Life as I find it

I came across this bizarre (yeah, that’s my favourite word) situation with poor Vlad, who like many of us here is a blogger writing about his interests and writing paid posts as opportunities arise. Now, this situation seems to have a lot of angles to it, but from what I basically understand….

This Vlad accepts to write a review about ePerks. From all that I have heard, this was a positive review (I can’t find it). However, comments on his post were very strongly negative. These had some intervention attempts by an anonymous commenter and the whole thing heated up.

Well… he addressed that exploding comments situation inviting an exploration into ePerks in a follow up post. The company itself did what ….. they shouldn’t have, if they valued their reputation. They threatened him. Now, for a company that buys reviews from bloggers to build thier reputation, to threaten a blogger for writing - and from what I hear, Vlad did not criticize the company until then - is like having an axe… don’t know where to put it… look…. there’s my foot…..

This is basically what happened. This was followed by an explosion of bloggers speaking up in support of Vlad (like I am doing right now). It really is no longer the issue what the services of ePerks are anymore. The issue now is their image. For a company paying to get reviewed, it sure has more unpaid reviews now, and none of them that they would want to pay for. I doubt if any of them include a link either. Some examples would be:

• iHype & ePerks - How To Kill A Startup by Andy Beard really looks into this situation from many angles. I found this post really helpful in understanding the situation.
• Presumed Guilty Until Proven Innocent by Aaron Walls speaks briefly about the right to free speech and the risk involved in mass acquiring of links without building relationships.
• Memo to ePerks.com: You idiots! Trying to censor a real estate weblogger is a poor way to defend your reputation — such as it is… by Greg Swann along with some other posts, all equally “defending” the right to free speech.
• There are many others who have got angry about this whole thing.

My perspectives on this:

• ePerks: This was an incredibly stupid thing to do, which I guess I don’t need to tell you by now. If you pay for a review, you get a review. The end. If you don’t like the comments, go camp out on the comments form, address the commenters (which you did). However, threatening a blogger for something he did not do….. You don’t have a leg to stand on. Opinions are opinions. The smart thing would have been to acknowledge the comments, apologize if anyone had suffered inconvenience, and invite them into a dialogue to resolve the issue, or make your stand clear. This could have got you a few free nice posts, for graceful handling. Now, it is just about digging yourself deeper and deeper, and the damage is really beyond control. How many bloggers can you sue? Do they even live within your reach to do that? Really, I see no happy solution for you beyond a massive apology, an attitude shift and big payments to bloggers for damage control.
• Vlad: I see you doing what you were supposed to be doing initially, but I wonder if you really understood the imact of your second post. While it certainly invited investigation and feedback, I felt that it enouraged making extreme stands, which is good to get lots of comments, but really, how important are comments - at what price?). Though I don’t see how it would have changed anything considering the nature of comments that followed.
• Common man: I understand your frustration at being scammed and applaud your sharing of your experience so that it may serve to warn possible victims, or provide feedback to ePerks, if they do attempt a change of attitude.
• The blogging community: I expereince this rush of support for Vlad as one of the strengths of this platform, and the community. I don’t know Vlad at all, but being in his situation (having written about a scam earlier) I know that it is a risk that we get unnecessarily caught up in legal hassles. While we know that there is something inside us that wants us to stand for the truth, it is equally difficult to face legal feed regardless of who will win eventually. I don’t know most of you personally, but this act of solidarity makes me feel that there is support anyway if we stand for our beliefs.
• For me: The truth needs to be told. If I can do it in a way that facilitates resolution, superb. If not, confrontation it is!

So many people are looking for easy ways to be online and earn from it. One of the greatest ways I know is to write reviews. Many people look at this as “selling your soul” or something, but really, do you need to sell your soul to have an opinion about something?

I enjoy doing paid reviews. Of course, the best part is that I get paid for writing, but there are other aspects to it too. One being that I end up looking at products, services and websites that I otherwise would probably have missed. Another, is for me to develop my writing skills, so that I can say what I want to say, rather than provide some sugar coated garbage. Believe me, this needs practice, and paid practice is good incentive.

There are literally endless places you can get opportunities to write reviews and get paid for them. I keep posting opportunities like that from time to time, and this is a time when I share one of those:

What I like about SponsoredReviews.com is that it doesn’t limit you to advertizers selecting your site before you can attempt reviews, but you can actually go through the requirements posted and bid on the ones you think will work for your interests, blog, style of writing and money requirements. This is good, because with many paid review sites, you end up having to settle for whatever their automated systems throw your way, and I am certain that many good matches are not even noticed.

For example, I could find a subject that really was of interest to me, and then, honestly, even if the budget is not as high as I expect, it works for me, because I am going to enjoy writing it. This is not something a software can anticipate.

But there are other sites of course, and I might as well list them here:

Another really good paid blogging site.

Another nice place is Review Stream - its really easy and hassle free to write reviews here, and there are no issues with creating accounts or anything. Quick and painless.

So far, so good. Will point out more opportunities as I come across them.