Earlier this year there was a big fuss in the blogging community over services that paid bloggers to write reviews of products. There was no disclosure, and positive reviews were expected. Obviously, the ethics of this were questionable and the backlash predictable.

ReviewMe is another site offering bloggers money to write reviews, but they demand a bit more transparency. Bloggers are expected to announce, prominently if not upfront, that they are being paid for the article and they are expected to give honest reviews. I’m getting $30 to write this, by the way.

I’ve signed Spinneyhead and How to Save the World for Free up to ReviewMe. It’ll be interesting to see what sort of products and services get oferred to How to Save the World, and just how Green they really are.

Joining is easy enough, blogs are accepted based upon a start rating system- which also affects how much you can expect to be paid for a review. The system draws on Alexa and other information about the blog. I was surprised to get a two out of five stars for both my submitted blogs. I must be more influential than I thought. (But, obviously, not as influential as I’d like.) Once you’ve been accepted you just sit back and wait for the advertisers to contact you with offers. There is one review you can do right at the beginning. ReviewMe has an advertising budget of $25,000 (since raised to $100,000) dedicated to getting reviews of the service, hence this piece. I learnt about the service from one such post, and I’ve seen another since signing up, so they’ve already proved effective.

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