Daycare Bear
Can you believe this, someone is paying me a billion dollars to write a review of their site. After I get the check, I’m going to buy an island in the tropics. You guys can come too. To be honest with you, I have mixed feelings about running paid reviews on this blog. Sure, a billion dollars is nice, but after I received my first billion dollar check, what am I going to do with the second and third billion dollar checks? I’m actually going to let my readers decide if I should run any more paid posts on this blog. Read the review below and then vote. Note: I’m not required to write a positive review.
Daycare Bear is an online site that helps parents find daycare providers. The site provides detailed and up-to-date information about current daycare openings across the country (US only, but they also have a Canadian version). The service is free to parents looking for openings and to daycare providers who want to list their openings. The site appears to be ad supported, but thankfully they don’t have any of those annoying popups that are common with a lot of free services sites.
As you can see in the screen shot below, Daycare Bear gives you the ability to enter different parameters for your daycare search (ie – daycare type or child’s age):
You can have the results displayed as a list or a map. Below is the map view for my search results. The balloon with the red X marks my location. The blue balloons are the daycares with openings near my location. If you click on a blue balloon, you’ll get a little more information about the daycare. By clicking again, you can get even more info about the daycare (such as rate, features, hours of operation, etc).
Another interesting feature of the site is the ability to apply filters on the search results. You can filter the results by:
- Max. daily rate $
- Educational program
- Experienced with children with special needs
- Financial subsidies available
- Government accreditation (license)
- Services available at night
- Services available in English
- Services available in Spanish
- Services available part-time
Given the choice of looking for daycare like a caveman (phone book) or using Daycare Bear, I would prefer the online method (Daycare Bear). I also like the ability to search based on various parameters and the ability to filter results. A big problem I see is the few results that are displayed for my location. If I did a Google search for “daycare” and my zip code, I can find many more daycares in my area, including ones that are a lot closer than the ones shown via Daycare Bear. However, Google does not offer information like rates and hours of operations like Daycare Bear does. In conclusion, I’m pleased with Daycare Bear, but they need to do a better job in getting the word out on their free listing and search (hence this paid review).
OK, let me know if I should run any more of these paid reviews. Keep in mind that the paid posts would probably occur at most once a month (most likely, once every three months). If you are interested in getting paid for reviews, go to the ReviewMe site.
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15 Comments
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Thanks for the info! A neat site and hopefully will help many find a great daycare.
Keep smilin!
LOL we did this review too ;). Actually, the Daddy Creature did it, I was too busy so I pawned it off on him ;). I didn’t even ask people tho, I just put it up there and too bad if people don’t like it, I have to eat. Ha ha ha.
I personally like to read honest reviews. That’s a great way to find out about new products and services available to me. I had a really hard time looking for daycare a couple of years ago. This might have been helpful.
That’s pretty good. There’s no reason not to do reviews. I say go for it. If the opportunity arises!
ROFL – Ironic timing for me as I was just looking into to paid posts myself this past week…Not sure what I’ll do yet but I’m considering it!
Hugs,
Holly
It’s your blog; I say do with it what you will. You say that it won’t happen every single post, so if you keep it to a minimum (on a personal blog), then it should interrupt the flow that much, and people always have the option of reading or not reading, as long as it’s obviously a paid-post.
I should mention that I’m fully expecting that personal invite to your private island. I mean, it’s only fair if we gotta put up with the paid posts that we should reap some of the benefit, right?
You did a good job writing this review: honest, concise, precise. And you said you couldn’t write well. Pfffft!
First, I have to build a mall on the island for my wife…yes, there will be a shoe store too.
I like your reviews. I’ll have to google Daycare Bear myself.
As for the billion dollars, you can always buy your wife some more shoes. A girl can’t have enough, you know.
I think you did a really good job! :D
It’s a great review and it’s relevant to your readership. Given that, I’d say keep it up as long as you keep the regular posts coming, too.
I like it!! Nicely done.
I’ll vote YAY to you doing relevant reviews and getting paid for them. Keeping the reviews to once a month or so should be ok. I was once reading a food blog quite regularly until she started writing many and very irrelevant paid reviews.
Why didn’t you write this Daycare Bear Review sooner? They might have just what I needed. Now my husband is preparing to camp in the office in June becos my mom is coming over.
I was going to suggest your mom, but I didn’t think your hubby would want that. My wife actually cheated. Her parents live out of town so she pretended she stayed home for a month.
I personally don’t think there is anything wrong with writing paid reviews provided they are honest and add to the blog. A lot of people don’t realise that running a sucessful blog takes a lot of time and effort. So, why shouldn’t a blog owner make some cash? DaycareBear is a good site, and the review is quite informative, unlike so many other reviews of this type.
Perhaps someone would like to review our daycare listing site for free? :) the link is http://www.godaycare.com. All parents who are in the process of finding daycare should check our site, as it provides a good mixture of listings, reviews and a forum (in case you need more info).
Thank you for your time.
I stopped accepting paid posts after this one. It was my only one and I didn’t really like doing it. If I ever find the time, I’ll take a look.