Why would you ever want to write a product review? Well, there are many reasons. If you are a blogger, influencer, marketer, or you want to build an affiliate site, you might end up writing a product review at one point or the other.
But is there a good way and a bad way to write product reviews? How exactly do you get paid to write product reviews? How can you convince people to actually try the products?
We’re going to answer all of these questions and more in today’s article.
Ideally, you should test out the product by yourself before writing a review. However, we all know that the plethora of websites that publish articles about the ‘best vacuum cleaners’ out there haven’t all had employees testing the products that they recommend.
Naturally, huge sites like the Wirecutter or others do have the budget to actually pay for the products and test them out. They will at least be noticed when they get in touch with a brand to ask for a free product in exchange for a review, and that’s because brands and everyone else know that they have huge traffic.
But the small affiliate website owner doesn’t have the money to buy ten vacuum cleaners and test them out and risk not being able to return them.
So, writers have to have a certain ‘flair’ for putting together reviews that explain what the products are capable of without ever touching them. How do you do that?
You can’t really learn how a product or service works if you don’t take the time to read a guide before writing the content. Devote at least one hour to doing some research, see what products your competitors are recommending, and the features they are focusing on.
Go through 2-3 guides in the beginning as they’ll most likely come with several similar features.
If you want to write content about complicated equipment or gear in a very specialized niche (such as fishing), you need to find out how that product works. Go on YouTube and look at how people are using the product to understand its basic functioning principles.
It’s far easier to make a list of the ‘best’ products or services if you merely describe them. Try to be as natural as possible, without unnecessarily focusing on the pros and leaving out all the cons.
Online shoppers are pretty smart, and they aren’t going to throw their hard-earned cash (especially in these trying times) out the window just because you tell them that one particular product or the other is the ‘best’. You actually have to try to convince them, and the only way of doing that is focusing on its characteristics.
The features can also tell you what benefits potential buyers are likely to expect. For example, if a product is lightweight, it’s easy to maneuver by anyone, even if they aren’t particularly strong, or it can be used by seniors as effectively as by young people.
A good part of learning how to write product reviews should revolve around the things that you have to do beforehand. If you choose bad products, you risk your readers not only not to believe you, but also discredit you.
They might talk to one another, create a subreddit about your website, or use a different forum to laugh at your bad review. This all has happened with multiple Amazon Affiliate websites, by the way, so we’re not imagining it.
Some products and services have thousands and thousands of reviews, and if they have a rating over 4.5 out of 5 based on so many people having used them, they’re pretty good.
Don’t pick products that have no reviews at all or whose reviews are all critical. It’s common sense, after all — nobody is going to buy them.
You probably do the same thing when researching what microwave oven or whatever else appliance you want to buy. You look at what other customers are saying because you don’t want to invest in something that doesn’t work.
Read more: Google Possum Update
Try to put yourself in the shoes of the people reading your content all the time.
How can you make money just by writing product reviews? Well, here are two ideas.
While it might be less popular these days since they dropped their commissions, Amazon is still one of the biggest players out there when it comes to online shopping. But how to write Amazon product reviews?
We already gave you the tips in the previous section of the post. Try to be as honest and straightforward as possible and also make sure that you don’t claim that one product or the other is the ‘best’. Amazon has a very strict policy when it comes to unfounded claims.
But how do you make money? Well, for every purchase that you are the intermediary of, you get a commission. It can range from 1% to 3 or 4% of the sale, depending on the niche. These are the basics of affiliate marketing, but there are lots of other networks besides Amazon that you can try.
This one works, too, but you should have a decent amount of traffic to be able to pitch to brands. Ideally, you should only promote the services or products of brands that you already trust and that you might have already recommended to your readers.
Otherwise, they aren’t going to trust your recommendations, and nobody is going to win from this situation. There’s also the option of allowing that brand’s PR person to write a review so that you don’t have to bother with telling how the product works or should be used.
Read more: Serpstat Review & Tutorial
How much money can you make from recommending the products or services of a brand? Well, it varies a lot from one site to the next. If you have a high-traffic website or blog, you have a better chance of being paid more.
More often than not, it’s actually impossible to get in touch with huge brands that have been around for several decades, especially if you’re just starting out. It’s a better idea to reach out to smaller brands, instead even though they might not have that big a budget.
Want to learn more about affiliate marketing and SEO? We have several different courses and plans available. Feel free to get in touch using the button below.