Starting a Product Review Site

As I’ve mentioned on here before, one of my projects is my headphone review site at www.headphonereviewhq.com.  I thought it might be helpful to others out there to find out what it takes to get up and running.

But what products should I review?

First thing’s first – you need to know what you can review.  I personally suggest picking something you already have a few of so that you can offer more than just one review.  If you’re short on cash and you can’t afford to go buying a lot of things to review, see if there’s anything your friends and family might have that you can borrow for reviews.  You don’t have to break the bank to get rolling, but you’ll definitely need some products to get started on.  Another suggestion though is to pick something that’s not too hard to get your hands on – for instance, reviewing washing machines might be a little difficult due to the size, availability, etc.  Plus, I’d suggest finding something that people are interested in.  I mean, I don’t know, but I doubt people really read reviews on the best pencil erasers.

Figure out how you want to do your reviews

Once you’ve figured out what you want to review, you’ll need to decide how you want to bring these reviews to viewers.  Do you want to do a website, a YouTube channel, a podcast?  These are big decisions that all have merit.  Ultimately a combination of all three is probably the best and there are even other options out there such as a Twitter account, a Facebook fan page, etc.  But, try not to overwhelm yourself at first.

Creating your own website

Look at what you have available to you and decide what your best avenue is.  If you already have a decent camera and you’re willing to drop $10 on a domain name and $6/month on hosting a website, then that might be your best way to go.  At that point you’ve got to be willing to write some reviews and take some pictures and you’ll be off to a start.  Start getting some quality content up on the web and then you’ll move onto the next step, link building – more on this in a future post.

Creating reviews for YouTube

If you don’t have the desire to set up a website and get rolling with that, maybe you want to start with a YouTube channel.  A quick note on this – there are MANY people out there who have nothing more than a YouTube channel and do VERY WELL as far as making a living online.  YouTube is the 2nd most popular search engine on the web so it stands to reason that this is a great place to put content. If you have a decent video camera and a relatively decent microphone, you can really get off to a quick start with a YouTube channel.  The key here is to really give the user what they want – if you’re reviewing a laptop, you need to give great video shots of every aspect of the computer, compare it to items of sizes people are familiar with, discuss features, etc.  Make sure the video is focused on the product and not you.  There’s quite a bit more to this which I’ll go over in a future post.

Maybe create a Podcast for product reviews

If you love the idea of a podcast and the reviews would translate well to a spoken review, then this might be a great avenue.  There’s no denying the popularity of podcasts as they’re a great way to consume content while you’re driving, working out, taking a solo lunch or any number of other activities.  If you have a decent microphone and recorder (iPhone, iPod, audio recorder, etc) and you organize your thoughts well, this can be a fun and productive avenue as well.  There’s a little work to be done in post editing after you’ve recorded the initial product, but you can garner a huge following rather quickly if create a quality podcast.

Become an expert

Once you get your product review site rolling, you’ll start gaining some recognition, assuming you’re doing a good job, and you’ll soon be able to request products from various manufacturers to do reviews on products you didn’t have to buy or borrow from friends.  If you choose products you’re passionate about, that will show through and eventually, with some hard work and dedication, you’ll become a source that people trust and respect.

Hopefully this will spark some action on your part and get you moving.  If you have questions or any comments, please leave them below as I’d love to hear from you.