Ideas

I like this idea. I think it makes sense, but I don't see how you could turn it into a business. Why would advertisers pay for this? How would this work? Please elaborate.

Well digiterata, you've got publicity - "getting those eyeballs" - on the one hand, and then getting inbound links for search engines to catalog on the other hand. Stories get passed around the blogosphere, so things can multiply like that.

Oh, I forgot to elaborate :).

1. Advertisers want to get their website noticed by people, so they are gonna want to drum up some oldfashioned buzz as well as get their site to rank high on the web searches, as I mentioned above.

2. So they don't want to just pay people to write positive stuff about them for ethical reasons and getting a bad rap. Then there is even an additional drawback to the 4 sites I mentioned up top: even paying for a "neutral" review causes ethical issues and blogger credability issues, which is not good for anybody. What I mean here is that paying someone to write stuff about you can lead to unintentional and unavoidable bias in the review which stems from various psychology related processes. One popular area where this psychology pops up is where doctors get those free dinners and stuff from drug companies with "no strings attached". Evidnece suggests that it is near impossible for people to avoid this instinct to reciprocate a gift.

3. Now, if the blogger is only asked to write a compare and contrast on these X number of companies they can't purposely or even subconsciously bias toward any of them. I think this elimates the ethical issues, no?

4. I will even personally guarantee a techcrunching if this gets built quick enough. Michael Arrington HATES those companies for tarnishing the blogosphere's credibility and is always talking about how they need to go.

Interesting idea. Are you suggesting a type of market for "freelance" product or service comparison blogs?...

What I mean is this. Company A wants to have some blogger(s) review their product. What they do is submit a blogging "job" to your website. The posting includes the scope of the review to be done, but not the identity of the paying company. Bloggers bid for the job. If a bid is accepted, the blogger writes the review and is paid for their work. The website could take a percentage or fee for every successful job. Their role is to bring the blogger and customer together. They could manage payments and even be a disinterested go-between to ensure objectivity of reviews.

This type of paid blog market could be used for all sorts of topics, not just product reviews. Imagine it as a market for freelance writers.

Yes JohnandPeter, I think that that is the gist of it. I have not worked out thoroughly the details, but the ones that you provided are intriguing and do add a further dimension to the idea.
-motiggidy

I'd like to add a separate idea here that would expand the original idea into online forums. It involves a way for forum owners to earn more revenue (as an alternative to showing ads). The forum owner posts a short review of your website to his healthy and active online forum. The forum owner earns more depending on certain metrics such as # forum members, #posts/per day, age of forum, # of views of post, # of replies, etc. Posts would be multi-site reviews just like in the original idea.