviewMe reviews for the blog at $750. Well, sit back and read on because I am about to tell you why.

For the past month I have been fooling around with Pay-Per-Post, a sponsored posting service. This service matches up bloggers and advertisers. Advertisers tell what they want and offer a price. Bloggers then look over the offers and pick ones they want to take. Well, in theory that is how it works.

In reality I have found that most of the bloggers who use Pay-Per-Post have a separate blog just for the PPP postings. This is good and bad.

It's good because it keeps their "real" blog from looking like trash and it is bad because it makes PPP look terrible. Face it, if you came to a blog and every other post was 300 words or less and an advertisement, would you come back?

To me PPP is all about building links back to your site.

According to PPP I stand to make $83 this month for doing five paid posts. There is also $30 waiting for me from some "review my post" offer I signed up for and some bloggers signed up under me for. Those posts have been pending for over 30 days!

So, what does that have to do with ReviewMe? A lot.

Unlike PPP ReviewMe is setup so that the advertiser has to pick the blog. The blogger gets to set a price (max $750 unless you are well known) and the buyer can look at your ratings and blog before deciding to offer you the job.

This is good because it insures what you are trying to promote does not end up on some horrible blog. The only bad thing about ReviewMe is that they take 50% of the price as their cut.

That is high!

I can see them taking 20% as a finders fee but 50%?

Because the fee is so high I have to charge people twice what I would be willing to accept as a fee for the review service. To be honest, if someone offered me a good amount of cash I would do it for less than what the ReviewMe sticker says.

Once I get paid for my last PPP post I will stop using their service. This is due in part to the fact that all of the jobs I would consider taking are for blogs with a PR of 7+. Do they people even know that Digg is only PR 8? What about Yahoo, they are only PR 9! Not to mention the jobs that list a low PR and a low Alexa ranking!

So, know that I have stated some of my feelings on sponsored posting let me explain why the price is so high:

  • ReviewMe's 50% cut
  • Permanent link on my blog
  • My high degree of Google search traffic
  • My personal pride

Right now I sell links on my blog via Text Link Ads for $25 per month. That's about $12.50 for me which would be $150 per year for me as TLA also takes 50% of the money charged.

Now, I grant you that the post will only have one link but it is permanent and when you add in the high amount of search traffic I get from Google, there is a good chance your article will still be read long after it is published.

The last part, my personal pride, is very important to me. My experience with PPP made me feel like a dirty pimp. I felt like I was selling out my readers for a few pieces of silver. Even though I picked the jobs to take I still could not help feel somewhat dirty from the whole process. If I'm going to feel somewhat dirty from running a sponsored post I expect to be compensated to such a degree that I can buy some soap afterwards.

I don't expect anyone to actually purchase a ReviewMe review from me. I don't think I would spend even $500 for one, let alone $750!

Now, please understand, I am not against the concept or people who profit from it. I just do not feel it fits in with me. I'd much rather just sell advertising space on my blog than write about something because I was directly paid to do so.