More Thoughts on Paid Reviews

I recently did a review of Tattler reusable canning lids on my cooking blog.  Now this was not a paid review and I clearly stated this.  I bought the lids at full price then after doing a fair amount of testing I wrote the review for the benefit of some of my reader who like me are looking to secure a reliable supply of canning lids in the event the single-use metal lids become unavailable.  I've done the same type of thing with other products that I really like so I was not expecting the requests for a review to land in my inbox.  These aren't paid reviews per say in that they aren't offering me money to do the review.  Instead they are offering me a free product to test then write a review.  I should be flattered but in some ways I'm not.  Why?

I have participated in epinions for quite some time so it isn't like the concept of paid reviews is foreign to me.   Those are really quite different reviews than paid reviews on blogs.  In fact with epinions you have no idea if you will ever be paid for a review but with a paid review on a blog you are either paid ahead of writing the review or once the review has been approved by the sponsor.  My personal feeling on any product review is it needs to be my honest opinion both the good and the bad.  I don't want to feel cramped that I have to give a good review because someone is paying me for it.    This isn't a concern for me with epinions because again I never know if I will get paid or not so quite frankly I call a spade a spade.  When it comes to paid reviews for blogs if you want to get paid calling a spade a spade is not likely that great of an idea.  Mentioning anything negative is likely to get the sponsor ticked off enough to not pay you. 

Now the funny thing is on the Tattler lids after I did the review that included my honest opinion that $9.33 was too expensive for shipping I actually got an email from them telling me they thought that was a bit unfail.  What the heck!  Here I am tooting their product, recommending their product to my readers while paying full price for that product out of my pocket and they think I shouldn't mention a negative like high shipping costs?  I replied to the email stating the reasons why that was included in the review.  Basically my reviews are based on my opinion and my opinion only so I don't want something like being paid influencing it.

So now I'm getting offers of freebies to review.  How can I possibly give an honest opinion of something someone sent me free.  My gosh!  If they send me their product to review and I feel it is total junk I am sure shooting going to say so and they just might not like that.  I have in the past ranted about inferiour products, incompetent businesses and even given this type of thing special awards.  Payment in any form would cramp my style and deny my readers of my very honest, sometime brutal opinion!

Garden Gnome
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