I never have been paid for the ones that I have given, I let the sellers have it all when I don't like a product. I'm actually reasonable with my reviews thought because I know that there are a lot of over-exaggerating people out there who just didn't like the product so they have everything negative to say about it. I learned that reviews can be manipulated, bought, etc, and I choose not to look at the good ones, but the bad ones only because people tend to still tell some truth about their experiences with the product.
I haven't done a paid review, but I have done received free products in exchange for honest, unbiased reviews. I prefer vendors that offer free products for honest reviews rather than vendors who pay for fake ones. Many vendors who offer free products even say that you have to disclose the fact that you received the product for free.
Slice the Pie is very good although not quite the same as reviews for products on forums. They give you homewares or clothing and you look at a picture and review it honestly. They want you to say what you think of the design, colour and style and they pay for it. The reviews are not available to the public but go to the manufacturer / producer which helps them to understand the public view on their product.
I have done a few, but I only did them when I got a chance to test out the product, and my review was my honest opinion. So...more like I was a influencer........but always honest about it. Unfortunately their are a lot of people paying for and doing fake reviews for money. Even worse, companies pay people to leave bad reviews for competitors!
There is no gainsaying paid reviews can be influenced, the payer for the reviews will hardly be neutral to the process and outcome of such reviews. Though I haven't participated much on paid reviews I can tell the process is most like going to suffer an external influence. Best to read about the products from independents sites and forums.
The reason I mentioned 'influencer' and part of the reason i was paid, is that I own and run some blogging websites that get a decent amount of views and I have over 70K followers on my combined social networks. So the 'paid' part is for my time to do the review and posting the content to my blogs/social networks. The 'brand' or 'business' owner is informed from the beginning that the reviews will not be fake or read from a script. All in all, I enjoy doing it and get some cool products and a little extra income from doing it.
I have always wondered about what it all entails, but I have to say that I am completely open to the idea, I just never really have taken that next step and tried to figure our how and where to do so. I really believe in reviews and they are one thing I must do before buying anything.
I have same reaction with @briannagoddess. I have joined several times in a syndication for a particular blog posts and one of them is a review of a certain beauty product. Though there is a line which states the reviewer's dissatisfaction. But it is overshadowed by a bloating praises and good impressions. Well, I can't do otherwise but to praise the said review or else I would be held contempt if I comment what is the truth. However, not all reviews are done that way. I think that is only done to beauty products.
I have never done a paid review. Sometimes I review products that I buy to share my good or bad experience. However, I don't expect anything in return for my review. I review just to encourage people to buy that product or discourage them from buying. Having said that if I get paid for reviewing product, I will certainly do it. However, I will make sure that I have first hand experience on the product I am reviewing.
I tried a few paid review gigs in the past but it usually takes so long to earn from them. They're much like surveys but at least I did manage to earn a bit from surveys. I get to extract my earning on a quarterly basis at least. It's actually a hit and miss. I'm not discouraging you from paid reviews but personally, it's not worth my time. If it works for you though, then carry on.
I've done several paid reviews on some electronic products but those articles/blog posts never had my name on the byline. I was simply instructed to research existing reviews and write something about the products based on how these were reviewed by other bloggers or demonstrated on video sharing sites. Those paid articles were supposed to be about top ten products for each category. That is why I don't trust online review in most cases.
I haven't done a paid review, I discovered that reviews can be controlled, purchased, and so forth, and I pick not to take a gander at the great ones, but rather the awful ones simply because individuals tend to at present educate some truth concerning their encounters with the item.
I have done couple of paid reviews for certain sites like mouth shut (for Indian consumers only) besides couple of other sponsored reviews offered by a food chain after I rated their food and did a free review on their site. They offered me a free dinner for two if I agreed to write three reviews for them. I did that because I liked their food and would have done without that gift voucher too.
I haven't done any paid reviews yet although I've written some articles about some products to which I should write their descriptions, their pros and cons and some of it's features. Yes paid reviews are common nowadays that's why even though a seller or an item has good reviews or positive reviews, you can't still avoid doubting since there is this thing called "paid reviews" that usually aren't as true as they may seem.
There are a lot of paid reviews on Amazon. A number of people request people to write 5-star reviews in return for money. I feel we should not completely rely on such reviews. Instead, look out for verified reviews from the site. Also, the apps on the app store are being reviewed as 5-star whereas the app is poor in performance. That is because of the paid reviews. I have never done a paid review before and I believe that the reviews should be genuine and should not misguide the customers.
I may have done paid reviews. I am saying "may" becaise I had several times reviewed multiple electrical items on a writing site bug I don't exactly recall of such an article was accepted or not. Although I could never cashout from that site despite getting my $8.
I have done it twice because at both times I had to say something about those two products in particular. I did it on a review site which invited people to say something negative or positive about any product. I had serious problem with my internet provider so I posted it in detail including my complaint references and other details. I also posted another review about a company that failed to provide me proper service (I will not mention the name of that company here though). However, I was not paid for my reviews because I did not reach payment threshold.
