I admit it, the first few ReviewMe reviews had me wondering; do the advertisers see a return on their $100 post? Some people would say, “Who cares? Just take the money!” However, I’m an advertiser as well as a publisher, so this kind of stuff interest me.
As luck with have it, one of the sites I did a review on posted their ReviewMe experience. Back in December, I posted a review of PubIncome.com, a blog own by Jason Rodriguez. At the time I did the review, Jason’s blog had just seven posts. Since the review, Jason has added only three more. However, one of the new posts is a recap on what happened after I reviewed his blog.
According to Jason, I sent him roughly 500 readers in a little over 24 hours. Jason didn’t provide stats after 24 hours, but judging by the graph, traffic dropped off tremendously.
$100 for 500 readers works out to 20 cents CPC. This really isn’t a high rate. I’m paying as much as 35 cents CPC for visitors from Steve Pavlina’s blog.
The problem with the above case study is there is no way to tell if the $100 Jason spent was profitable. At the moment, PubIncome has no income sources. Therefore, the only way to measure success is to work out the cost of each visitor and compare it to what it would have cost using other advertising methods. If Jason is happy with 20 cents per visitor, then the review was successful.
ReviewMe For Affiliate Marketers
When Aaron Wall asked me to review his SEO Book (aff), I signed up as an affiliate before posting the review. Signing up as an affiliate allowed me to track any sales that may result. It also allows Aaron to measure the effectiveness of his advertising efforts. Aaron made this blog post a few days after the review was posted.
I have not tracked sales from most of my ReviewMe reviews (because I do not generally track that granular), but John Chow put up affiliate links in his review of my ebook, and I can tell you that his review paid for itself the first day.
The review of Aaron’s e-book has sold eight copies so far. At $79.00 per book, that works out to $632.00 in gross sales. After removing $240.00 for affiliate commissions and $100.00 for the review, Aaron is in the black by $292.00.
Here is the exciting part. The review is still on the blog. Google has indexed the post so it will continue to generate sales. Aaron has received a permanent link, which helps his SEO and ranking. And to top it all off, he made money on the deal!
Because I have been involved with ReviewMe, many people have told me that they thought ReviewMe was just an SEO tool, but I realize that links / rankings / SEO in general / brand building / trust building / sales are all just a side effect of getting exposure and satisfying market needs. The benefit of reviews from a network like ReviewMe is that you get exposure in active channels that people trust and are paying attention to.
The SEO Book case study provides an extremely compelling reason for affiliate marketers to try ReviewMe. Many advertisers think ReviewMe as just an SEO tool, but as Aaron has shown, it can be far more than that.
I’m starting to think I should charge more than $100 for a review.