Best Bang for your Blogging Buck
April 3, 2008 Posted by Tyler CruzRetireAt21 made a great post yesterday detailing 10 “make money online” blogs and charting them out based on their paid review results. Michael Dunlop, from RetireAt21, purchased paid reviews from each of the 10 sites and kept track of the results from each.
This is an extremely useful chart with invaluable information. What’s even better is that Michael told me that he plans on purchasing more paid reviews from other sites in the future and update the list. It would be great to see the results from a John Chow or Zac Johnson review.
Okay, so I’m a bit biased being ranked #1 and all, but you can’t deny that such a list is very useful. Michael Ranked me #1 because:
“Tyler gave the best review by far, offering suggestions, constructive criticism and feedback. He obviously researched the website and did a great job because of it!”
While I’m ranked #1, two other blogs beat me for CPC. Jonathan Volk at $0.14 and Courtney Tuttle at $0.17. I can’t tell you how cheap this is for highly-targeted traffic, especially in this niche. And especially in such volume.
I’ve been preaching for a long time now how my paid reviews are a bargain when compared to others available, and here’s some more proof 🙂 However, it’s important not to take this chart as written in stone. Some products and websites fare better than others, it’s only natural. If you want a review done of your pedicure site, it will naturally get lower interest than if you got your graphic design business reviewed.
A few other notes about the chart:
- My paid review price is now $130, but when Michael purchased it the price was $120.
- Michael got the John Cow review half-price; his actual price is $200 which would make the CPC $0.60
- Infected By Bugs offered to refund Michael his money because of the low CTR, and kept checking with him how his advert was going and if there was anything he could do. In the end he placed an advert on his forum as added compensation.
I really appreciate the list, and will definitely return to it when I do my large marketing promotion for PublisherSpot in a couple weeks. I’ll most likely be purchasing reviews from the top 5 blogs on the list, as that will be give me over 1,000 highly-targeted clicks within a day or two alone!
Thanks again to RetireAt21 for sharing his results with us.
Hey Tyler 🙂
Thanks for the mention, great post 🙂
I did guest posts here and at another site that gets similar numbers of visitors around the same time and I have to say that the post here both got a ton more comments and drove more clicks to my site. Now I do think that the post I had here was better than the other but it also points to the fact that the audience here really does seem more engaged with the content and receptive to exploring new things. I’ll certainly come here for a review when I have an appropriate product to launch.
Thanks tyler for putting this up, I am on that list and was stoked as well. I can also attest to tylers reviews. I had my webmaster forum reviewed by tyler and I got more clicks then I did from the JohnChow review I had.
586 clicks is hard to pass up.
I’m quite a ways behind the rest of you, still building my content and traffic. But, it is good to see that paid reviews actually work.
Very useful chart.
Nice post, Tyler.
That’s pretty cool to see how it breaks down like that for paid reviews.
Now if I only had the money to get a paid review to see if traffic would come to me!
I had a feeling you’d blog about this lol
Congrats, Im sure that this will build up your revenue for April. Pls Check your email.
Tyler,
keep on proving value back to your readers. And your blog reviews will continue to show that value.
Great job
Brian
affiliate manager
Pingo.com
I’d have to say your blog kicked ass when I guest posted here – it has sent me near 1,000 visitors since then, as well as a few links from others that picked up the article.
As for being fourth in the list, I find that pretty cool. Second highest for number of comments, though 😎
Thanks for all the testimonials guys 🙂
Those are nice stats.
Congrats for the best converting one. You will see more sales now. 🙂
Reviews in general are excellent advertising campaigns because they provide detailed, personal information about a product. At this CPC rate, it’s priceless.
Tyler, again thanks for the statistical breakdown. It would be easy to take a less expensive review and think, “Hey I got some traffic” but when you look at the CPC and truly gauge what percentage you’re looking at, it really puts things into a better perspective.
I draw the comparison to gas prices here in California. I scream at the cost not because its $3.71 a gallon, but because it’s gone up X% in the last day, week, month, year, etc. People always say, “Oh look at Europe, gas prices are higher.” Well when their gas price DOUBLES in under 2 years, then they’ll understand our complaints. It’s about a percentage.
That’s a pretty smart technique to figure out who overs the best reviews. He should expand on that maybe, if he has the money! I think it’d be useful.
It’s crazy how you double everyone in clicks. Crazy! But I guess since you do such a good job with your reviews, more people read them and pay attention.
Wow, this was an unexpected ranking. Congrats for coming first. By the look of your reviews, you certainly deserve it.
so why arent you making 30k a month like chow? It seems you have the rankings for it.. More advertising for you? I would like to see the results from John Chow as well.
lol yes.
Why not more than Mr. Chow ? any answer
I just came accross your blog. Great site. I look forward to revisiting.
Thanks for posting the stats, they were interesting and very informative!
True, It makes sense to buy a review from you! I observed that you have been doing some great reviews and I enjoy reading them.
But reading 1000+ words is really not everyone does, I am okay to read complete post of 400-500 posts may be but I might be just clicking the link in your post and check the advertisers’ site myself than reading your complete review.
You are #1 the big pimp on the block.
Thanks for this post, I was looking all over the internet for something like this chart! Can you expand the expirement and include some other Blogs like JohnChow and Shoemoney? It would be interesting to see!
hmmm thats an interesting study. Congrats on getting the top spot, I’m finding that the more i read John Chows blog the more I’m realizing that most of his articles are paid reviews. Definitally helpful to know the results. I’ll keep this in mind the next time i want to possibly get reviewed.
zach, I second your thoughts. John Chow has becoming nothing but a blog on paid reviews. May be he is done with his original articles.
Even I myself started searching for good articles elsewhere where as I used to read John Chow regularly earlier.
Paid reviews are a great way for a smaller blog/website to get some more traffic. I know a lot of those webmasters would be shy to pay for a review but it is well worth it!
I quite agree that this is a very valuable post. Well done for ranking 1st Tyler. The top 5 review bring approximately 2000 hits at a CPC of 16c. That seems good value to me!
You also have a new subscriber as I am keen to know how you rate against the Zac Johnsons of this world!
Thanks for a great post.
Great deal for such a price. I would order a review, but I want to get a re-design done on my site first.
Anyone a good designer? I need a re-design. I like the work Unique Blog Designs do too. That’s kind of what I’m looking for.
This is valuable information. Has John chow really turned into an all paid review site? I don’t think so. What about Not John Chow?