Why I walked away from a $100 review
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I’ve written around 15 or so reviews at SponsoredReviews.com, most of them coming from bids I submitted. Last week, I was sent an unsolicited review request for my poker blog. My rate for SponsoredReviews.com on the poker blog is much higher than I charge for direct-contact reviews.
(By the way, the cheapest way to get a review from me is to contract directly. The second cheapest is PPP - Direct. I adjust my brokered prices upward so I don’t cannibalize my direct business.)
I do a steady business on the poker blog. I could do many more reviews there, but the price I set is rational from the following perspective: The online poker industry is very large and continues to grow despite recent legislation to curtail the transfer of money from the US to offshore gaming websites, the margins for the poker sites and their affiliates are typically very large, and the poker-blogging community values itself enough not to engage in destructive price wars to attract advertisers.
Hint, Hint.
Back to the review: the company asked me to write a "Benefits Only" review, something that is not necessarily a red-flag but certainly a yellow caution flag. I write benefit-only reviews when I can do so in good conscience, but I won’t do them if I don’t buy into what they’re selling. However, in this case, I was very familiar with the company, since it was the poker site where I first learned to play online poker. I don’t think it would be cool to name them for about 8 reasons run three times.
Ahem. Online poker players got that.
Anyway, I hadn’t played there, hadn’t downloaded their poker or casino software, in years. It was always the crappiest site in terms of graphics and performance, but had some really shitty players you could rob blind bad players to make money from so serious poker players would still play there from time to time. It’s considered an aquarium, in poker slang (full of fish).
The problems started when I tried to download the software, however.
For legal reasons, the software could not be downloaded to a US IP address. I won’t confuse you with the legalities, if you know poker you know why, if you don’t know poker, you don’t care why.
Anyway, there’s always a backdoor for a determined degenerate, and I found it. What that says about me should just be set aside. However, that’s when a bigger problem started. McAfee went nuts, with all kinds of red-flag warnings. I’m no expert, but it appeared something in the download mimicked spyware.
Naturally, I uninstalled the software and contacted SponsoredReviews.com, and after some back and forth where they said they would contact the customer and provide some assurance that this was not malware, it appeared they were not successful. They told me McAfee must be overprotective, and it was up to me whether to complete the review or not. It took us until less than 24 hrs prior to the due date to reach this point.
[I will say this - I prefer the PPP - Direct model that allows an advertiser and blogger to communicate directly through the PPP - Direct system]
So, my decision was to not do the review. There was no way I could ignore the issues of having to hunt for backdoors to download software, then try to determine which parts of the software were safe and which were malware, at least from my layman’s understanding of malware. I could have faked it - I know how to write a non-review review, and I’m certainly well-versed and capable of explaining the features and benefits of one online casino over another.
But everytime I pulled up LiveWriter, I stared at a blank page and came up empty. To be honest, I was embarrassed I was even trying. Better to walk away and hope there are no repercussions from the broker.
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Whenever you use poker slang it makes me hot.