Long or Short Capital

This post is sponsored by ReviewMe.

ReviewMe is a service created by Text-Link-Ads founder Patrick Gavin to offer advertising within blog posts. I don’t mean contextual ads like those offered by Google or Yahoo, I mean actual content created by the authors of a site that is written purposely to exclaim the delicious taste of Lucky Strike cigarettes or the powerful advertising platform that ReviewMe will be.

And now I will tell you why I am short this very concept.

It’s a simple process to get paid to review something.

1. You submit your site to ReviewMe, filling in a brief form containing details about your site.
2. They approve your site and list it on their marketplace.
3. SiteX.com or Service Z browses the marketplace and decides that your site would be perfect to review their product.
4. You get a notice that SiteX.com or Service Z wants you to write a review of them on your blog. You accept the proposal.
5. You have 48 hours to write 200 words about SiteX.com or Service Z and place it on your site and you will be paid 50% of whatever they paid ReviewMe.

But they pay you TO write on something not for WHAT your something says. So they are paying LoS $50 to give the LoS subscriber base the recommendation to SHORT them along with the entire Web 2.0 Index. They just paid me to write that! Genius or Madness? I would definitely opt for the latter.

From their FAQ:

Can I require a positive review?

We do not allow advertisers to require a positive review. The vast majority of reviews are measuredly positive, although many do contain constructive criticism. We view this as a bonus: how else can you quickly and cheaply get feedback on a product or service from influencers?

ReviewMe pays money for people to selectively write from the gut on a product, which is the way things should be. What business worth investing in does things the way they should be? That whole premise runs counter to everything we have learned from the Satan’s Portfolio Theory of Investing, namely that the best way to make money is to make/produce/offer products with the least amount of ethics possible. By these standards, ReviewMe is set to underperform the market and we recommend backing up the short truck.

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