Today I learned of a new blog service titled Review Me. The general idea is that advertisers of products or services pay money to bloggers in exchange for writing about them. I hear some groans already about selling out, but to those people I ask why are you reading a business blog? By the way I’m not really selling out, read on.

I like the idea of this service thanks to two important points:

1. Reviewers are not required to write positive reviews.
2. All paid posts must be labelled as such.

Due to the impact that blogging has had on the internet, marketers have been trying to get bloggers to write about their stuff in exchange for products or cash. Many of these are intended to be hidden advertising masquarading as the writer’s personal opinion. Other blog marketing attempts are simply brutually misguided. Neither situation is really good.

Review Me sounds like it’s on the right track to fix the above. Part of the reason to read blogs in the first place is honesty that doesn’t exist in mainstream media and advertisements. If people’s words start being purchased secretly, this credibility will be diminished. Indeed any blogger who becomes known to secretly endorse products will very quickly suffer reputational problems. Additionally who on earth really wants to read paid endorsements labelled as reviews? Clearly you won’t get both sides of the story. The points I stated address both these issues, and I applaud Review Me for instituting these rules despite the potential for them to lose some sales.

So how does Review Me actually work? You sign-up and provide some very basic information about your blog and preferred payment method (cheque or PayPal). It took me all of 5 minutes to sign-up and my blog was approved automatically as well as being assigned a ranking. This is very refreshing in a time where most services require confirmation of your payment info through some lengthy authentication process taking weeks to setup. Once signed-up, a blog is then listed in the Review Me marketplace where marketers can offer to purchase spots on the blog. If the blogger accepts the review then he/she becomes obligated to write it within 48 hours. I’m still not sure if products are delivered to the reviewer, or if the reviewer is limited to products they have used in the past. This will be interesting to find out.

Provided I’m actually offered reviews to write (the Review Me one is automatic, but after this advertisers have to actually request a review on my blog), I pledge to only to accept reviews for relevant products and to say only my honest opinion even if that means tearing a bad product apart. I signed-up for this service in the first place since I already do the occassional book review, and as part of making this blog pay for the time I devote to it I am always seeking ways of generating income from it without harming the blog’s credibility. If the service does take-off it certainly may provide a solution that fits the needs of advertisers, bloggers, and most importantly, readers of blogs.

This is an unbiased paid advertisement.

Ok so that tagline is actually a bit of lie and should be “terrific forums for everything”. Steve Pavlina recently launched forums on his blog with areas to discuss everything personal development related, including business, health, and even psychic development! I used to post on his forums for shareware developers as the man has a way of bringing together fantastic and virtually troll free communities together to discuss interesting knowledge.

I’ve mostly been paying attention to the business forum myself, but hope to dive into some of the other ones occassionally too. I highly recommend checking them out.

Last week I finally received papers stating that I now own my very own corporation (federally registered in Canada)! Tilted Pixel Inc. is now my 100% owned-by-me corporate baby. As you can probably tell by the reduced posting frequency I’ve been working extra hard to pull together everything related to that while keeping up with the ever-increasing work queue.

Incorporation of the company represents a bit of a graduation ceremony from a small business idea to a serious commitment and a validated business model. Less than a year ago I had a registered sole proprietorship, business cards, a single client, and three oversized photo prints with the company logo (for “exhibitions”). I now have three website projects on the go at any given moment and a solid plan for expanding the company further and further. Keeping the business profitable and growing has been a matter of applying what I’ve learned in my previous ventures and sticking to the fundamentals of building the business one solid block at a time.

What makes Tilted Pixel work? It’s actually a very simple concept, albiet shockingly ignored in the website development world. Tilted Pixel delivers what clients ask for with websites that are built to spec and can be edited by the client rather than requiring the web developer. I’ve invested the past three years into a terrific website development architecture custom built exactly to deliver on this promise. It would have been easier in the beginning to use an off-the-shelf solution, but had I gone this route I would have lost control over the services and capabilities that I am able to offer my clients. The software would have ruled the company. With my architecture I never have to feel restricted since even if a capability is not there I know it can be created.

I’m basically tooting my own horn in this post but this milestone is tremendously important to me and something that I feel like sharing with all my readers Feel free to post stories of your own business start-up achievements in the comments!