A product review blog can be an excellent way to earn extra money online. By tying your blog to an affiliate program, you can create links from your blog to the merchants who sell the products you review. If a reader clicks a link and purchases the product, you earn a commission. However, writing a high-quality review can be difficult; you want your blog to generate sales, but readers will quickly grow suspicious if every review that you publish is positive. Publish honest, high-quality reviews to foster trust with your readers, gain a following for your blog and begin earning revenue.
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Disclose affiliate links if your blog uses them. You can do this a single time in your blog’s “About Us” or “Privacy Policy” section. Most readers can recognize affiliate links and do not appreciate attempts to “trick” them into clicking. It is far better to earn affiliate commissions because your readers trust and want to support the continued development of your blog; readers who enjoy your work will continue to purchase through you.
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Review products honestly. If you own the product, state this in your review because readers tend to appreciate a review that comes from firsthand experience. If you do not like the product, say so — even if you have an affiliate partnership with the manufacturer or seller. Some readers may choose to buy the product anyway. If you don’t like the product, you may still be able to point out some positive points that make it a good choice for other types of consumers.
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Avoid reviewing products you do not own or have never used. Many blogs attempt to capitalize on affiliate partnerships by writing reviews that merely state products’ features copied from the manufacturers’ websites. Readers can tell when a review contains no firsthand experience and will usually look elsewhere for a better review.
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Take your own pictures of the product whenever possible instead of using pictures from the manufacturer. Taking your own pictures — even if they look inferior to the manufacturer’s photos — proves that you are writing from firsthand experience.
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Write the review using subheadings and bullet points that summarize the content and break it into easily digestible chunks. The majority of your readers will probably scan the review for high points rather than reading it thoroughly, and large blocks of text make an article difficult to digest.
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Write a review that answers the questions potential buyers have. For example, if a product is a revised version of a company’s older product, owners of the older product will want to know if they should upgrade. Write from the reader’s point of view, and you will probably be able to think of several questions that the review should answer.
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