Taking a Look at MEGA Tech News
Since I have started this website, I have had the opportunity to *meet* quite a few new and interesting people. One of those people is Stephen Fung, who owns and operates a couple of different businesses including Futurelooks and MEGA Tech News.
The other night I had an opportunity to have an email conversation with Stephen regarding a question that I had about the ReviewMe (aff) service. As a result of our conversation, Stephen submitted a request for me to review MEGA Tech News. As a notice to my readers, this post is a paid review of MEGA Tech News via the ReviewMe service.
What is MEGA Tech News?
As you can probably guess by the name of the site, MEGA Tech News is a site focused on providing readers with a MEGA resource for technology related news items. While the site is only a few months old (the inaugural post was made back on December 11, 2006), it has already managed to provide readers with over 600 posts covering a variety of topics.
Given that I am in a technology profession, scanning the list of categories provides me with a number of interesting topics such as Software, Hardware, Internet and a personal favorite Automotive.
MEGA Deals.
Due to the nature of content here at My New Choice, the one category that really caught my attention was the Deals category.
As of right now, the Deals category does not contain quite as many news items as I was hoping to find but I do feel that it shows some signs of promise. As an example of the potential, there is one news item that detailed the chance to receive a free CoolIT RAM coolers courtesy of CoolIT Systems (free is always good) and one that provides details on an available discount on multiple copies of Windows Vista.
While not really a deal in the true sense, I enjoyed the warning on Best Buy’s bait and switch. As someone that has banned shopping at Best Buy (which is a story for another day), it did not surprise me to hear that they would try a tactic like the bait and switch.
As the site matures, I would expect there to be more Deals available and I will be keeping an eye on this category to see if this can become the resource that I think it has the potential to be one day.
Suggestions for MEGA Tech News.
When I first visited the site, I was searching for an *About* page to find out more about the story and people behind MEGA Tech News but could not find anything on the site. In my opinion, this type of information helps a visitor make more of a connection with a site and increases the likelihood of becoming a regular reader.
One other suggestion that I would make is to provide a *Contact* page. It appears that MEGA Tech News is more of a technology news aggregator rather than an initiator of news, so I would think a contact page would be beneficial to allow readers the opportunity to submit news items of interest. It is possible that MEGA Tech News is not looking for reader submissions but I would still see some value to offering a means of contacting the people behind the scenes.
Closing Thoughts.
Overall I like the information that is being provided and with the healthy selection of categories, it should not be too difficult to find news items that are of interest on a regular basis.
Subscribing to the full RSS feed provides an easy way to keep tabs on current news items and should alert me to any new deals when they become available. There are some areas of improvement that I think can enhance the reader’s experience and hopefully Stephen will take those into consideration.
Take a spin around MEGA Tech News and let me know what you think!
Disclaimer
This post has been a paid review and contains my thoughts on the positive and negative aspects of the site or service in question. With the intent of providing information that is valuable to my readers, if you object to this post please let me know.
That is awesome that you are doing Paid Reviews now. This has really paid off for people like John Chow.
Let us know how it goes.
Thanks. It was a hard decision to accept reviews because I don’t think they are very well received in the realm of personal finance blogs but I thought that I would give it a shot.
It will be interesting to see how this is received by readers of the site but so far the feedback has been positive.
Well, that has gotta be a cool conversation-cum-earning deal! It is a wonder to read and see so many of others giving a go at reviewing Stephen’s site as well. Nice work!
Thanks for the feedback!
You are welcome. 🙂
Great Job! You are officially no longer, a ReviewMe Virgin 😉
Thanks for the feedback Stephen!
How well do they pay? I will look into them as well.
Are you referring to ReviewMe? I’m assuming that is who you are asking about. When I initially signed up with them, they assigned a value to your site based on your Alexa rank, Technorati rank and RSS subscribers.
However, they have since changed things around where site owners can determine their own price. FWIW, I have left my price at the value that was originally assigned.
It is important to note that reviewers only receive 50% of the stated price as well. I’ve read that some bigger sites have negotiated to keep more of the fee but the 50/50 split is the default.
Let me know if you have any other questions about it and I will do my best to help out.
I am guessing that they are looking at PR as well. There are some sites that are accepted have ‘horrible’ Alexa and technorati rankings, but they have a moderate to high PR.
If they do value the PR, they don’t mention it in the page where you can view your site details. The only rankings that they list are Technorati, Alexa and RSS.
It is not mentioned, but you can do a check on these. Look at those on the lower end of $30-40. Most have ‘horrible’ Technorati & Alexa ranking, yet it did not stop them from making the cut. I thought that ReviewMe criteria were more stringent.
On further look, they were all sites with a minimum PR of 4. Who says ‘PR’ doesn’t count, afterall?
My price isn’t much higher than that but my numbers have increased dramatically since I had applied. My Alexa has moved up to about 470,000 and Technorati is right around 24,000 now.
My PR is at 3 so I am not sure what they use for criteria. If they are using it, I really haven’t seen a mention of it but they might have their own internal criteria for approval.