Summary
Learn the components of a good review and how to line up your first few gigs for free products, trips or services in exchange for your honest reviews.
One of the greatest pleasures of being a blogger is writing product reviews. The excitement of getting packages in the mail, the thrill of finding a new product that helps my family, and the joy of making money from the comfort of my home has led to my career in professional blogging.
So how can you get started? This primer will show you how to get started as a product reviewer.
Selecting Items to Review
The first thing you need to consider is your audience. Is this something that only benefits you, or would you naturally recommend this product to a friend who matches your target audience?
You can certainly review every product that comes your way, but make sure your products pass all three of these points:
- They are something you want and can use;
- Are of interest/use to your readers or desired audience; and
- Fit the theme of your blog.
If not, your review seem too self-serving.
You are an Influencer
Start thinking of yourself as an influencer: you can influence your audience’s behaviors and buying habits.
As your readers grow to trust you, you will naturally want to recommend things that are useful to them. If there are products, services or even destinations that you’ve already enjoyed that fit with your blog’s focus, go ahead and write a piece about them. Once you do that, you are an influencer – it’s as simple as that.
At first, you won’t get paid or get free products, but you can monetize your reviews easily.
Create a blog post that recommends products and put in your affiliate links from programs like Amazon's Affiliate Program, Commission Junction or Share a Sale.
Ideas include holiday gift guides, recipes with affiliate link ingredients, travel tours, web publishing tools, hosting, blog plugins, or “must have” posts featuring things like top technology, seasonal fashions or back to school items.
An example is gift guide I created for my readers last Christmas (see right image). Gift guides are great because when you grow, you can charge companies to participate in your guide.
Ultimately, as an influencer through your product review site, you can bring real value to buyers. The impact isn't easily ignored as can be seen from the values that some product review sites achieved during resale. For example, Sun & Sea Salt went for $10,000 on Flippa.
Finding and selecting items to review
A blog on general parenting is going to have a wide selection of products to choose from. However, a blog about “green living with kids” will have a smaller selection of relevant products and services – only eco-friendly children's items. A post on the latest tech gadget there won't fly with that audience.
Another particular product that’s quite good to review and promote is web hosting services. Why? Because it’s a “soft” product that has a high demand – every individual who wants an online presence needs a web host. YOU need it and use one. So why not review your own web host?
The Components of a Great Review
There are several parts to writing a review that is both engaging for your audience and beneficial to prospective clients who come your way.
1. An Eye Catching Photo
Brands LOVE IT when you make their product look good, so take plenty of photos and do everything you can to make the image look good.
If it’s a cooking product, show the product and the resulting dish you created. If you cannot take a good photo, ask for an image from the client – better to have something that looks good than nothing at all but you must learn to take reasonably good photos.. Travel reviews lend themselves to great photos, but you may need to get creative for a service.
For example, if you were reviewing a cleaning service, you can shoot the logo on the truck, the team and their equipment, and before/after photos of the areas they clean.
Screenshot below is a review for books from “Frozen.” Notice that I have multiple pinnable images, so I can repin from time to time, and change the pin board and topic each time I do.
Another example – If you look at Jerry's InMotion Hosting or GreenGeeks review – he uses tons of value adding photos and charts to complement the write-up.
2. The Benefits of This Item or Service
Write everything you love about this product, but pay attention to what the brand is promoting currently as well.
For example, if it’s an allergy product and it’s springtime, you can position the content on how challenging this time of year is for you and other allergy sufferers.
A word of caution: be honest! Don’t make stuff up; highlight the positives you enjoyed that fit the brand’s campaign if and when possible or else just stick to the facts. Line up as many positives as you can and emphasize anything you loved about it.
In my seasonal ad campaign from Zarbee’s – I used their photo since I had not received the product yet.
3. The Flaws
At a conference one year, I attended a Q&A with a panel of brands. The critical take away I learned from a brand representative was that nothing is perfect. If you write a 100% positive review, no one will believe you and you’ll lose credibility.
Write about the flaws, but be gentle.
Remember, you’re trying to drive people to purchase this product. However, if the product is a dud or the flaws are too large to actually recommend it and you received the product for pay, immediately contact the vendor and ask them what to do. They may want you to stop working on the review, they may repair the flaw or they may not know about the problem and ask you to delay the post. Talking to them is always the answer and it gives them a positive perspective on you.
4. Your Overall Opinion and Product Info
Once you’ve listed the positives and the flaws, you can give your general opinion – be as creative as you like. Make a rating system, gives a thumb’s up, show a smiling child – whatever works best for you.
Finally, give the details on the product, especially a link where to get it.
5. A Compelling Story to Wrap Them All In
Today, storytelling is the best way to write good copy. This is another thing brands LOVE.
If it's good enough, they may even share your review with their audience – and that's great exposure for your blog. If you start with a compelling personal story and how the product contributed to your life, you’ll also get better reader response. If it's good enough, they may even share your review with their audience – and that's great exposure for your blog.
In a paid review campaign I did for Silk – my writing was inspired by my frustration of what to do with too many bananas in my house!
6. Full Disclosure and Proper Linking
FTC regulations require you to disclose when you are blogging with any kind of reimbursement, including cash, free or discounted products, coupons, gift certificates, conference/event admission or any kind of payment.
Do this at the top of your post or before any links. If you did not get the product for free but are using your own affiliate links, you MUST disclose as well.
Use proper hashtags to disclose on social media. I use “#ad” for posts and social media as it’s short and easy to plug into any outlet. You can put on your post, “I received this product for a review, but all opinions are my own,” for products you’ve gotten without payment.
Remember to disclose if you received free product, even if you are just raving about them another time. It’s confusing, but the best advice I’ve ever heard is, “When in doubt, disclose.”
Finally, always choose “no follow” for your links, affiliate or otherwise. If the brand refuses to accept that guideline, walk away.
This are just part of the list of what you need to do to prevent your blog from getting sued.
For products you already own and received no compensation for, you can skip this – unless you'd like to disclose that you've received nothing in exchange for the post.
Where to Get Products You Like?
1. Pitching Brands
It’s perfectly acceptable to pitch brands to review products you like. The smaller the business, the more likely you will score some review products.
You may be offered coupons rather than the product to start. Position your pitch with why your audience is a good fit for them, how they will respond to the product and what you will do for them. Pretend you are writing a cover let for a job application!
Remember to include your stats and media kit.
2. Affiliate Networks
Affiliate marketing is a developed industry and has become a key source of online income for many mom (among others) bloggers. An affiliate marketer promote a product or service that can be tracked via links, codes, phone numbers, etc., that’s unique to you. You then earn a portion of the revenue when a sale happens through your unique link.
An affiliate network is often the platform that acts as an intermediary between an affiliate and the brands (aka merchants). It’s part of the affiliate marketing equation that tends to get left out, since most affiliates deal with the products/services directly, but is still an important information to know.
Generally, an affiliate network is often used by merchants to manage their affiliate program and also acts as a database for their products. Publishers can then choose the product that they want to promote, depending on their market.
Commission Junction and Share a Sale are two of the most popular affiliate networks.
3. Product Review Sites
For newbies, I recommend Tomoson, which has lots of campaigns for bloggers with small audiences. Personally, I started out with BlogPRWire and SheSpeaks. You can also try MomSelect, MomItForward and Bloggy Moms.
Once you start to build an audience, you can sign up for places that require higher level page views, like MomCentral, Clever Girls or Social Fabric.
4. Event Invitations
This is where blogger relationships and support groups are going to come in handy.
This spring I attended Time to Play Magazine's blogger toy event in New York City, where companies present new toy releases and demos while collecting business cards from bloggers. These types of events are typically invitation only, which is why it pays to sign up with a local blogger group, similar to your niche. Two groups I belong to include Philly Social Media Moms and Green Sisterhood. We share events, promotion, opportunities, professional advice and promote each other's sites.
Underpromise, Overdeliver and Safeguard Yourself
Once a brand has engaged you, follow the guidelines of the review request.
If they request something unethical, turn it down before you start. Reputable, blogger-savvy brands will send you links to their site rather than spammy text links. Promise the basics – for example, 500 word post, sharing on Facebook & Twitter – and then deliver extras, like additional sharing or pinning. Always tag the brand when you are promoting your reviews.
Finally, keep track of the dollar value of all products and reimbursement you receive. You will need to report that as income on your taxes.
Frequently Asked Questions
This depends as there are a great number of blogs in existence and not all of them generate revenue. The key to commercialization is traffic, and low traffic sites are not usually able to earn money. Here are some actionable tips to drive more blog traffic.
As a rule of thumb, revenue is subject to the rule of conversion, meaning there is usually an estimated percentage of your traffic who will buy a product. The amount you earn per conversion depends on the product(s) you promote.
Example: At conversion rate of 2.5% and earning of $100 per conversion, you'll make $2,500 for every 1,000 traffic.
Bloggers have access to a great deal of channels for blog promotion. One of the most popular means is via social media, where great content can benefit from social sharing. As a starting point, you can refer to this 5 basic strategy to grow your blog readership.
Youtube mainly works on an advertising system which requests users to have many views in order to be commercially viable. Bloggers who work on an affiliate system can have the potential to earn significantly more from a lower volume of traffic.
If you are looking for alternative ways to earn more online, we've got 50 online business ideas you can follow.
Dedication and perseverance are the keywords of the day for beginners. It takes time to generate website traffic from scratch and during the early periods, many blogs do not generate much revenue. Building a strong stable of content will help increase your traffic over time – and that's when the money will start to flow.
I strongly recommend you to read our detailed guide to start a blog where we've covered everything from A to Z.
What's Next?
Now, it's time for you to jump in and get started. Practice on your favorite items and use social media to promote your posts, tagging the brand you're raving about. Don't just stop at one or two posts – persistence is key. Keep improving your blog, if you are new – share your blog with friends and family members to start, learn and implement good SEO, and keep publishing good content.
You can do this. Jerry Low, the owner of this site, started WHSR alone as a hosting review blog. Look how far he and his team has come today – WebHostingSecretRevealed.net (WHSR) has became one of the best hosting guide sites out there.
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