I’ve been a member of SponsoredReviews.com for three days now and have bid on five reviews. About an hour ago I logged into my account to see if there was any action. Nothing……… So, I started thinking to myself, “Why haven’t I sold any reviews?” Read on to find out the following:

1. Why I haven’t sold any reviews.
2. Why I’m an absolute moron.

What SponsoredReviews.com Is
SponsoredReviews.com provides a service that would fall somewhere between PayPerPost and ReviewMe. If you have a blog, you can sign up to use their services to connect with advertisers that are willing to pay for opinions and reviews on their sites.

Where it differs from both PayPerPost and ReviewMe is that the blogger actually bids on the amount they will do a review for. You will see an advertiser’s campaign, and it will say that the advertiser is willing to pay between $10-$250 for a review. You place a bid, stating the price you would do it for. You can say whatever amount you want. The advertiser will compare your blog to others that have bid on the review. If they like your price and your blog’s value, they will choose you to write the review.

I bid on five jobs, and logged in to see if there was any action. There wasn’t any, and I started trying to figure out why. After looking at my site’s description in there I decided that I was a absolute, moronic lunatic! It was something like this:

This is the personal blog of Courtney Tuttle. I help people to make money with the internet and learn about blogging.

That is one of the lamest things I’ve read in my life and the fact that I wrote it brings me mountains of shame. Feel free to copy it word for word, substituting your name - it’s by far the best way to never sell a sponsored review in the known universe.

I’m such weakling sometimes! I help….blah blah blah. Oh my gosh that’s total weak-sauce in a bottle. If I was an advertiser I wouldn’t read past the first 4 words in that description. I’m lucky that I didn’t get rejected by all of them, luckily my bids are still pending.

The truth is that I actually believe in my work, but am shy to say it sometimes. I think that advertisers should buy reviews from me because right now they’re getting more than their money’s worth. Over the next year my site will get a lot better, and their permanent links will get more valuable every single day.

I fought my own instincts that tell me not to self-promote, and changed my description to this:

CourtneyTuttle.com is a PageRank 3 blog about blogging. It is predicted to be a PageRank 6 for the next update. The site draws 300-900 readers every day and is currently growing at a rate of over 100% per month.

The blog was started in February, 2007 and has already climbed into the Technorati top 20,000. You can plan on seeing the site in the top 5,000 within a few weeks.

My readers trust what I say and participate actively through their comments. Even my sponsored posts spark discussion, you can find an example here:

http://courtneytuttle.com/2007/05/21/i-freaking-love-payperpost/ (11 comments)

I’m not going to lie, I feel really funny writing a description that is so self-promotional! Ultimately, I feel that I had to decide whether I wanted to sell reviews or be modest. I guess I want to sell reviews! Feel free to disagree in your comments if you don’t trust what I say.

If you don’t promote yourself, who will? If I was an advertiser, I wouldn’t want to pay for a review from a blogger that didn’t believe in his blog. If you believe in yourself, act like it! For some of you, this will be against your nature. It’s most definitely against mine. I feel funny writing this post and I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t think it would help people.

I’ll keep you updated about my progress with SponsoredReviews.com, I think I’ll do a lot better now. If nothing else, advertisers will know that I believe in my work! What do you guys think?