Blogging is the new way to make your fortune online without a lot of work. There are a variety of niches and ideas for thriving blog posts, but review blogs can be particularly profitable if you know how to build a great site and develop a money-making blogging strategy. If you’re planning to write a review blog, here are some things you should know about generating capital.
1. Fit Within a Niche
A niche is most important for reviewers. You can’t hope to gain the expertise you need if you focus on products in every niche. The most successful reviewers have chosen a very narrow pocket on the web and share their expertise in that area.
Additionally, you need to choose a niche that can make a profit with reviews. It’s hard to make a lot of money on reviewing low-value products. Most people won’t subscribe to a blog that reviews pens, for example. If they read reviews before making a purchase, they’ll look at the short blurbs on a retailer’s website, not an in-depth blog post.
However, if you’re reviewing mattresses, survey sites, debt consolidation organizations, snoring solutions, and other high-value and often mysterious products and services, you’re more likely to generate a real following.
2. Write Quality Posts
Your entire business is built around the quality of each post you publish. If people wanted an under-researched, short blurb on the effectiveness of a product, they would read reviews from Amazon, Wal-Mart, or other major retailers.
A quality review post has several essential factors. First of all, it’s well-written. The sentences are easy to read, and there are minimal grammatical errors. It should also be well structured with short paragraphs and breaks where necessary.
Next, it should be in-depth. You’ll want a brief description of the product as well as details on the design, cost, value, and more. For in-depth reviews, it helps to have a navigation block at the top so that consumers can bounce around to elements of the review that are most interesting to them.
Here’s a great example of a superior review post from Surveys Wonk, a blog that reviews the best survey-review sites. Examine the qualities of this in-depth post to help you structure your own review posts.
3. Sell Advertising Slots
A review blog is ideal for selling advertising slots, especially for companies you review. You can sell advertising slots on your website and get compensation for the space, or you could get paid anytime a client clicks on the ad or makes a purchase through the advertisement. In some cases, you’ll get paid for both. As you gain more readers, selling advertising slots is an excellent way to bring in passive revenue.
4. Build Affiliate Links
Building affiliate links into your blog posts is another powerful method of generating profits on your blog. Like an advertisement, an affiliate link is placed in your blog post, and you get a commission when a reader makes a purchase on an affiliate site through your link.
Obviously, affiliate links are best reserved for products that you review favorably. If you say more bad than good about a product, no one will want to make a purchase through your link, and you won’t get paid.
5. Join Product Review Networks
One of the best ways to earn money and find items to review is through a product review network membership. Your role is the mediator between buyer and seller, so go to the source and find the hottest products to review.
The best product review networks include ClickBank, Google Affiliates, Amazon Associates, Rakuten LinkShare, and Commission Junction. You’ll find affiliate opportunities, as well as great ideas about popular products to review.
6. Connect with Other Reviewers
Any blogger can benefit from the power of networking. You’ll have a hard time getting more followers, advertising gigs, and affiliate links if you aren’t well-known. Connect with other reviewers in related, but non-competing niches to see if they can spread awareness of your brand. Try to find influencers, or those with thousands of followers, to maximize your exposure.
There are many strategies for networking effectively, including attending seminars, participating in forums, using social media, and cold-emailing those in your niche. You have to be willing to put yourself out there and prove yourself as a reviewer worth being acquainted with.
7. Promote Your Content and Boost SEO Rankings
Popular blogs that also make money get plenty of traffic from search engines. To grow your following, you’ll need to spend some time promoting content and boosting SEO rankings.
There are dozens of strategies for promoting your blog content—much more than can be encompassed in a single blog post. So, you’ll want to spend plenty of time researching things like social shares, long tail keywords, blog comment standards, forum usage, influencers, and more. As you dive into the promotional world of blog writing, you’ll learn even more tips and tricks about monetizing your blog and adding value for your readers.