I’m a bit disappointed in the services that are available to help bloggers sell their “real estate.” I’ll be honest .. I started this blog when I was a newbie at Internet Marketing and it’s early life was nothing more than a splog at best. Not really knowing what made a great blog or even the best way to push products, I went with the highly overused “review” blog. Throw a few banners up and talk about products and people would come in droves to buy them … right? Wrong. I’ve since deleted all of the original posts and started over some time ago. My goal now is to publish content that people actually want to read … and if they buy some products while they’re here or a paid review or ad space … so much the better.


So when I first began this blog, I ran across all those paid review sites and applied to them. I was promptly told that my blog did not meet their rigorous quality criteria. Well, now it does and I’ve been accepted into all of them. However, the problem I am now finding is that their advertisers don’t meet my rigorous quality criteria … with my main gripe being … they are cheapos. Going to PayPerPost to the available opportunities for a blog that hasn’t acquired A-list status yet, I find review after review for $5-$10. The graphic to the left is today’s “Featured” opportunities. The $35 one requires that your blog be at least a pagerank 5 — ha ha ha —. Are they not aware of the Google slap that stripped some of the top blogs of a lot of their pagerank? And do they think that an A-list blog will review them for $35? Not likely. Quite simply, I’m not going to do an in-depth review of someone else’s product or website for 5 bucks. That isn’t the way I want to position this blog. I spend a lot of time writing content and a paid review is not exception. My last paid review was 450 words with two graphics and numerous backlinks to pages within the site. It is well written and I had to research the site and company before writing about it. It’s on another blog I write, but I was paid $25 for it and that is acceptable to me. I can live with that at this time, but if these companies think they’ll get that level of attention for a measly 5 bucks, it won’t be here. You also cannot list more than one blog until you’ve accepted and completed 10 reviews. I’m also limited to 10 reviews per month …. hahahahahahahahahahahah … I seriously doubt that I’ll find ten reviews a month that I’m interested in.

Review Me is another one that had declined my application and has now accepted it. They no longer have an affiliate program in place, so new blogs cannot display that graphic that tells you how much a review is on this blog with a link to order one. If you are in the general marketplace but don’t yet qualify for the “premium” marketplace, you can’t even set your own price. You can’t even browse the marketplace to hunt for opportunities. You get accepted and then sit around and hope someone chooses your blog out of thousands to make an offer to, and I don’t even have a clue as to how much they have me listed for … the price that they list me for may be unacceptable to me.

Now we come to SponsoredReviews. I recently joined them and was immediately accepted for a $25 review on my sports blog … that’s the 450 review I was talking about. Not only do they list some quality advertisers, but you can browse the marketplace and bid on the reviews you’re interested in. You can also set your own price and list as many blogs as you think will qualify. I currently have four of my blogs listed with them to cover different niches. This one appears to be the most promising of the bunch so far.

I’ve recently been accepted by Smorty … very recently. I found very few opportunities listed there, but it’s too soon to evaluate Smorty, so I won’t go into any detail until I’ve had more time to check it out.

OIOPublisher is a new and very interesting concept in selling your blog real estate. I recently posted about OIOPublisher here. Today is the announcement day for a contest I entered to win a free copy of OIO. If I don’t win, I’m going to pay the one-time price of $37 for OIO and give it a whirl. I like the idea of getting rid of the middleman altogether and selling your blog reviews and ads independently. If OIO has a viable and thriving advertiser marketplace, they just may be the best option yet. I will post about it when I’ve actually got the script and know how it works in greater detail.

I was selling Text Link Ads but found that I haven’t really earned nearly enough money with them to risk Google’s powerful and almighty wrath. It took me while to reach pagerank 3 and I’m not going to throw it away for a few bucks. I’m still with Kontera, testing out the benefits and also new to Chitika MiniMalls, testing out their program.

Now ad space is something different to me. I don’t put a lot of time and thought into ad space. It’s just there. If it’s empty, it isn’t making money so my criteria for selling it are less than a paid review. Right now, I’m still waiting for approval as an advertiser in Project Wonderful, which I also posted about recently. I know the ad prices are low … I have bought numerous spots there and I love the opportunity to place ads at a reasonable price on some very nice blogs.

This is just a recap of the different services I’ve come across and started using to the degree, and how they are beneficial to me … or NOT. Some of you may have different or better experiences with the companies I’ve listed and if so, I’d love to hear about it. Bookmark