Buying and Selling Blog article reviews

Cristian Level X³

October 16, 2016, 12:05 pm

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Buying and Selling Blog article reviews

Let's say you have a decent blog with some decent traffic and also you managed to develop a small community of readers. You write good articles on your niche and maybe you have some Google AdSense ads around as a way of monetizing the blog.

Something else you can do to earn an extra buck would be to offer blog review for products that are niche related. A certain manufacturer can send you the product for you to test and maybe write a review submitting a link to the company's homepage.

There are two ways of handling product review on blogs:

Be 100% transparent - meaning your will give a full honest opinion on that product
Avoid certain drawbacks - you state only the positive stuff, ignoring the negative for the sake of the client that is paying yours for the review.

As a blogger which way would you be inclined to handle such a problem?
As a client, would you insist on an honest blog review or would you demand the blogger to leave the negative stuff out of the review?

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iamawriter

iamawriter

One needs to be selective about accepting products for review if the review is not good. The question is how to reject products which could create a bad relationship with the blogger and the company in question. How would you handle it?

7 years ago

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Judas2018

Judas2018

Good point. I tend to be very picky about items I review in exchange for payment. I have decided to deal with this by agreeing to review a product on our official youtube channel as a video. This way, the review is objective and doesn't really tell people to go out and buy the item or not. It simply gives them enough insight into its inner-workings where they can make up their own minds at the end of the video. Very different from agreeing to post a blurb or blog on your official website about a product, in exchange for pay. If you didn't like the product, it could get tricky with the supplier or sponsor. If you lie and say you did like it, it betrays the trust of your audience. A video of the product being un-boxed, and being displayed or shown off visually, comes off as far more objective on both ends.

7 years ago

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Corzhens

Corzhens

I agree with you that being transparent is the best approach. When you write only about the positive aspects of the product and you have seen the negative aspects but didn't write it deliberately then it is like lying. That's why I don't entertain the idea of a product review because it is not easy to be neutral especially if you are writing about the product and being paid for the review. How can you point out the bad aspects of the product then?

7 years ago

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Kakashi2020

Kakashi2020

I've done a lot of paid reviews in the past and I would always be 100 percent transparent in my reviews be it good or bad. This is what I tell the client and if he agrees then it's all good. But in cases that the client insists that reviews should be good, then either I reject it or I would check the content first then I decide whether to review it or not.

6 years ago

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ballyhara

ballyhara

Obviously nobody wants a bad review on his/her product, but if I'm paying for a review, I have to accept an honest opinion about it, because that's the only way to improve it. In the end, either if I like the opinion or not, that's exactly what a client will see on it. Maybe a good way to do so, is by making a personal list of pros and cons, that way people will know your own perception on the product, which is better than a critic about it.

7 years ago

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Lynne

Lynne

I do paid product reviews on my mommy blog. I am upfront and honest with people that want me to write a review and there are a few things that are really important to me.

My readers need to know what I really think. It is why they follow me and read my content. I will not leave things out.

I also don't do reviews unless I have received the actual products.

So yes I tell my customers that if I do a review it will be a 100% honest review. I will always try and write a really positive review but in some cases it is just not possible. I had someone contact me to write a glowing review of their MLM opportunity and I told them I will not even review it on my mommy blog because I detest MLM.

I think it is really important to be transparent and honest in all your dealings and not sell your soul for a couple of bucks. It is not worth it.

If someone gives me a product and I can't say anything nice about it then I will not take their money and write a review. I would rather give them feedback in private on how they could possibly improve their product and let them know where the shortcomings are. But I won't publish a review on my website that will cause more damage to them than good.

8 years ago

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Cristian

Cristian

That's some good fair play for not taking their money if you don't have anything good to say about their products Lynne!
Unfortunately not so many bloggers do this, I had clients that sent certain products to influencers only to get a really nasty negative review AFTER the payment was done and the influencer was paid.

8 years ago

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hitmeasap

hitmeasap

In all honesty, as a client I would insist on leaving anything negative out of the public review, but I would appreciate to get that information in private so I could improve my product, writing or whatever in the future. Or perhaps even edit the actual product the review was about. - However I would never allow a review I've paid for to state anything negative at all, not even if it's 1 negative thing and 101 positive ones. Nothing negative would be allowed.

That being said, I've never paid for a review and I will probably never do it either. - Well, perhaps if I use Kardashian or any other super-famous person. Something like that would be amazing!

From a sellers perspective, I would insist on writing a 100% real review for the same reasons Lynne already stated. My readers are following me, trust and believes in me. - I wouldn't risk any of that for a couple of bucks but I've seen tons of people doing exactly that. - Money can be something extremely powerful.

8 years ago

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Cristian

Cristian

Well, it doesn't need to be something that destroys the product but it has to be something in my opinion. Otherwise, people will figure out you've been paid only to say nice things and won't help much with your credibility.

Any product out there has both negative and positive aspects, of course the positive need to outweigh the negative parts but you need to include some drawbacks to make the whole thing genuine.

8 years ago

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DarthHazard

DarthHazard

I know that quite a lot of bloggers do this already. Companies love sending out products for extremely well-known bloggers to try out and then review them. The only problem is that these bloggers try to write nice reviews because they feel bad that the company has sent them products for free and they feel bad to leave a bad review which could impact them massively especially if the blog has a large user base. That's why sometimes it is better to just buy the product and then leave a review for it. It's even better when you get paid to write a review because that creates an extra stream of revenue for you.

7 years ago

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Kakashi2020

Kakashi2020

Companies do often seek reviewers to review their products and even their site and social.media pages and most would demmand that the reviews should be positive.

6 years ago

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galegatling

galegatling

I have thought about doing product reviews. Never had the chance to try them out though. I've got a question too: How would the company entrust you with their products to be reviewed? What are their requirements for you to be able to qualify to review their product(s)? I'm guessing you should have a certain page ranking level of your blog to which it would allow you to qualify right? And probably a number of subscribers too?

7 years ago

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