Product reviews are a great way to introduce people to new products while increasing your affiliate commission earnings. But how do you know if the product is good or bad?
This is where you come in!
Being honest and using persuasive speech are the key. This will help not only with marketing, but also with customer satisfaction – because customers want to hear what others think about the product before they buy it for themselves. Many affiliate marketers simply read over the products sales material and B.S. their way through the product review.
Please, please, please do not do that!
The easy way is usually the wrong way. You can permanently damage your reputation as a product reviewer and lose the trust of your audience. Once that happens, you might as well pack it up because you will never regain their trust.
In the long run, you will make much more as an affiliate marketer by creating honest product reviews. Your audience will come to trust you and look forward to your reviews. Having an audience that trusts what you say is priceless. Trust is something you cannot buy, you can only build it yourself.
As a Moral Marketer, you will want to make every attempt to actually test the product you are reviewing. This is fairly easy to do for digital products and software. It may be more difficult if you are reviewing a physical product. Before making any purchases to conduct your review, try to obtain a review copy from the seller.
Now that the elephant in the room has been identified, we can move on…
Why Are Product Reviews Important To Shoppers?
As the e-commerce world continues to grow, so does the need for good product reviews. More than ever, we need information to help us make decisions about items we can’t hold in our hand before buying.
Ratings and reviews are extremely important for customers to make educated decisions on whether to buy one product over another. It seems to be ingrained in us to seek out the opinions of others and to learn from their experiences with that same product or service. I am sure you are as guilty as I am when it comes to online reviews. Before buying a new product or visiting a new restaurant, we read the reviews to determine if we will in fact, visit that establishment or online store.
Reviews are social proof for products. If a product has many positive reviews, it gives potential customers more assurance that they will be happy with the purchase.
Reviews can also help shoppers figure out if there is anything wrong or different about an item so they don’t make any unexpected purchases and end up disappointed after going through all of the efforts of researching and buying the item.
What Are The Benefits of Reviews As A blogger?
As a blogger, you can write reviews for your audience to help them make decisions about their purchases.
You can also provide your audience with a resource for reviews of products, which will help them make more informed purchasing decisions. For instance, including links and screen shots of google, amazon or another trusted review source of what other customers have said about the product and their experience.
Including these sources adds to the credibility and usefulness of your content. You want to use reviews as much as possible when doing product review posts because they will aide in your overall writing and help when you cannot get access to the product in advance.
What Do You Write In A Product Review?
To start a product review post, you’ll need either a sample of the product that you’re reviewing or to gather a series of reviews of the product online. Amazon is always a good source for this because it encourages people to leave reviews. and automatically verifies whether the reviewer has actually bought the product.
Look At Both Good and Bad Reviews: Be mindful of both bad and good reviews. No one can say they’re perfect, but you don’t want to give a false representation of your product either. You’ll also need the features that make it unique or what makes it stand out from other products in its category.
Common Complaints: Spot those common complaints that people have about the product: if there are common complaints about a product, make sure to address them in your review.
Know The Price of The Product: this is especially important for some products that have different prices depending on where they’re sold and you need to be aware of those differences when writing your reviews so people can better understand what kind of value or quality they’ll receive.
What Should You Include In A Review?
Once you have gathered your research information and your own opinion after testing/viewing the product, you can start writing. Other things you might want to include in the review are:
- The pros and cons of the product (ideally in an easy to read table or bullet form for people who like to scan)
- What makes this product good or bad for you, and why?
- What are some of its features that would be beneficial to someone who has been looking to buy it in particular?
- Any differences between this product versus other products they might have looked at but didn’t purchase because one seemed better than the others?
- Any repeated good or bad points you found from checking reviews on the product.
- What are the alternatives to this item? What other products would be a good buy for someone who wants what you just reviewed?
Legal Stuff
If you are in the United States, per FTC guidelines, you must disclose 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 expand with a button click or live at the bottom of the page.
As a side note: It seems to me to be a matter of common sense, it really should go without saying but….the law is the law.
What Are The Important Things To Consider When Writing A Review
There are a few important things to remember when writing a review to make sure you have an honest piece of content.
Pricing
While you can mention the price of an item in a review, it is not mandatory. There are some Amazon terms that prohibit mentioning the price. Amazon has shown that they will remove associates for the smallest of terms violations, so it’s best to try to comply with their rules. You could make reference to the general price such as ‘item normally in the range of $20-$35’. Just no specific price if you are dealing with Amazon products.
Technical Information
It’s helpful to walk readers through the steps of using the product and include any technical information that you deem relevant. Don’t forget to mention if specific tools or equipment are needed to assemble or use the product.
Depending on the level of knowledge your audience has, certain words will either be more or less appropriate. When writing for an outside audience with no insider knowledge of the subject matter, you may need to adjust your language accordingly.
Writing A Quality Review
A product review is a great way to share your knowledge with the people you care about and help them make an informed decision. There are many things that go into writing one, but by following this guide, we hope you’ll feel more confident in what goes into it. As you gain experience writing reviews, your persuasive speech will come naturally and your reviews will improve over time.
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