Don’t buy a John Chow review without the blog to back it up
It used to be that paid reviews were something a blogger could aim towards. Once a blogger had built his or her blog up to something they could be proud of, there would be a paid review in the right league and at the right price that could continue the expansion of the blog. Something has changed recently, and it’s happened on John Chow’s blog.
The oft-overused phrase “the John Chow effect” is killing the whole Review Me process and making a mockery of the entire set up because clueless bloggers are buying $400 for reviews without thinking about what they are spending their money on.
The two reviews that have particularly acted as a catalyst for this are the one about Andrew Talk’s blog and, more recently, the one about John Jordan’s blog. Both of these blogs are nowhere near the stage where the author should be looking at hitting the top level of reviews.
What is most troubling is that these two bloggers appear happy at having wasted their money on scathing reviews when they have very little on their blogs that will sustain readership. Why would you buy a John Chow review if you don’t even know the basics of blogging? These people are killing the Review Me process by making themselves look silly and turning other people away from buying top-end paid reviews.
A number of commenters in reply to John Chow’s reviews have said that they have been turned off the idea of splashing out on what was once the holy grail of getting yourself reviewed. Now, anybody and everybody is working on the basis that a John Chow review = success for your blog. That’s not how it goes down.
When you are ordering paid reviews, look at how much you are spending, where your review is going, and how this can benefit you. Don’t bat out of league. There will always be time to work your way up to the stage where you can buy a review from the A-list, but this is not a process that should be rushed.
If I were John Chow, I would stop using Review Me’s services so that he can take full control of whose blogs he reviews and whose he does not.
As for me, I just purchased a paid review that I believe will benefit me. I thought long and hard about this paid review and I’ve put my money where my mouth is (although it’s not a huge amount of money) and will see what happens. Wish me luck.
Addendum: I emailed John Chow about this and asked him what was up. He told me that he has complete control over which blogs he reviews and that he reviewed those one to prove that just because they bought a paid review, it didn’t mean they’d get a positive review. John said he will have a post up about this soon.
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Digg it for goodness sake! Stumble your heart out!
5 Responses to “Don’t buy a John Chow review without the blog to back it up”
Good luck.
I’d like to build up to that as well.
How would stopping using ReviewMe give John more control over who he reviews? He always has the choice whether to review them or not.
I was under the impression that the reviews were pre-paid. Otherwise he wouldn’t have reviewed Andrew Talk’s cluster f-ck.
The payment only goes through once you choose to accept the offer. He chose to review Andrew Talk’s site and I think most people would if they were getting $200 out of the deal.
$200? Does ReviewMe take 50% of the $400 review price? Then I really don’t understand why John Chow isn’t selling reviews directly from his blog. More control and money should be reason enough.
As for the couple of negative reviews he has done, I don’t think he should have agreed to the second one. The first one was blatant copyright infringement, and to take the $400 for a negative review was only right. The second time, however, I don’t think the review was beneficial to anyone.
Of course it is difficult to disagree with an easy $400, but the review may cause him to actually lose potential review offers in the future.