Price Gaming Keeps Increasing On ReviewMe
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Ever since ReviewMe started allowing publishers to set their own price, more and more publishers started taking advantage of it by increasing their review price to the maximum price of $750. The advantage of setting your review price to a high price is that your blog gets listed on the first page, as ReviewMe lists sites from highest price to lowest price.
Lower ranked blogs are now using ReviewMe as a source of traffic instead of a source of income.
The moment I realized that ReviewMe lists sites from highest price to lowest price, I too increased my review price from $250 to $320 thinking that I may get more review orders. But the next day I found John Chow make a post about ReviewMe price gaming and since then I have noticed an even higher level of price gaming on ReviewMe.
This is a screenshot of the ReviewMe ‘Blogs’ Category taken by John Chow on April 11th
Today’s Screenshot of ReviewMe Blogs Category
Did you notice that the 5 star rated John Chow dot Com blog has been pushed down on the list by other low ranked blogs?
If this price gaming continues, it will become tough for even good blogs to get a review order as the first few pages will be flooded with low ranked blogs that raised their review price.
ReviewMe has to do something about all this price gaming as soon as possible. A good solution is to set a limit on the price range based on blog rating like John Chow said -
I think ReviewMe should continue to allow publishers to set their own price. However, to prevent price gaming, a limit should be placed on the price range based on blog rating. For example, a one star blog can choose between $0 to $100, a two star blog can go up to $200, three stars go up $400, four stars up $750 and five stars have no limits. That would prevent lower ranked blogs from trying to game the system just for traffic.
By the way, I reduced my review price to just $100, so if you would like your product or web site reviewed by me, use this link 
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Posted on April 20th, 2007 | Category: Internet |
Ashish Mohta
April 20, 2007 at 11:59 pm
Thats a neat trick I guess, A loop-hole being exploited in a nicer manner. I think these days every system is getting explioted more and more because of this.
They can make it very simple by not allowing to exceed more than the price set for them That will keep everybody happy
Mr.Byte
April 21, 2007 at 1:41 am
But how do those low stared blogs expect to get a review for such a high price? I don’t think anybody would opt for them
Ashish Mohta
April 21, 2007 at 1:47 am
: They get noticed !!! They get traffic …use TLA as free advertising machine
Chris
April 21, 2007 at 3:09 am
I completely agree with this post. It doesn’t make sense at all because they are basically getting free publicity even if nobody is signing up for the reviews.
Madhur Kapoor
April 21, 2007 at 4:05 am
I think think they need to fix it like John Chow recommended . A better option would be to remove the “set own price” thing .
Ryan J. Parker
April 21, 2007 at 9:41 am
ReviewMe should consider a price to star ratio list with the lowest price per star listed first to actually reward people for setting a lower price.
Chow’s blog, for instance, would be $60/star, while someone like Dosh Dosh would be $150/star. For someone like Dosh Dosh to match Chow they’d have to settle for a price of $180 or less, and they might actually have someone buy a review. ReviewMe gets no reward with the way the list is currently setup, as no one in their right mind pays that much for a review.
I should have blogged this, but I’m too busy.
Vijay
April 21, 2007 at 1:59 pm
What johnchow said was actually a very good idea. I am sure this exploit will be rectified soon..Hopefully..
: I noticed that your feedreaders nos. have dropped by more than 300 in a day. What happened?
Mr.Byte
April 21, 2007 at 2:33 pm
Yeah, how come subscriber count is decreased by 300. I doubt that much people unsubscribe in a single day. I guess there must be some issue with feed burner count.
Ashish Mohta
April 21, 2007 at 7:19 pm
: Best is not let people exceed the pricing which is already set for them. They can decrease but not increase. If they want to allow they should allow to a particular percentage only.
@ I think feedburner have missed the Google reader count again for some blogs. I see a lot of drop on number of readers on other blogs to. Luckily they didn’t forget for me.
lyndonmaxewell
April 21, 2007 at 7:19 pm
That’s what happens when they release to let publishers take control of price setting. The best would be for partial price setting, according to the stars rating level.
Mr.Byte
April 21, 2007 at 10:23 pm
Feedburner having this issue quite often these days… I hope they fix these issues once and for all
Gili
April 21, 2007 at 11:36 pm
@ Mr Byte - I agree feedburner is inconsistent most of the time.
In General - i agree with Chow’s proposal. The price gaming should be somewhat limited.
Patrick Gavin
April 22, 2007 at 5:30 pm
JohnTP, thanks for the heads up on this, we will have a fix for this go live on Monday.
Ashish Mohta
April 22, 2007 at 6:28 pm
: Cool. We all will be looking forward to it.
: Congrats!!!!!!!!!
JohnTP
April 22, 2007 at 7:55 pm
Vijay,Mr.Byte, Ashish- Yesterday Feedburner did not include Google Feedfetcher, that is why it showed only 800+ RSS readers. Today the feedcount is working fine.
I have seen this happen to other blogs too, so if this happens to you, don’t panic, just wait for a day
JohnTP
April 22, 2007 at 7:57 pm
Patrick Gavin- Thanks for reading my post and I am glad you will be fixing this problem. We all look forward to it
Patrick Gavin
April 23, 2007 at 6:02 pm
Hello, we have our fix up, basically we are listing in star order first, then price, thx.
JohnTP
April 23, 2007 at 9:07 pm
Patrick Gavin- I still reached high on the list when I increased my review price to $750, but I am sure no one will order a review from me at that price
Ronald
April 24, 2007 at 12:26 am
Anyway, John has change his blog background color
JohnTP
April 24, 2007 at 12:58 am
Ronald- Yes, I did it a few days back (I colored my left sidebar too), Did you like it?
Madhur Kapoor
April 24, 2007 at 2:57 am
The background color of the sidebar looks good .
Blain Reinkensmeyer
April 24, 2007 at 9:30 am
I have seen this quite a bit actually as well with the reviewme gaming. I really wonder how much it actually brings in though. Perhaps reviewme should just ban those sites all together?
Vijay
April 24, 2007 at 10:38 am
I should say this has been fixed now. The various sites are now ranked by the no. of stars they have and then the price in descending order. Users can set their own price even now, though
Investing Blog
April 30, 2007 at 6:40 am
I believe ReviewMe put a stop to this gaming effect. However, I finally got my 1st review! Maybe all this controversy attracted new advertisers?
Vince Cordic
May 1, 2007 at 11:56 am
The price gaming may bring the gamers a little bit of extra traffic, but as we all know that traffic is mostly useless and they surely won’t get any reviews for that price.
So really, there’s not a lot of harm done. Advertisers will still look past all this and find a blog in there price range that is credible. If anything it will make the lower priced blogs (relatively) look like even more of a bargain.
On the other hand I still think they should fix it. Perhaps by only allowing reviews to be increased in price by X amount after X amount of reviews have been purchased at the current review price.
Webmaster Money
July 26, 2007 at 9:07 am
Exactly, it is nonsense that low rated blocks can have such a big proce, I am wondering if they make some reviews with this rating or if it is realy just linkbait.