ReviewMe's 5-Star 'Generals'

I got a shocking revelation recently when John Chow (60th on Technorati), 'thanked' ReviewMe for restoring his rightful fifth star as a blogger. In that post, he told us how there were only three of them in that elite club of 5-star bloggers, on the ReviewMe network.

The other two are Jeremy 'Shoemoney' Schoemaker (69th on Technorati), and Performancing (23rd on Technorati). This revelation triggered my curiousity, so I went headlong to dig up the mystery arithmetic of rating and ranking by Reviewme. This is the outcome of my protem findings.

I found out SEVEN REASONS why the Top 20 or most popular bloggers in the world, by Technorati rankings, did not participate in the ReviewMe network, and these are the first three salient reasons (the second part- 4 Reasons, would be the subject of another posting):

1. The elite bloggers have all carved a niche for themselves in the blogosphere. Some of them blog for fame and for fulfillment of their passions, and not for miserly money (if you consider $250 share per review for the biggest bloggers- John Chow currently earns $200).

2. To 'divert' into openly disclosed paid reviews, would cause a 'social riot' on these popular blogs by their loyal readership base.

3. Others among them earn so big incomes and patronage that, they would not want to descend to the meagre offers of a relatively new network like ReviewMe. For example, Jeremy Schoemaker who earns over $130,000 mointhly from Google Adsense network alone, would not bend to the ReviewMe opportunity.

He (Shoemoney), living up to his name, unrepentantly outprized his reviews by five-fold ($2,500), virtually more than all bloggers in the ReviewMe network! I doubt if he would ever get any advertiser to give him a nudge.

As ReviewMe grows to reckoning among big advertisers, an offer of 5K to 10K per review may no longer be strange. Maybe, the Top 20 bloggers in the blogosphere would change their mind and join the network, but for now, it is a 'No-go' arena, meant for small and medium level success bloggers. What do you think?

I would write next on, the arithmetic mystery performed by ReviewMe to rank bloggers and why it differs from the traditional metrics used by other stakeholders in the blogosphere.