I was about to spend $500 on a sponsored review for my WordPress plugin.

Before I paid, I decided to check whether these reviews actually work. Spent three weeks pulling Wayback Machine snapshots for 24 plugins across WP Mayor, Barn2, ThemeIsle, WPExplorer, and LearnWoo — install counts before and after each review.

Results: 15 out of 21 plugins showed zero measurable install growth.

3 plugins actually declined. The only site where any plugins showed organic growth was ThemeIsle — which explicitly refuses paid reviews.

A few things that surprised me along the way:

• WP Mayor CEO Mark Zahra responded before I published and made genuinely fair points. His argument: their clients sell premium plugins, conversions happen through direct sales — not WordPress.org free installs. I included his full response.

• Barn2's own transparency reports showed their sponsored content revenue dropped 82% in one year. They quietly removed the advertising page.

• The WordPress.org ecosystem is basically a closed loop — most users discover plugins through the admin dashboard search, not blog articles.

I'm building Queryra (AI semantic search for WordPress/WooCommerce) and this research saved me probably $1,000+ in marketing spend I would have wasted.

Full data and methodology here: https://queryra.com/blog/paid-plugin-reviews-roi-research

Has anyone here had different experience with paid editorial placements?