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When Does a Runner Reach the Finish Line?
You might be thinking that this is not related to the post, but it is. Say, a person is running a 100-meter track. Before he is able to travel 100 meters, he has to travel half, which is 50 meters. Before he can travel 50 meters, he has to travel 25 meters. Before he can cover the distance of 25 meters, he has to reach the 12.5 meter line first, and so on and so forth. So this means that the runner will be stuck at the starting line. Thus he will never reach the finish line, his goal!
Stop thinking about the paradox now. Let’s connect it to buying blog reviews being a poor marketing strategy. Buying reviews may, at first, seem to help you reach your goal, though in reality you would just be wasting money and not reach whatever your goal is for your website!
Don’t believe me? Read on.
Blog Reviews Often Have Short-Term Effects
I have had bought some blog reviews a few months back for a niche site of mine. My site was good, it had targeted content and a pleasant design. I experienced medium to huge traffic surges, depending on the size of the blog I bought a review from. Sure, the traffic was great, but they didn’t return. I got like a 50%-100% boost of traffic during the week the review was on the homepage, but when it was buried into the archives, the traffic was lost.
Why does this happen? I believe it’s because the readers of the blog only check out the reviews for the sake of seeing the site and to be able to leave comments on the post. Obviously, if a blog is big, people would want to comment on its post to gain exposure. I think this is the reason why they check the sites being reviewed — to have something to comment about!
Even though some people (more or less 10%, depending on the type of audience the blog has) are actually interested in your site, quite a number of them will either forget about your site or lose their interest! Now, for some amount of money, you’re left with a few returning visitors.
If it’s not that easy to understand, then let me give a concrete example. Let’s create a situation! Here it is:
You own a technology-related shopping site. You found this tech blog which has 500 subscribers. The author charges $40 per review. Not bad, huh? Let’s say only 300 of these subscribers are active, i.e., only 300 of them read the blog daily. You bought a review and it was the recent post for 2 days, but the same 300 people read it. So basically your $40 was spent to reach 300 people. An okay deal? Not really. What if only 10% of them actually cared about your site? The other 90% just visited to be able to leave comments on the blog. The 1:9 ratio may seem weird at first, but it is possible.
You now have 30 people who are interested in what yo have. Then because of unavoidable circumstances, half of them forgot about your site. You think that’s a good deal for $40? Nah. It would be better to pay $0.50 per click for really interested visitors on a PPC campaign!
There you go, short-term traffic increase for some serious money spent. After the buzz, the traffic surge will be over too. How does this prove that buying blog reviews is not a good strategy? Simple, really. A long-term, gradual, and stable traffic increase is way better than a short-term, sudden traffic increase. There are many ways to bring in quality and returning traffic to your website. Sadly, buying blog reviews is not one of them.
Not All Blogs with High Subscriber Counts Publish Great Reviews
Not yet convinced? Well, here’s another reason why purchasing blog reviews can be an “epic fail” tactic. You’ve seen those blogs with 1,000 or even 10,000 subscribers. They have big subscriber bases, yes, but the question is, do they publish great, informative reviews? Not all of them! I can pinpoint some right now, but I will not do that — this post is meant to help you, not to degrade others. 
Even if you pay $300 or so for a review on a blog with tens of thousands of subscribers, most of the time it wouldn’t be worth it. Sometimes, people are too busy and they publish a 300-500 word review for $300. While that is not bad, some of them do not even bother to proofread their reviews! Your $300 can be spent on more meaningful things. Believe me.
Hint: Banner ads and things that could help promote your site (like Facebook apps for example).
…But Some Internet Marketing Gurus Say Blog Reviews are Great!
Sometimes, it’s very hard to get people to believe you. I’m aware that while some of you have been convinced by yours truly already, I know some of you still resist my ideas — and I know exactly why.
You have been told by some internet marketing gurus that blog reviews are great.
Why not believe them, right? Well why would YOU want to believe them? They are also internet marketers. Marketers are somewhat similar to lawyers — they tend to exaggerate and lie sometimes to get what they want. So, our dear internet marketing gurus who we’re talking about are blatantly telling you that reviews are great because they want to sell their reviews to you!
Get the picture? Great! Now let me know your insights. Do you think buying blog reviews is a great marketing strategy or are we better off with other things which can give us a better ROI?
P.S. Here’s an awesome deal for you. If you want an amazing blog review that will give your site maximum exposure, then click here! For only $20, you will get a very splendid and a smashing review of your product or website. No crap. No BS. Just an in-depth review to give your online business an edge over your competitors.
(Did you click or not? )
Readers have left 10 comments on "Buying Blog Reviews: Poor Marketing Strategy?".
Quite right lucas! Blog reviews won’t produce as much effect as they are hyped up. As you correctly said, they are most likely to be buried down when the post goes down in archives!
Great post again!
- Swastik -
Swastik’s latest blog post… How do you deal with negative comments on your blog?
Brilliant post..I bought a lot of reviews before from webmaster forums, you know the $10-$20 deals but they weren’t worth it.
I agree with all your points most especially your last argument! Kudos for publishing yet another great post.
Thanks for the compliment!
Great to see you here again, Gian. I’ve added you on MSN, though you’re always away.
Anyway, those cheap deals aren’t really worth it, heh. I’ve tried them (less than?) a year ago and they were C-R-A-P! It’s like the reviews were posted for the sake of posting them and getting the job done. No effort whatsoever.
The real reason to buy these ‘reviews’ is to get a good backlink to your blog and not the immediate traffic. On a PR4+ blog that has decent internal SEO your blog’s review could easily wind up on a PR3 internal page with in context anchored links. Of course, the blog that sold you the review might get penalized by Google for selling links but that’s no skin off your nose.
Frank C’s latest blog post… Used Cell Phone Buying Guide
Ha! I love the snippet about buying a good blog review after you trash the whole point of them. Classic!
Backlinks, yes, but I was talking about marketing your site/product to people - not search engines.
Great point though. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
I see blog reviews everywhere but I personally think they are not really worth much. I think you can use the money for a good review elsewhere to get a better ROI
Bruno Auger’s latest blog post… Do’s and Don’ts of Customer Support
@Lucas:
Ya right? but at least I learned my lesson
Reviews may not be the best way to monetize as gradually Google will punish those paid-review blogs with lower PRs assigned. This will in turn reduce the organic traffic and hence less visitors.
John Chow is continuously getting trashed by Google though he makes a lot of money via ReviewMe.
Cheers,
Ajith
I’ve never bought any reviews before.But I did do a ‘Review My Blog, Get Free Linkback’ post. I did see an improvement in ranking for the keyword anchor text that I was targeting though.
Peter Lee
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