Following the ginormous success of John Chow’s ReviewMe linkback promotion, a lot of websites have been following suit, including mine! Blogbait.net is a great resource that I have just found that has taken the time to find a lot of sites who are doing similar types of linkback promotions along with other contests. As I looked through the site, it became quite clear to me that this was going to be a daunting task at hand to review all these blogs! Also, I don’t think I’m prepared to completely sell out the soul and content of my blog to accomodate all these reviews, so I came up with some tips to balance out the desires of both parties.
1) If there are no word count requirement, find a way to incorporate a link to their blog into one of your upcoming posts. This is where creativity comes in handy! Check out how I just entered a Zune Contest by linking smartly!
2) If there is a low word count requirement of less than 200 words, then write one post that reviews 5 blogs at a time. Most rules don’t say that they should get their own post space, so why should they get one all to themselves? So, to make it easier for my readers, I’m going to lower my word count requirement to 100 words for my backlink promotion!
3) Do your research on the blogs and don’t just review just any blogs. Links to low quality sites hurt just as much as the benefits of linking to a high quality site.
- Look at their post history to see if they update regulary (at least once a week)
- Check their current PR Rankings and their future PR Rankings - I use iwebtool to check future PR.
- Make sure the blog requesting the review follow through with what they say and post your link on the right site. I’ve already seen it happen where some blogs are misleading their posting the contest on a High Ranking site and then posting the link on a lower quality site.
4) Take Advantage of the System before The System takes advantage of you! Feel free to practice these tips by reviewing my blog if you haven’t done so already 
So, those are the few tips that I’ve come up with now, but I’m sure there are more. What kind of tactics do you use to review other blogs without selling your blog soul to the devil?
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I am with you, am getting sick of blogs that do nothing but reviews, and also the ones that only rephrase already posted money making tips.
The SEO world has discredited 2-way linking for quite some time. On one hand these reviews may get the word out and help you gain technorati rank, on the other, you may be shooting yourself in the foot with the search engines. I really wonder how this applies to blogs apposed to content sites.
Not really on topic but I must say I do plan on entering your contest but MY desk was a bit TOO cluttered.
It is still running right?
The review fad has killed a few blogs that I used to read regularly because I have to wade through reviews to get at the interesting stuff. I wouldn’t mind skipping a review every now and then, but when they outweight the content I just get … bored!
Great tips! I’ve been participating in a few of these link promotions and I will be following your lead in combining the promotions into one post. Great idea! Have you heard back from Adam at BlogBait? I’ve sent him a couple emails and haven’t heard a thing!
[…] Gary Lee, making his second appearance on Speed Link Sunday, discusses the how to do sponsored posts properly without compromising your blog’s integrity. Personally, I don’t mind ReviewMe since you […]
The current trend of link to me and I’ll link to you ad nauseum is a bad trend for the blogging community IMO
What has more value - getting 20 links and 20 readers to your site because they see you running it with integrity and good content. Or getting 100 links through a swap program that don’t really carry any true readership. But they do inflate your Technorati readers.
If you’re more interested in your Tech numbers than that’s your decision I guess. Personally I get a bigger thrill when someone visits my site and feels like entering the conversation. Not when I see a backlink through an impersonal swap program.
I’ve started a workshop on my site which does have some backlink benefits but the main intent is to find someone else’s site that we esteem and give them some free airplay. The group will share links afterwards as well as discover some previously unknown sites.
I’m obviously biased - but I think a program like that carries considerably more weight in the long run than the current swap trend.
http://thepaperbull.com/community-blog-project-promoting-others/
I’ve been ’selling my soul’ for a while now