Should You Buy A Blog Review?
In the first post of this series I took John Chow’s review of my blog as a case study, my verdict was that the review was well worth the $100 I paid. After that post a lot of people were asking if it’s worth the current price - $250. Well, let’s see.
Before I you we answer this question, let me note that this article may be geared more towards those who are looking to buy reviews specifically from Chow, but outlines the same principles of buying paid reviews from any blog.
The Obvious
Let’s makes a couple of things clear - this post will not outline the obvious. Tips like getting reviewed by someone who can do it well and buying reviews on highly targeted-audience blogs have been given many times, and I hate recycling content.
Instead, I’m going to ask you a couple of questions about your blog, and leave you to answer them; after answering them objectively, you should get your answer. Why am I not simply answering with yes or no? because each blog is a separate case, and I’m sure you know your blog better than I do.
Why Are You Buying A Review?
Ultimately the most common goal behind buying a blog review is creating buzz and gaining more exposure. Many people are more curious of the effects rather than assessing the benefit behind paid reviews, if you are thinking about paying $100 just to see your Adsense earnings skyrocket to $10, I’m afraid this post is not for you.
Should You Buy A Blog Review?
As I said earlier, each blog is a separate case, so I can’t give you solid advice based on my own experience; what I can do is helping you ask the right questions.
Assuming you will sit with yourself and answer these questions from a neutral perspective (not an easy thing to do), you should be able to determine how worthwhile would buying a review be; whether it’s a simple $50 or a $250 JohnChow.com one:
1. Are you bringing something of value to the table? most blogs today mainly contain recycled content, a significant percentage is enriched content and only a small percentage of blogs are creating value for their readers to consume.
It is okay not to write a killer-post all the time, but if you want to accomplish anything in the long term, you’ve got to have valuable content.
2. Do you have enough of it? don’t go purchasing a review after you just finished writing a valuable post, wait until you have enough of them so people can see it wasn’t a one time shine of an average blogger (another question to ask).
3. Are you (really) ready for the exposure? keep in mind that with exposure come a lot of good things, but possibly some growing pains as well. The more people that flock to your blog, the more you are likely to be asked uncomfortable questions, be criticized, and generally face conflicts..you may be prepared but you may not be ready.
4. What’s your blog’s first impression from a first-time visitor perspective? people are becoming less and less patient with time, which means first impressions are getting more and more important; I’ve covered this importance in the first two aspects to revise in 2007.
Assuming you are buying a specifically a review from a highly targeted-audience blog (like JohnChow.com), impressing the savvy folks isn’t going to be as easy.
5. Most important question to ask: where would you be a month later? I’ve stumbled across a lot of blogs that got dugg or got reviewed by John Chow, and while their RSS and traffic jumped, you’d come back a week later an see “the day after..” syndrome, not only they don’t retain a significant part of the newcomers, they are also unmotivated due to this fact.
The Bottom Line
For some people these questions may seem a bit aggressive, and some of you might say my commentary is biased towards negativity, well that’s because most bloggers aren’t going to get any significant long-term benefit by buying a review, and it’s not because John Chow doesn’t do 100% of his job.
It’s because of two reasons: The first is that their blog simply isn’t providing value that’s worth sticking to, in this case I’d suggest working on that before forking out $250. The second case is when the blogger lacks in marketing skills and doesn’t know how to make (or keep) the most of his review, if you suspect that’s you - the feed should let you know when the next post in this series is up.
I like where you’re going with this post, but I was really asking if _you_ would pay $250 for the review.
Obviously this only applies to you, which is why I ask as such. This post should let everyone else answer that question for themselves, but I’d like to know about you specifically.