Product reviews on their own are not a smart business strategy. The burst in revenue from the sponsorship is nice, free products are normally fun, and the easy commissions with affiliate links are very appealing. But you likely won’t survive in the long run if you always rely on doing reviews.
Once Google, YouTube, Pinterest, etc… wipe the review or reviews that drive your traffic, and they will, your business will sink because you only focused on these types of short term wins.
If you’re a current product reviewer or you are thinking about creating a review platform, here is how you can take a successful product review and turn it into a long term business strategy.
Here’s the process and then I go into more detail:
- Do keyword and topic research (this is the must read section)
- Create the review
- Make sure to optimize it and not just for the brand terms
- Create a follow up post that tries to display as recommended reading
- Bring the person to a place or platform you control
- Monetize!
Do Keyword And Topic Research
If the product or brand you are reviewing has a lot of search volume, this is good news for you! But only if you rank for Product + Reviews on YouTube or Google. If the product or brand doesn’t have a ton of search volume, then you need to do keyword and topic research to help an audience find you.
Keyword and topic research are not the same thing!
- Keyword research is looking for specific phrases with an estimated monthly search volume on a platform like Google, YouTube and Pinterest.
- Topic research is finding the questions people are asking like if the product is compatible with another product, how much the product weighs, or if the product really works.
(Before we get into the meat of this post, some of the links below are affiliate links and I’ll earn a commission if you shop through them.)
Here’s a three step process to do keyword and topic research:
[Read more…] about How to Turn Product Reviews Into a Full Business