So for about the last month I have been signed up with SponsoredReviews.com to try to drum up another stream of income by writing sponsored/paid reviews for different websites and products. After competing a few reviews and getting my first payment I figured it was time that I shared my experiences with the site.
First Impressions
After searching around the site looking for reviews to complete, I quickly noticed that there are not a ton of reviews. With some categories, such as business or technology, there are 2 or 3 pages worth of listings but other categories such as web development only have a couple listings. Luckily with with the broad ranges of topics that I can cover with Dorm Room Biz, I am able to submit a bid for a lot of different categories which then opens up a lot of different opportunities for us to write reviews and make some extra money! If you are going to use a site similar to SponsoredReviews.com or ReviewMe.com, it is important to have a broad enough range of content that you can cover a lot of different topics without the review seeming out of place.
Number of Reviews
I have currently applied to over 10 reviews since joining the site. Only one of those “bids” was rejected by the site owner. I have 7 that are currently waiting for a response from the site owner. I have had 3 approved and with the time I had, only had a chance to write 2 of the reviews and 1 expired.
Thoughts
I like the system that SponsoredReviews has in place, however, there is one thing that I do not like. The fact that a “bid” submission can go unapproved forever. The first round of submissions that I sent out were on 8/28/07, 3 of those still have not been approved. If there was either a deadline for submissions to be approved by the advertiser, I think that it would be more effectively. The two reviews that I did complete were not approved until 2 weeks after I bid on the review.
Lets Talk Money
If your blog has the exposure and the numbers (ranking, visitors, etc) you can demand a higher pay out for your reviews and hope to get a larger commission, but for Dorm Room Biz, I have been able to make bids of $15 per review. That gets me about $10 a review. The some reviews have a price cap of say $10, which only nets me about $5. So for the first two reviews that I completed, I got a PayPal payment of $13.00.
Continue to Use?
I will continue to use SponsoredReviews as a way to get some extra income for Dorm Room Biz. Combining this site with other sites such as ReviewMe and Text Link Ads the payments can add up.
Do you use Sponsored Reviews? Do you use a different review website?
I’ve made a total of 20 dollars since the inception of Startup Students – all from Adsense. Clearly I am doing something wrong, but I am not sure what. I signed up for text link ads a long time ago and they accepted me into some sort of beta program – unfortunately Ive never had an offer to put the ads on my site. And reviewme wouldnt accept me for some reason 🙁 Any suggestions?
Hey Brett. It took me a while to get some takers on TLA as well, however, for some reason their plugin widget isn’t working correctly on my site. Their support wasn’t much help either, so I have to figure something else out.
But just remember to diversify your income avenues. Sign up for different programs and see what works the best for you. ReviewMe and SponsoredReviews are great ways to pick up a little extra cash (even if it only is $5 a review or something).