Writing reviews for money

Can you really make money writing reviews online?

We are currently in the midst of a recession. A great many people are finding it hard to keep up with the cost of living and are trying to find ways of making a little bit of extra cash each month. A lot of these people have turned to the internet at their hour of need and are attempting to make money via affiliate marketing and article marketing.

If you are new to affiliate marketing then you will probably be wondering what kinds of articles are most profitable. To be perfectly honest one of the most profitable types of articles are reviews. Reviews can make money because people like to know as much information about a product that they are considering buying before they actually buy it. Therefore if you write a review about a product you are giving that potential customer your opinion of that product, if the customer decides to buy that product through your review then you will make money.

The reason why writing reviews for money is so popular is because the traffic that your reviews will gain are targeted traffic. The vast majority of people who read your review will be people who are looking to buy a specific product and would like to know about peoples personal experiences with that product. Basically your readers want to buy and you want to sell so this is the perfect combination.

What kind of products should I review?

A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that you have to write reviews for expensive products such as high end electronics to make money writing reviews. This is not the case. To be honest it is much harder to make money through writing reviews about high-end electronics because there are so many people out there doing that already and they are better established than you. Certain kinds of products are not profitable for the beginner internet marketer to review because the competition is too high. When choosing what products to review it is a good idea to start off by writing about products that you own and use every day because you will be able to write about them from a more personal stand point which will engage the reader.

For example, lots of people use washing up liquid. You could write reviews about the various different washing up liquids that you have used. Explain why you preferred certain ones over others:

• Was it the smell of the liquid?
• Did one tackle grease better than the others?
• Did one of the washing up liquids give you a rash?

Writing about this sort of thing will make the review more personal and more powerful and will hopefully make more sales. The main thing that you must do is look for product that people want to know about but that nobody is really writing about. Then you will be writing reviews about products that have low competition and high search volume. You want products that are getting over 1500 searches per month but have low competition. I will not go into too much detail about finding these products as there is a plethora of information about that specific topic already on Hubpages. But I will point out that an easy way of finding ideas for products, that have low competition, is to use the GoogleAdwords Keyword Tool.

Once you have written the review you will need to place an affiliate link within that review, usually at the bottom of the review. If you place your affiliate link near the top of your review people may miss it because they are reading the review and do not wish to click away from the page. But placing the link near the bottom of your review means that the review will have to be long enough to cover all of the aspects of the product whilst not being too long that people get bored of reading the review and go and seek their information elsewhere. When writing reviews for money it is important to keep to the point, do not add loads of filler, keep the review on track and keep it interesting. You may have to edit your reviews a few times before they start to make money but you will get there eventually as long as you keep to the points and keep the review engaging for the reader.

Writing an Interesting review

When you write a product review you will need to make it stand out from the rest of the reviews of that product that are available online. Add your own personality to the review and try to make it as interesting as possible. Do not be afraid to point out any of the bad points that you have found about certain products. Writing about the bad points alongside the good gives readers the impression that you are honest and not just writing this review to make a load of sales. The most important thing is to be original.

A fantastic example of original, unique and rather profitable reviews comes from Ben ‘Yahtzee’ Croshaw over at The Escapist. Yahtzee spends his days reviewing video games in his own unique and comedic way. He created a show called ‘Zero punctuation’ in which he talks at high speed and points out all of the flaws in the most popular games available each show consists of a funny cartoon. Even though he basically insults every game he reviews he makes money from this as he places an affiliate link at the bottom of each of the videos knowing that no matter how much he rips into a game people will still buy it.

Hopefully this little guide has helped to increase your understanding and has given you something to think about. If you have any questions please feel free to leave a comment in the comment box at the bottom of this page.