Work from Home: A Pinay's Project: paid to review

What is Slicethepie?

Slicethepie is an online community of new artists and music fans, which both share benefits from the web-based service. It was founded by David Courtier-Dutton back in 2007, and as of to date, has grown to more than 9,000 artists and 50,000 scouts.

First of all, if you’re an artist, Slicethepie a great place to sell yourself and your music. Slicethepie is designed to help new artists (amateurs and unsigned singles, bands, groups) kick off their careers. Through Slicethepie, an artist can raise funds from music fans to literally finance their album recording and releasing. It also offers much needed marketing and exposure. It’s also a great place for music fans to find new songs and new artists.

Next, we’ve mentioned the term “scouts.” Users or “scouts” are the ones who listen to tracks, rate music, and post a written reviews about what they have listened. Now here’s the punchline: Scouts get paid for their music reviews.

In other words, Slicethepie.com is really an online money making opportunity - a get-paid-to-review-music site. New artists signup and create their own account where they can upload their music (The name of the artist is not disclosed by this time) then scouts get the chance to listen and review them.

Note that scouts are expected to post quality reviews - just a few lines will do. You cannot, of course, cheat on this by just copy-pasting, Slicethepie can easily check plagiarism. And while Slicethepie encourages an honest feedback, you can opt for a constructive criticism instead rather than giving out indecent comments and have your account terminated.

For scouts, there is also a rating system. You can improve your status by writing quality, constructive reviews and scouting actively or regularly. The better your status, the higher your rate for each review you give.

Minimum payout is only £5, and you can withdraw it via PayPal. Note, your first £5 must be invested in your chosen artist though.

What’s more, not only does Slicethepie allow every music fan to play like talent scout, it gives ordinary users the opportunity to be investors as well for their favorite artist.

If you know the trade in the music industry, you know you’ll definitely earn from this. Users as investors rely on their own judgment (and instinct) on finding which artist had the potential to be a future success. The catch is that, fans can then invest (for a minimal amount) and later get a share of profit.

Among the thousands of new artists on Sliecethepie’s listing, the top 2% (who gets the best reviews) are put upfront for 2 weeks to raise more funds. How can fans help out their favorite artist? They can buy backstage passes at £5 (investment) each or buy contracts for as low as £1.50. If the artists reached the sufficient amount of £15,000 from fans’ contributions, they’re now ready for the album recording, releasing, and contract signing.

Under Slicethepie, formal contract period is 2 years. Payout for investors depends on the number of albums and singles sold. Royalty of £2 goes to Slicethepie for every album and 20p for every single. Artists, in return, keep all copyrights and the sales from the backstage passes.

So just how big is Slicethepie now? By 2008, it already has financed more than 11 artists since its launch in June 2007, reaching £200,000 from fan contributions, and paid back £40,000 to their scouts. Also in 2008, Slicethepie has had $2 million investment coming from Bob Holt (Mear’s CEO), Mark Taylor (Microsoft’s UK director), and Gavin Breeze (Datacash founder) for site improvement.

PayPerPost (PPP) is another paid-to-blog service. In PPP, bloggers are called Posties and to date, PPP boasts of having the largest sponsored content marketplace in the world.

Unlike other paid-blogging services that offer campaigns, in PPP you can choose which particular subject you want to write about. Upon registration, you can browse through the marketplace for “opportunities” posted by advertisers and choose the ones you like – preferably most relevant to your blog.

While pro-bloggers can charge advertisers their rate-per-post, other paid-blogging services usually get a large cut from that because they serve as middlemen between the advertisers and the blogger. If your blog is generating enough traffic, you can opt for PayPerPost Direct, a system which allows the blogger to deal directly with PPP advertisers.

You can put PayPerPost Direct’s widget in your blog. If an advertiser would want to include a sponsored posting in your blog, they can just click on the widget to be directed to you. It would then handle the requirements for a complete transaction such as negotiation, payment processing and tax reporting for a 1-time 10% service fee. This feature is available for all PPP bloggers for TypePad and Blogger.

For PPP’s referral program, you can get paid when others sign up through your Referral Badge and SignUp Forms. Under the Referral Badge, you earn $15 when your referred blogger also gets payment for his approved post. For the SignUp Forms, when your referred blogger joined PPP through your SignUp form, you get paid when your referred blogger also get paid. The same thing if an advertiser sign up through this form, you get paid after the advertiser made the first deposit.

Payment is via PayPal.