A brand new business, ReviewMe was launched last Thursday November 9th. They use a model to help bloggers monetize their blogs by reviewing various advertisers’ products and services.
This new service comes from Patrick Gavin and Andy Hagans both also at Text Link Ads.

Some important points to remember while using Reviewme.com:

1. Advertisers pay for product reviews ahead of time, with no guarantees that review will be positive
2. The review needs to be a minimum of 200 words and needs to be completed within 48 hours after accepting the offer
3. Bloggers explicitly need to disclose that they are being compensated for their posts.

For more articles and discussion on this new service you can also look at:

• ReviewMe Launches: A Better PayPerPost by Michael Arrington / TechCrunch
• ReviewMe.com Launches With A Model That Makes Sense by Jim Kukral / ReveNews
• ReviewMe Launches by Darren Rowse / ProBlogger

Are online reviews important?
According to Guy Kawasaki online feedback is very important. Guy has written a post on online reviews encouraging companies to embrace online reviews:

• Use reviews to improve your operations. Some negative reviews are off the mark, but most provide at least a kernel of truth about problems in your business. Take steps to fix these problems.
• Encourage your customers to post reviews. Mention these review sites to your regular customers, and tell them how much you would appreciate them posting an honest review about you.
• Use positive reviews in your marketing. Just like a Zagat’s write-up or a newspaper profile, a good online review can be posted in your shop window or on your Web site.

Also another interesting point by Elias Kai from Google-kai

wow, I think you got everyone’s attention, but can you see the balance, will it be positive or negative. Anyway, negative or positive publicity is always a publicity.

And Bob Caswell from Computers.net writes on ProBlogger.net:

What I don’t get is the all or nothing / black and white approach to this new idea. For example, one big complaint is that if most of your reviews are negative, then advertisers will no longer be interested in your site. This could be true but is assuming too much.

First of all, are advertisers going to read through your entire archives to figure out what is positive and what is negative? And it’s as if everyone who signs up with ReviewMe will stop what they were previously doing and only write reviews for ReviewMe. For my part, I post something nearly every day, sometimes multiple times a day. If a paid review with full disclosure is here or there, how would an advertiser know where to look without reading half my blog?

I don’t know if the business plan will work out, but I don’t think it’s fundamentally flawed. I think blogger and advertiser behaviour is hard to define. The results will tell us how it works, not our over-simplified hypothetical’s.

Gene Kavner Former World-Wide Director, Amazon Associates Affiliate Program, 2005-2006.

Bias always exists, whether disclosed or not. Being compensated for the post does not in any way mean that a blogger is not honestly recommending a product they have evaluated and found useful. Just as not disclosing compensation does not automatically dupe the reader, disclosing does not automatically mean the writer is biased. Credibility of the blogger is built on consistent, interesting, thought-provoking perspective, based on months if not years of publishing. If I respect a blogger, I will not mind if he is compensated. And he doesn’t need to tell me. I will trust that this blogger will not want to ruin his reputation which had taken years to build over building bogus positive reviews based solely on getting token compensation paid him by the advertiser.

Elle Brown from Wedaholic just did a paid review via Reviewme.com.

To be honest I was surprised to find a wedding product company wanting a review from my site on day one. I had only just finished writing the review about ReviewMe.com itself!

Well I will just carry on running my blog as normal and see what firstly the reaction is and secondly whether any more advertisers want to appear on the site.

Seems that the only difference between the reviewme model and what has been going on forever is that the reviewer is required to disclose that they got paid. Top reviewers have always gotten paid… they get free gadgets to review. Seems like a free PS3 is worth a heck of a lot more time than a little $30 check.

For $60 you can get the following on LCDs Assistant:

1. You get great exposure on LCDsAssistant.com. Typically it takes 2 -3 days for a post on this blog to be indexed in Google. On many occasions I expect the review to be longer than 200 words (minimum requirement, see above) in order to write a fair review and I prefer to add photographs with the post.
2. An good and honest review of your product or service. Please browse though the archives for my existing reviews to see the standard of writing you find on this weblog.
3. I will end the post with the words “”This is a sponsored review. Please note that this post represents ethical and unbiased review.”. This to avoid any confusion as to whether I am writing the review for fun or if I am receiving money for it.

This is a great opportunity for LCD TVs en Flat TVs and accessories for these TVs, especially new ones, to receive immediate exposure in front of a targeted audience.

P.S. This is a sponsored review. Please note that this post represents an ethical and unbiased review.

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