It’s likely if you’re here, you have a passion to share your opinion on products and services in the market. Maybe you’ve seen product reviewers who have inspired you, and you want to know how to start a product review blog.
In this article, I’ll be sharing with you successful product review site examples and step-by-step how to start a product review blog.
What is a Product Review Blog?
A product review blog is a website that publishes mostly reviews that share the pros and cons of various products.
A product review website is most valued when the content helps potential customers to make their purchase decisions easier.
People type in terms like:
- [product name] scam
- Is [product name] a scam?
- [product name vs. product name]
- Best [product type] for [tasks they’ll be doing]
- and more
When they type in terms like that, they’re looking to find an honest review that helps them to decide which product is best for their situations, and when you run a product review site, it’s best to keep it in consideration how the product review is your service.
Other Names for Product Review Websites?
- Affiliate sites
- Niche sites
- Product review sites
Do Review Sites Make Money?
Absolutely! In fact, one review site, fitsmallbusiness.com, is on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies in the US, and earns $7.1M/year.
While Fit Small business is an anomaly, there are several blog owners who write reviews on their sites, and make lucrative incomes from doing that.
Successful Product Review Website Examples
If you’re interested in starting a product review blog, it would probably be helpful to see other successful examples. Here are a few successful product review sites you can take a look at…
How to Entrepreneur
I started How to Entrepreneur in 2018 and did a lot of product reviews on the site. In fact, the product reviews drove a large portion of the revenue.
The Wire Cutter
The Wire Cutter is a product review website that’s achieved massive success. It was started by Brian Lam in 2016, and 5 years later, it was sold to the New York Times for $30 million! 5 years of work for $30 million!
Now, the site is run by New York Times, a large and established media company, but the content is still mostly product reviews.
NerdWallet
NerdWallet is a personal finance review site that offers advice on credit cards, loans, and other finance products. The founder, Tim Chen, says he took $800 in startup capital to start the business.
Now, the company is run by a team of writers, editors, and other media professionals. 10 years from inception, the company is said to be worth more than $520 million!
And, I have a whole list of other successful affiliate sites you can check out here.
How to Start a Product Review Website – Step-by-Step
If you’re looking to start a product review blog, these are the steps you can take to get started…
1. Create a Plan
It’s important that you get clear about what you plan to do today in order to start taking your business to the next level. This step-by-step guide can help you to decide which tasks are important to start your product review blog, but you can get even more advice by downloading my business planner.
For a limited time, you can download it for free, so grab your copy now…
Choose a Niche
A part of creating your plan is choosing the audience you plan to serve. There are so many different types of products that people want reviews on, and they span across several industries.
It’s best to decide who you’ll serve, then focus your content around products that audience might be looking for.
Is a Product Review site a Niche?
No. Product reviews aren’t a niche. Instead, a niche is an audience. Some examples of niches would be:
- Fishing
- Golfing
- Or, Freezer cooking
You can check out more niche ideas here.
Set your Goals
Within your business plan, you should also have goals. You should be clear on:
- How much money you need to make to replace your current income (if that’s a goal)
- What products and services you can sell in order to reach your minimum viable income
- How many product reviews you can write in one month
- And more
In the beginning, you’ll be estimating, but as you continue setting goals and tracking your results, you’ll get better and better at setting realistic goals and expectations.
2. Build a Website
Once you’ve created a startup plan, you want to build your website. Your website is where you’ll house your product reviews, so it’s important that you choose a good content management system.
I recommend you create a WordPress website. You can register your domain name and start building your website in minutes!
I use Bigscoots to host the How to Entrepreneur website. They offer very reliable service with very little downtimes and they specialize in website speed for websites of multiple types.
Alternatively, you can use Wealthy Affiliate’s hosting since you’re starting an affiliate site. You can get your affiliate marketing training and hosting within one very cost-effective package.
3. Create Content
Once your website is set up, it’s time to start writing content. You want to start with your basic pages: home page, about page, contact page, and blog page. Once you have your pages set up, then you want to start creating your product reviews.
How do you write a product review for a blog?
Considering that a product review blog is built around the service of writing reviews, it’s even more paramount that you create content consistently.
For some, they’re creating content to attract customers to a product and service, but for product reviewers, the content is the service, so you want to make sure you have an editorial calendar that has consistent publishing of reviews your audience would be looking for.
Recommended Resources:
- How to Create an Editorial Calendar (with free template)
- How to Write Product Reviews that Make Tons of Sales
- Free eBook: How I Made my First $10k in Affiliate Sales
4. Monetize the Website
As a product reviewer, it’s likely, you’ll be able to make a significant income with affiliate marketing.
As an affiliate, you can link to products and services you review, and make affiliate commissions when a person buys products thru your referral link.
I’ve made $10’s of thousands of dollars with affiliate marketing, and you can see more about my experience here.
In addition to affiliate marketing, you can also make money by:
- Selling physical products
- Selling digital products
- Selling services (like sponsored posting)
- And, Posting ads on your website
5. Set up Social Accounts
One way you can inform people about your product review blog is by posting your content onto social media. Even if you have personal social media accounts, it’s important to create social media accounts for your business–this will enable you to have more places to build awareness and attract visitors to your website.
6. Get Traffic
Once you’re creating content consistently and sharing it on your social media channels, you’ll start to see your traffic increase incrementally. You should be able to build up your revenue from organic traffic, but you can amplify it even more when you diversify.
You can get traffic to your website from organic traffic, offline marketing, PR, guess posting and collaborations, and by paying for ads to your website.
7. Make Money
As more people are learning about the quality of your reviews, and purchasing products and services from you, you’ll see incremental growth in your income.
Conclusion
Starting a product review blog can be really helpful. Buying products online is a completely different experience than offline. You don’t test things out the same, and you don’t try things on like you would offline. As a result, product reviews are important.
I hope this guide on how to start a product review blog was helpful for you. If you have questions about this, leave them in the comments section below.
Are you Ready to Start your Product Review Blog?
If you’re ready to start a product review blog, you should definitely download my free eBook and checklist that tells you the things I learned from making my first $10k in affiliate sales.
The tips and advice I share there can be very helpful as you’re building your product review blog. Click the image below or download the free eBook here.
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