Product Blogs: the Paid Review Option

Posted on November 25, 2007 - Filed Under Integrated Marketing

Starting bloggers with a product to sell have the opportunity to generate more incremental revenue from their blog than their counterparts who are providing valued articles in their respective niches. One great example is Nate Whitehill. By starting a blog, he has managed to promote his business of selling unique blog designs to other bloggers, and in turn receive a lot of readers on his blog from people who are hungry for tips on how to make their blogs stand out.

If you have a mature product that has had some market success and have started a blog to promote it online, it makes sense to invest in some advertising for your product blog.

There are many ways to advertise your product blog online. From Google Adwords, paid text links, private ads on a popular blog, to creating an affiliate program that other bloggers can participate in. The most effective method of advertising is if you get the endorsement of an A-list blogger for your product via a paid review. A list bloggers have a large base of loyal readers who trust in his recommendations, and have great influence to generate the awareness that a new product needs. In sync with that, I would recommend advertising on social media networks and submitting a product review to YouTube to generate buzz. A well planned campaign that where you build each advertising element on each other is extremely effective in creating a hype while targetted ads continue to bring in traffic well after your product launch.

I have a post on the backburner on how to create a buzz marketing campaign on the Internet, but this post will focus on the paid reviews as an advertising channel. The one piece of advise I will give bloggers looking to put a review on a popular blog is that a paid review is not an advertorial.

A Paid Review Gone Wrong?
I have come across a comment board which facilitated an attack against an A-list blogger, claiming that he was unethical by giving a poor product review of the client. That said, the advertiser did receive increased traffic from the A-list blog, and had a number of signups that should have more than paid for the cost of the review itself. Going back to the A-list blog, the reviews he had written consisted of his frank assessment as an experienced blogger and business person. While I did spot a negative review, it didn’t slam down on the product but rather pointed out obvious flaws and even suggested improvements which helped the advertiser increase his businesses significantly upon following the recommended changes.

This incident highlighted a major shift in mindset with regards to traditional media advertising vs online advertising, and is something that you will want to note if you planning to invest some money in promoting your product blog. While traditional media consists of corporations whose commitment is to their advertisers, bloggers are individuals who are highly committed to their readers and audience. Looking at traditional publishing vehicles such as newspapers and magazines, costs of printing and distribution are high and few of them are able to survive without sponsors from advertisers. This gives advertisers the power to control what, when and where of their advertisements. That is why a write up of a product in a magazine is called an advertorial, or a written advertisement that is skewed toward highlighting the benefits and advantages of buying the product and promotes the client brand.

However, bloggers are a different breed as online publishing is more a passion and a service they provide to their readers while earning money as a bonus. Personal branding ranks high, and loyalty and trust from their readers are important as they are fans that will bring in traffic for their blog and click on their ads and buy products from them. They have spent a large amount of time developing and building relationships with their audience, and are not likely to jeopardize that over subservience to advertisers. Therefore, in place of advertorials, you have paid reviews instead. The difference between an advertorial and a review is that a review consists of a frank assessment of the benefits and downfalls of a particular product or service based on the reviewer’s personal experience, where he provides his personal endorsement.

Tips for Getting a Good Review
While there are downsides to getting a paid review which includes lack of control over what will be said about your product and how many people will end up buying your product, they are outweighed by the benefits that it provides - visibility, product / brand awareness, endorsement by an authority blog in the same niche, valuable backlinks and “sold” customers coming to your site.

Below are some steps you can take to limit the risks of paid reviews:
1. Choose an authority blog in the same niche as yourself where you are an active commentator or have some relationship with the blog owner.
2. When requesting for a paid review, submit brochures / writeups that clearly highlight the benefits of your product. If benefits are not clear, and how the product works is ambiguous, you are not likely to get a comprehensive or good assessment simply because it is difficult for the reviewer to know what your product is about.
3. Make sure you have a quality product with a good business model. If you want the reviewer to have good things to say about your product, it has to be a good product in the first place so that he can give his endorsement to it. If your product is not mature yet, I would suggest you explore other advertising channels like paid text links buying private ad space or banners.
4. Read the previous reviews by the blogger. Look out for factors like how comprehensive are the reviews, does he provide visuals of products, are his reviews fair and intelligent, and the number of comments and amount of interest generated by his reviews.
5. Check if the blog owner does all his reviews himself or assigns other writers to conduct the review for him, especially for the type of product you are offering.

Do you have any experience to share on the benefits or downside to paid review advertising? Who are your top choices to get a paid review from and why?

Don't miss any of my posts by

subscribing to my feed!

Comments

974 Responses to “Product Blogs: the Paid Review Option”

lady on November 25th, 2007 2:58 pm

that was a long post but really worth reading..

nowadays, an advertiser can choose to have a positive review only and thus spare his website or product of the unwanted criticisms.

Ivy on November 26th, 2007 8:40 am

Thank you for your kind comment.

I have yet to come across publishers who will give only positive reviews. Is there a list of them?

Frank C on November 29th, 2007 11:26 am

Hi Ivy,

Some review requests can be “benefits only” which means the requesting party only wants and will only pay for positive reviews. They’re usually the same ones who don’t want to to disclose that it’s a paid review too.

On the general idea of a getting a product review done for your product, sometimes it doesn’t hurt to just ask a blogger. I’ve had 3 publicity firms ask me to do uncompensated product reviews for their clients’ products. I’ve done them because I liked the products they were offering. They get a free, natural, review and, with any luck, I’ll get some useful contacts myself and buzz for my blog in return.

Ivy on November 29th, 2007 10:58 pm

Frank,

That is interesting. I would expect that there would be reviews that would promote benefits only, just haven’t seen any of those yet.

Your comment solves the mystery for me - it isn’t disclosed that its a requested review. I think you have a great strategy going for your site, and find myself learning so much from seeing how you’re doing it.

Offering free blog reviews on top of being a great gesture of generosity and building goodwill among the blogging community is also a great way to promote yourself for doing product reviews!