by Mary Lake

Created on: September 24, 2008   Last Updated: February 10, 2009

Reviewstream.com allows you to write reviews on anything - restaurants, personal products, electronics, Internet sites, etc. You are eligible to write a review once you have used the product, and can give a detailed opinion on that specific item. At first, I found this site very interesting because they solicited honest feedback from users, and negative reviews were as welcome as positive reviews.

The sign-up process is minimal, and the website is very easy to navigate. First create a pen-name, then enter your email address used for submissions and payment via PayPal. Keep in mind, when you write for Reviewstream.com your review has to be original and can not be reposted anywhere. Once you submit a review, Reviewstream will reply via email in two or three days. You will know if your review was accepted, how much you have been paid (payments are $2.00 or .40 depending on the quality and need for the particular review). Payout can be made once your account has reached $50, and is through Paypal only. If you are unsure of what products to review, or are lacking ideas there is a specific section for review requests.

At first, this sounded like a great and easy way to make money. As long as you followed the guidelines you should be paid the $2.00. So, I did the math and figured if I followed the rules and wrote a good review I could make $50 by submitting 25 articles - possibly a bit more with a few .40 payments.

I quickly found that it was not as easy as it sounded. No matter how detailed my reviews were, a majority came back at the .40 payout rate. At this rate in order to reach payout it was going to take writing around 125 articles and not a little over 25 like I had originally thought. And they all came back with the same suggestion "please add more of your opinion to your review." Even if I wrote exactly what I thought it never seemed to have enough opinion, and there was no other feedback. However, I did find if you submitted a review based on a request in the "seeking review" section, you were more likely to receive a $2.00 payout.

Two months after joing Reviewstream.com, I made it halfway to payout and it took several more months to reach the payout amount. However, this was due to my frustration with the low payout, minimal feedback, and discovery that writing reviews was not a favorite activity of mine. I would recommend at least giving them a try. I did not enjoy writing for this site, but there are others who I know that do - and make money easily and frequently writing reviews for them.

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