Bloggers make money?

How dare they! It’s true though. We all know the blogosphere is not just used to talk about our cats and day at the mall. Blogs are great ways to communicate. Executives can publish one post and have the entire world up-to-date, companies can talk to its current and potential customers, people can share their ideas and stories with friends and strangers alike. Blogs are powerful and extremely functional–people are catching on.

So, why can’t some bloggers make money? A lot of people are full-time bloggers (they may prefer to be called journalists, or writers though). Sure, we can drop a few ad links on your website and make a few bucks a day. Does that really compliment what we’re doing? Hardly. Just like television commercials ineffectiveness: they don’t compliment the medium nor the content. Relevance is important and a few sites have found a way to solve that problem for bloggers.

I’ll only venture forward by stating this post is sponsored by ReviewMe. I agreed to see what this crazy idea could offer me. A few dollars to talk about a website and review it? Don’t I do that anyway? Yes. Should I get paid for it? Why not? Sure, my wisdom and commentary are invaluable but I’m willing to negotiate a price…

Oh, you’re convinced I’m not trustworthy anymore, right? I get paid so I’m no longer impartial? I understand you can’t help but be skeptical as to what I say but that’s nonsense. For starters, ReviewMe doesn’t allow advertisers to mandate positive reviews. In other words, it’s the author’s discretion as to which way their review will lean. Mike likens sites like ReviewMe to PR firms. I think this is a pretty accurate analogy. As I said, I’m the kind of guy who is going to look at sites and give my honest opinion either way. ReviewMe simply facilitates the exchange between advertisers willing to be judged and the bloggers willing to talk about products and services. I hope it can attract the services of some interesting new sites. Obviously, I wouldn’t talk about irrelevant material here so there’s truly no impact on the reader.

So, with that said I’d recommend ReviewMe to anyone. The site’s interface is straight-forward and easy to manage. I had no problem signing up and getting my first review started. Will it be effective in generating honest ‘buzz’ and advertising? I have no way to tell but I do realize that money introduces a new level of motivation. There’s no doubt this will have an interest effect on blogs everywhere.