from $0 to $1500 per month in 9 months…up next $10k+ per month…
Posted by Ben Cook as Blog Marketing, Blog Monetization, Earn Money
When looking at the blog income report for January, many of you noticed a drastic increase in the income from Sponsored Reviews. A couple of you asked how I had been able to get so many extra reviews from one month to the next. Well, I’m going to break my own advice and explain how exactly I managed to up my income so drastically.
The truth is, I didn’t do any more Sponsored Reviews than normal. I just made more on the ones that I did write. A lot more in fact.
So how did I do this? The answer is pretty simple… I raised my price. SponsoredReviews like all the other review marketplaces ranks blogs on several criteria. SR specifically looks at Link Pop, Technorati ranking, and Alexa rankings to help the place a general value on your blog. For example, a review on a 3 star (in this case check marks) blog will probably be worth more than a review on a one check blog. When advertisers browse Sponsored Reviews marketplace, the blogs are displayed by two criteria, first, the number of check marks. Next, the blogs are sorted by price.
A couple of weeks back I noticed that Blogging Experiment’s ranking had moved up to a 5. And, since 5 checks is the most that any blog can get, I decided to make sure my blog showed up first according to the next criteria, price. Unlike bargain stores where the best deal is always promoted first, Sponsored Reviews lists the blogs with the highest priced 5 star blogs first. To show up first, I simple increased the list price. Instead of listing a review at $200, I set the price at $801 (the previous top blog was charging $800) and, as you can see, this blog now shows up first when advertisers browse the listings.
In reality this isn’t all that much of a secret, but a lot of people will hesitate to pull the trigger. By putting the price so high, you’re going to get fewer reviews and that’s very much true. However, for the Blogging Experiment I’ve only had ta few reviews purchased through the market, without me having to bid on them initially. So what I’ve essentially done, is made roughly 4 times as much per review that is purchased through the marketplace. Also, by being listed first, I receive a lot more exposure and chances at having a review purchased outright. Time will tell for sure whether my tactic works over the long haul, but at least for last month, it paid off well.
14 Responses
DJ at Fermentarium
February 5th, 2008 at 10:14 am
1I noticed that you don’t have Adsense. Did you drop them at some point? I’ve hesitated to use Sponsored Reviews on my site, because I’ve heard that Google will punish you. What is your experience with this?
Jim | BloggingStartup
February 5th, 2008 at 10:44 am
2Seems like a smart use of the Sponsored Reviews systems….and it worked for you. Congrats.
Ben Cook
February 5th, 2008 at 11:37 am
3@ DJ, here is why i don’t use adsense.
As for Google punishing sites that use Sponsored Reviews, it’s true that they’ve said they will and in fact many people that use paid review services (especially payperpost) have had their pagerank penalized. That’s why for instance this blog shows a page rank of 0 when it was previously a 4.
However, pagerank does not affect a site’s rankings in the search engines and I haven’t lost any traffic or rankings from Google.
That’s really a decision each webmaster should make on their own and consider the costs and benefits of each option. For me though, the money from Sponsored Reviews is more than having PageRank is worth to me.
CatherineL
February 5th, 2008 at 11:46 am
4Great advice. One of the best ways to increase your profits is to increase your prices. Even if you lose some customers - you’ll still come out well ahead.
What’s the bets that John Chow is charging more than you by the end of the week?
SEO Blog
February 5th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
5Definitively a smart move. I remember a similar advice (on post) at Catherine’s blog regarding this same topic.
In either case, raising the price will definitively make so you can earn more money with less work involved, now the trick is to keep them coming back or at least recommending that amount of money spent for a review.
Well done Ben.
Gerri
February 5th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
6I have tried them but have not yet been approved for any opportunities. What am I not doing right?
Rebecca Laffar-Smith
February 7th, 2008 at 1:12 am
7Of course, having just told your 850 subscribed RSS readers and everyone else who visits your blog how you’ve done it you’ll drop down that list because everyone else will amp their prices too.
I still haven’t figured out how PageRank works. For some reason, my static site has a PR of 1. It is updated very infrequently, has minimal pages, ranks very low in search listings, and has zero google affiliation. My blog still has no PR, it is optimized, returns fantastic search results, and is updated multiple times a week. It’s made me wonder if blogs in general are penalized simply for being blogs. I’m also wondering how my link weights affect my rank. As far as I’m concerned it’s too much of a headache to figure out. It’s not like sites with high PR are necessarily better than sites without PR.
Congratulations on your Sponsored Reviews success, Ben. Fewer reviews for more money sounds like a great deal for you, AND for those purchasing reviews.
Homeboy's Astronomy Blog
February 7th, 2008 at 1:44 am
8This is a smart move. I must check my position in SponsoredReviews right away and consider raising the price.
Tom Ross
February 11th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
9I just tried signing up and was disappointed by their 3 month waiting time! What about us new but keen bloggers?
Ben Cook
February 11th, 2008 at 8:41 pm
10@ Tom, that’s pretty standard for these types of review sites. PayPerPost and ReviewMe also have the 3 month waiting period. Really, I’d say it’s probably for the best as it will take a while to build value on your blog and you probably wouldn’t make much from reviews yet.
Steve Elliott
February 13th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
11I’m with Rebecca on this. On of my sites is about 13 months old and gets a meagre 50 uniques a day, but is somehow a PR3. My top blog gets far far more traffic but is PR2.
So confusing to the layman. Guess I will be sticking with my accounting job for a while longer !
Simlock verwijderen
February 24th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
12Yes, I saw you are making a huge income with your sponsored reviews. About $600 dollars. That is so much, keep up the good work. I read your blogs with pleasure. You are a good writer man, maybe you can work for the local news paper or write an book and sell it.
mnel
June 8th, 2008 at 5:22 am
13hi. i’m new with sponsored reviews and i just wanna ask, will i get suspended if my posts have a google ad in it? you see, i’ve added google ads to show after my posts, will my sponsored reviews content/membership be affected by it? thanks!
Claudia
June 30th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
14It seams they changed the way they show you the blogs.
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