Should I List My Reviews on a Blog

One of the best ways to monetize your blog is with affiliate marketing.

Ad banners are a horrible way to make money online. In 2020, less than 0.1% of viewers clicked on an advertisement banner, and that statistic is only getting worse.

Roughly 25% of all visitors use an advertizement blocker. That means fewer individuals are seeing the ads on your blog.

That means less money in your pocket.

Affiliate marketing is a much amend fashion to monetize your blog, in my opinion. Of the eight ways to make money with a weblog, information technology is perchance my favorite.

Creating a production review blog is an effective way to use affiliate marketing. In that location are iii types of weblog posts a product review blogger can create:

1. Review — Detailed assay of a product
2. Comparison — How does a product compare to other products in the marketplace?
3. How-To — How to use a product after purchasing

In this article, I'll more often than not cover reviews and the format y'all should utilise for them.

I can tell you lot from experience that creating a product review blog works very well. All of the income from my site Investor Junkie came from affiliate marketing. I sold the blog in 2018.

In fact, nearly of the websites that have sold for over 7 figures were likewise production review blogs.

Information technology turns out, as i of the final steps earlier ownership a product, consumers seek out production reviews. What used to be establish past picking upwardly a copy of Consumer Reports magazine is now constitute online with Google.

With a product review blog, there's much you must exercise to ensure your success. This guide will get yous started equally a product reviewer. Information technology includes advice for which I normally charge a consulting fee.

1. Pick Your Niche

If you are creating a production review blog, yous should either take expertise in that industry or hire writers who are knowledgeable nearly that infinite.

In my opinion, nothing is worse than reading a review of a product by a writer who obviously either has no qualifications to review the product or didn't really use the product.

Production review topics can exist very diverse and autumn in a wide range of niches. Topics include:

• Beauty
• Fitness
• Consumer
• Nutrient
• Wellness
• Digital
• Computers and technology
• Software

… to proper name but a few.

How to pick your niche is a topic in itself. But you should cull wisely and make up one's mind your niche before you proceed to the next steps.

If I were picking a topic for product reviews today, I would choice a niche about which I had a decent amount of cognition and into which I also believed I could add together more insight than the average writer.

For ideas on how to option the best niche for you, I recommend reading Ryan Levesque's book Choose.

2. Start a Blog

Larry'due south Take

If you're but starting out and looking for a depression-cost, no-frills web hosting provider, Bluehost is your best pick. They requite you a free domain proper name for the first year and have a one-click WordPress install. You'll be up and running with your web log in no time.

Bluehost Review

Subsequently y'all've determined your niche, the side by side step is creating your weblog. (If you're looking for detailed steps, check out my how-to kickoff a blog article.)

I recommend Bluehost. It's perfect for someone starting out with a product review weblog.

If yous guild Bluehost through me, I will install and gear up WordPress for you for costless! You lot'll get my recommended theme and plugins. You lot'll also go admission to my first Ready, Gear up… Blog! course for FREE.

3. Utilise a Product Review Template

The success of your production review web log depends on the layout y'all utilize and the details you include in each review. I recommend creating a standardized format for each review (or at least for all the reviews in the same category). This allows you lot to create a standard operating procedure that makes each review easier to write (and too easier to delegate to other reviewers).

Below is the production review template I recommend you lot use. It has taken me years of testing and looking at rut maps to perfect.

These are the recommended sections every review on your blog should comprise:

My Recommended Product Review Template

As with any template, use it equally a guideline. Your audience may take dissimilar needs. If so, adjust your template accordingly.

Psychology plays a critical part in the review template design. Equally a reviewer, you want your reviews to be the best-created articles on those products. You want the heir-apparent to exist sure they've fabricated an informed decision on which production is correct for them. To exercise this, you must get into the shoes of a prospective buyer.

A product may not be right for you lot personally. You lot tin can country that in a review, but realize that, for other buyers, the product might be perfect. Their decision-making procedure might be different than yours.

A well-designed review website helps three people in the transaction:

1. The buyer — You aid them buy the best product for them
2. The merchant — Yous transport the best buyer to their production while directing other buyers to competing products that are more appropriate for their needs
3. You (the blogger) — You lot become a committee for each affiliate transaction

There are two types of visitors to product review blogs. I call them:

1. "Summary Susan" — Wants a quick summary and your recommendation
2. "Detailed Dave" — Will read everything you write and so read information technology again just to brand certain

You want to satisfy both types of visitors, but their needs are very dissimilar. On the web, near people skim content. And so y'all want your review template to be easy to read and set up so the visitor can quickly gather the information they're looking for.

At that place are many "Summary Susans" who just want quick answers to their problems. "Don't brand me retrieve; but tell me the answer" is their thought process. You lot want to make sure you create a clear path to aid them decide if the reviewed product is correct for them. If the production you are reviewing isn't right for them, y'all need to straight them to the alternatives.

The second type of visitor ("Detailed Dave") wants to be sure they are making the right decision. The buy may exist a huge financial commitment for them, or information technology may have other social implications. Their job could be on the line, or a spouse could criticize the buy for years to come.

For this type of visitor, this is where the layout, presentation, and content should smoothen. Just like "Summary Susan," "Detailed Dave" is looking for you to be the expert in this niche.

The reader of your review wants to assure themselves they are making the right conclusion before they purchase. Your review is the last step earlier they take the plunge.

This is one of the reasons why a practiced review format is and so disquisitional.

Non but does it help the reader, just — if yous write a detailed review — they will purchase through the link given to them.

How to Write a Product Review

You should create a production review template that's standard across your site.

A production review should incorporate ix components:

1. Title/Make Logo
2. Summary
3. Features
4. What Is X?
5. Pros and Cons
6. Screenshots
7. Pricing
8. Alternatives
9. Recommendation

What social club you put these sections in tin vary. Remember, this is meant to be a guideline.

As the reviewer, your subheadings should respond consumers' common questions well-nigh the production or service.

Some niches have other additional keyword searches. If so, y'all should add them to your product review template.

Permit's break downward each section in detail.

Championship/Brand Logo

The offset role of any review should make the reader certain they're on the right page. You want it to be clear that they are seeing the review for the brand or production they've searched for. That means the headline for each review should showtime off with "Brandname Review" or some variant of this.

An optional subheading should highlight a cardinal characteristic or aspect of the product. Information technology can be a skilful or even a bad attribute.

If you can, also add a logo epitome of the brand to make it clear to the reader that they are looking at the right review.

Summary

The purpose of this section is to quickly capture the attention of your visitor to:

• Assist them make up one's mind if they want to read your review
• Identify whom the product is for
• Identify whom the product is NOT for
• Potentially requite a call to action

This section could display:

• The make logo
• The name of the reviewer
• The date the review was created
• (Optional) The date review was terminal updated
• An opinion of whom the production is best for
• An overall rating
• A product description
• Whether the production is recommended or non
• (Optional) Supplemental ratings
• (Optional) A call to action

Here's a sample of ane:

Product Summary instance by Coin Done Correct

If you are using the Amazon Associates plan, you tin can generate a production summary, every bit I did higher up for the Ryan Levesque volume.

The WordPress plugin I recommend is AAWP.

Not just can AAWP prepare your affiliate links automatically, but it tin can pull in a production paradigm, description, and pricing information. All of this is automatically updated to prove the latest information from Amazon. It makes using Amazon as an affiliate very piece of cake to use.

Larry's Take

If you are looking to monetize via the Amazon Associates plan so AAWP is the WordPress plugin you must utilize. It has the ability to not merely create links to Amazon products simply has the ability to create summary boxes that automatically update with description, images, and pricing. You lot can create production comparison pages easily every bit well.

Platform	WordPress
Price	$39 - $299 per year

Learn More

Rating

People want a visual representation of how good (or bad) the production you've reviewed is. They like to see how the review in question compares to other reviews you've done. It makes it easy for the reader to appraise your review and decide if it's worth reading farther.

I highly recommend that you add a rating to each of your reviews.

This rating can also show up in a Google search (otherwise known equally SERP).

An case of a star rating in SERP

You can practise this manually via a schema markup known as JSON-LD. Google expects to encounter the markup in a specific format, and you can follow these guidelines and add information technology manually to your review. The JSON-LD schema is piece of cake to create and is one of the best ways to help improve your SEO.

If you are using WordPress, you lot tin add the schema via a plugin. At that place are many to choose from, simply I recommend WP Review Plugin.

Pros and Cons

The next important part of your production review is the pros and cons section. Readers want to detect out almost the adept and bad features of the production.

No product is perfect, and so if your review is listing only the positive aspects without discussing the negative… it's not a review. It'due south a puff slice, and your audience will realize that.

Your review will be more authentic and genuine if it includes the negative aspects of the product.

I'll cite the Harvard Concern Review:

Good reviews, every bit expected, increased sales across the board, with gains from 32% to 52%. For books by established authors, negative reviews caused a drop of about fifteen%, on average — too not surprising. Simply for books past relatively unknown authors, bad reviews caused sales to ascent, past an boilerplate of 45%. This held even when the criticism was extreme: After one peculiarly scathing review, for case ("the characters practice non have personalities so much as particular niches in the stratosphere"), sales more than quadrupled.

Bad Review Can Boost Sales. Here'southward Why – Jonah Berger

Features

Visitors to your blog desire to see a list of the reviewed product'due south features. Are there any aspects unique to the product?

I adopt bullet points or an HTML tabular array that lists the attributes and the benefits. Remember, yous are writing a review to assist your visitor decide if they want to apply or not use the production.

What Is "BRANDNAME"?

From my SEO inquiry, I've plant this to be i of the more common searches with a similar intent to the review itself. You replace "BRANDNAME" with the name of the brand in an H2. For example, I used the subhead "What Is ThriveCart?" in my review for the shopping cart service.

People are searching for the product and want to find out more than about the production. Y'all should answer the question directly.

Ideally, if you are looking for a featured snippets position in Google search, yous should effort to limit your description to around 50-60 words.

A variant of this is "How Does BRANDNAME Piece of work?" Which subhead to use depends upon your niche and should be researched.

Screenshots

Before individuals buy a product, they want to meet what it it looks similar. If it's a concrete product, prospects like to run into what it looks like in use. Yous're better off creating your own product shots than relying on the stock photos supplied by the manufacturer.

However, if you don't have the budget or the time, start off with photos from the maker.

I prefer placing all of the screenshots in one expanse using a slider. I dislike showing images all throughout the review and prefer to have i place for the reader to see the various aspects of the product.

I recommend the WordPress plugin Soliloquy for this.

Larry'south Accept

A WordPress plugin that allows you to create image sliders on your weblog. Normally I'm not a fan of sliders merely for screenshots in reviews, this is the exception and the only utilize case I recommend using Soliloquy.

Pricing

In any product conclusion, cost is an important factor. Yous must include pricing information in your review. "Pricing" is not only a mutual search term simply including it in a subhead helps Google make sure you have the details on what the product you are reviewing costs.

Not every production sold has an easy-to-sympathize pricing structure. If the product has different cost options or levels, exist clear about what's included in each one.

Does the vendor take a discount if y'all buy in bulk or long-term? Does the product come up with any guarantees or warranties? Where tin can they purchase the product? (Hint: via an affiliate link.)

Alternatives

People dear to think in terms of comparisons. In fact, when we are already familiar with ane production, information technology's natural and piece of cake for united states to associate it with some other possible product to use.

For the sake of simplicity, I would non recommend listing or recommending more than three alternative products. More than options typically pb to more defoliation.

Withal, you can offer and present other key features of diverse products to help differentiate them.

Alternatives to Personal Majuscule on my blog Investor Junkie

While people like to compare like products on the market, they also desire to be clear on how they are different. What central features do the alternatives offer that the reviewed production does not? Are they competitive in price merely?

Information technology'due south more than than likely you can notice key distinctions for those other products to betoken out. And it'southward probable those other products also accept chapter links available equally well. Then it would make sense to as well offering a link to them as well. You get bonus points if you create a review for the alternative product and link to it.

The review may be the entry point to your brand, but information technology doesn't take to end there. Mostly, a visitor volition enter your blog via one review but wind upwards purchasing a competing product because of your detailed articles. They'll apply your comparison to find out the alternative product is a much ameliorate fit.

As an influencer, your goal is to brand everyone — the vendor, the visitor, and you lot — happy with the chapter marketing transaction.

Y'all make the vendor happy because you sent the best visitor to its product.

You make the visitor happy considering they bought the best product for them.

And of course, you make yourself happy considering you get a commission for the purchase.

If you are using Amazon for your products, AAWP also has the power to create squeamish-looking comparing tables similar to what was on my blog.

Disclosure

A disclosure isn't role of the format I gave you up top, but it'southward critical you include 1 in your product reviews. In fact, it should exist the first section of your review.

If you are in the United states, per FTC guidelines, you must disembalm links on an article that are monetized. According to the FTC, the disclosure must be "clear and conspicuous." It cannot be a hidden legal disclaimer that you must aggrandize with a push button click or live at the bottom of the page.

I'm not a lawyer — nor do I play one on TV — then please consult counsel on the matter. However, in that location are some good articles out there on the basics.

4. Grow Your Search Traffic

One of the disadvantages of monetizing via affiliate links is the need to larn traffic for your product reviews.

The primary method is via organic search traffic. That means SEO for bloggers is critical.

The reason why nigh product review blogs rely on SEO traffic is simple: Most merchants do not let members of their affiliate marketing programs to bid on paid traffic for their brand.

So yous must build your traffic organically. Later on all, if you are creating a review, information technology'due south the only way you can go brand search terms similar:

• "BRANDNAME Review"
• "BRANDNAME Alternatives"
• "BRANDNAME Pricing"
• "What Is BRANDNAME?"

All of these are common search terms, and considering of my recommendations, yous accept a improve chance of ranking for these SEO terms.

For more than tips, bank check out my SEO class:

5. Update Web log Mail Reviews

Unlike other types of blog posts, review posts are evergreen. They have an unlimited timespan and can exist in perpetuity.

But as opposed to what many other affiliate marketing gurus will tell you, a product review weblog is not passive income. From my experience, a review blog post is non "ready it and forget it."

On my previous blog, almost 80% of our editorial agenda involved updating former articles and reviews. That's because products were constantly adding new features and functionalities.

Nil is worse for someone searching for a review than finding i that'south months (or years) out of date. You can create a improve user experience if you continue your reviews current. Google will besides advantage you for it with higher SERP.

Unfortunately, many merchants don't tell you about updates and you must seek out the product changes. I advise subscribing to the visitor'southward press releases and monitoring their various social media channels for product updates.

Summary

Creating a product review web log is a great way to monetize a weblog. In my stance, when y'all combine reviews with affiliate marketing, your site can become much more profitable than with ad banners.

FAQs

What are some of the other ways to make money blogging?

Chapter marketing is merely one way to brand money online. I have another article on the 8 ways to make coin blogging.

How practise I generate an audience to find my blog?

I of the primary ways bloggers create an audition is from organic search traffic. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is how you create content to rank in Google.

I have 9 tricks to go your blogs posts to rank in SEO for Bloggers.

How much money tin I make blogging?

From my experience, you can certainly brand more money than a full-time job. Instead of relying on income reports bloggers often release, I decided to use public records. In my article, I document affiliate marketing blogs that sold for 7 figures or more than.

wagnerfixecition.blogspot.com

Source: https://larryludwig.com/product-review-blogger/

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