Looking For Blogging Guinea Pigs?
My major headache with the web is that, it is a short-cut comunication device that carries with it the potential danger, (or is it risk now?) of promoting any unproven and untested business model to the fore, for the unsuspecting web audience. ReviewMe has generated an awesome buzz in the last one week on the web, so much so, that a Front Page Diggstory about it from John Chow's site got an amazing 189 diggs in just 24 hours!
There is one 'rule-of-the-thumb' given me by one of my web metors, whenever it comes to decision making on whether to "go along with the mob": "Keep your motives pure- seek to get rich, but not through the 'get-rich-quick' schemes on the net". I have always abided by this 'rule' since he taught me.
It is now obvious that the 1-week buzz over ReviewMe is bursting at the seams. Fundamental flaws discovered by John Chow (he diplomatically called it 'teething problems'), have exposed this experimental model designed as just another traffic-driving scheme for web relevance. It gives me the impresion that the architects of this scheme hurriedly left the drawing board, just because they thought they have a solution to the flaws inherent in the PayPerPost model.
The simplistic offer of $25,000 "GIVEAWAY" (that was the only attraction), could at best, cover only 500 bloggers at $50 per blogger. As at the time of this posting, the ReviewMe has jumped from 1.2 million to 100,202 on Alexa in one week!
In less than 24 hours Andy Hogans of ReviewMe has had to come on Jonn chow's blog to admit the flaws with a promise to rectify them. That 'fire-brigade response' smacks of experimenting with the soul of many a blogger's desire for monetization of their talents. I am an unashamed follower of Jason Calacanis on the philosophy of "Remunerated Talents", and I share his sentiments on why the Payperpost Model may not work.
For example, I have had my mailbox inundated with pending tasks from Blogsvertise- another pay per post site, Yes, I got enlisted, but lost my 'writing liver' when it comes to crass commercialization of my talents and toying with my subscribers and loyal readers. They are hard-won treasure that I would not be ready to trade for any payment, for a post or review that is inspired by monetary rewards. The truth is that: gurus like John Chow cannot go beyond the first review they did for ReviewMe, anything else would speedily whitle down the rising profile of his personal blog. I am certain he would not want to trade that for any mess of pottage too.
Soulcast was another example of this recent trend, after 6 months of experimenting, many enthusiatic bloggers are burnt out and have dropped out. It was just another fantasy. If you have noticed, the fella running the Soulcast has ran out of Adwords campaign too, (I haven't seen his ads on google for the past 3 to 4 weeks running now).
So long friends, please "Shine your eyes" before plunging.
There is one 'rule-of-the-thumb' given me by one of my web metors, whenever it comes to decision making on whether to "go along with the mob": "Keep your motives pure- seek to get rich, but not through the 'get-rich-quick' schemes on the net". I have always abided by this 'rule' since he taught me.
It is now obvious that the 1-week buzz over ReviewMe is bursting at the seams. Fundamental flaws discovered by John Chow (he diplomatically called it 'teething problems'), have exposed this experimental model designed as just another traffic-driving scheme for web relevance. It gives me the impresion that the architects of this scheme hurriedly left the drawing board, just because they thought they have a solution to the flaws inherent in the PayPerPost model.
The simplistic offer of $25,000 "GIVEAWAY" (that was the only attraction), could at best, cover only 500 bloggers at $50 per blogger. As at the time of this posting, the ReviewMe has jumped from 1.2 million to 100,202 on Alexa in one week!
In less than 24 hours Andy Hogans of ReviewMe has had to come on Jonn chow's blog to admit the flaws with a promise to rectify them. That 'fire-brigade response' smacks of experimenting with the soul of many a blogger's desire for monetization of their talents. I am an unashamed follower of Jason Calacanis on the philosophy of "Remunerated Talents", and I share his sentiments on why the Payperpost Model may not work.
For example, I have had my mailbox inundated with pending tasks from Blogsvertise- another pay per post site, Yes, I got enlisted, but lost my 'writing liver' when it comes to crass commercialization of my talents and toying with my subscribers and loyal readers. They are hard-won treasure that I would not be ready to trade for any payment, for a post or review that is inspired by monetary rewards. The truth is that: gurus like John Chow cannot go beyond the first review they did for ReviewMe, anything else would speedily whitle down the rising profile of his personal blog. I am certain he would not want to trade that for any mess of pottage too.
Soulcast was another example of this recent trend, after 6 months of experimenting, many enthusiatic bloggers are burnt out and have dropped out. It was just another fantasy. If you have noticed, the fella running the Soulcast has ran out of Adwords campaign too, (I haven't seen his ads on google for the past 3 to 4 weeks running now).
So long friends, please "Shine your eyes" before plunging.
posted by Philomena Ojikutu at 12:45 PM
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