One of the sites I visit nearly every day is Neatorama. This morning I finally got a chance to do some “catch up surfing”, and I noticed a blurb on their site talking about a new service called Review Me.

I’ll admit that I have an almost knee-jerk reaction when I hear the phrase “get paid to review…”, but in this context it actually looks like it might be a good way to match blog reviewers with smaller companies looking to get the word out on their products and services. 

Let me back up for a moment and clarify: I have no problem with a review site paying their reviewers to do their job (in fact, I think this is a good thing!), I have no problem with a review site having sponsors or advertisers as long as all affiliations are completely disclosed or are at least quite obvious, and I have no problem with people making a living doing what they do best. The key here is proper disclosure.

However, the phrase “get paid to review” almost makes me think of payola, or being paid to slip a “sponsored” review in with the “regular” reviews. But evidently that is not the idea behind Review Me.

According to the FAQ: “We like to keep the guidelines loose, so bloggers can write in a way that makes sense for their unique niche and audience. We do require that all reviews are at least 200 words long, and that the review post is disclosed as being sponsored in some fashion.”

It looks like Review Me is basically operating as a middle-man, taking 50% of the proceeds when they connect an advertiser to a blogger.

The ”How It Works” page for advertisers reads:

2. Create a free account, define the products or services that you would like to get reviewed, then purchase some reviews.
 

3. Your order is sent to the reviewers and they will choose to take on the review or not.
 

4. You receive notification when each review is completed and published to the reviewer’s web site.

The “How It Works” page for Bloggers reads:

2. If approved, your site will enter our ReviewMe marketplace and clients will purchase reviews from you.

3. You decide to accept the review or not.

4. You will be paid $20.00 to $200.00 for each completed review that you post on your site.

I really like the blurb added on the FAQ page aimed directly at advertisers, as it is not too different than Gear Diary’s own: “We do not allow advertisers to require a positive review. The vast majority of reviews are measuredly positive, although many do contain constructive criticism. We view this as a bonus: how else can you quickly and cheaply get feedback on a product or service from influencers?”

I thought it would be fun to give Review Me a try so that I could write about it from a more informed point of view, but what stopped me in my tracks was that there was no encryption or protection evident on their registration page which asked for my name, address and social security number. Right from the start, a major deal-breaker.

So what do you think about a service such as Review Me?

Added later: I just found a very informative post by David Ponce on Oh Gizmo about this very service which he was paid $125 to write. Wild! Well, for those that wondering, I did mine for free.

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