How to Earn Money on a Review Blog

As word gets out about your review blog, you’ll be asked to review more products. It will be exciting at first. You may even find yourself experiencing an adrenaline rush. As more and more products arrive, you’re going to be left wondering if the products are worth the time and effort it takes to review them. After all, you’ve got bills to pay and mouths to feed. That’s where a little strategic planning comes in. In order to continue blogging about your industry’s products and services, you need to incorporate a few money-making strategies.

Instructions

Sell Products

1. Choose a produce that compliments your blog’s theme. Whether you choose to use a third-party delivery service or ship the products yourself, it’s vital that you only offer products that enhance your visitor’s experience. It’s also important that you choose products you’d use yourself. If you find a product to be of low quality, so will your readers. If you find a product to be over-priced, so will your readers. You’ve taken a lot of time to build trust. Don’t ruin it by offering something that isn’t up to your own standards.

2. Sell books. If your blog reviews books, you don’t have to sell new books. You can specialize in selling limited editions or affordable, used books.

3. Sell household items. If your blog reviews household items, you may not want to be responsible for buying and selling such large merchandise. Offer products that instruct. You can even offer manuals for downloading.

4. Sell merchandise. If your blog reviews products that can be bought in stores, consider opening up an online store that caters to that audience. With a resale license in hand, you can buy merchandise at wholesale cost and sell them at retail prices.

5. Sell usable merchandise. If your blog reviews products that are too expensive to buy and ship yourself, consider offering fun products that spread the word about your blog.

6. Sell information products. If your blog reviews products related to a specific industry, like search engine optimization or web design, sell DVDS, books, e-books, audio files, and memberships to tutorials and hands on training.

Sell Services

1. Choose industry-related products; even if it’s from the competition. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to pitch your services on your blog. It won’t hurt to sell products from your competition as long as you believe in the products.

2. Offer your services as a speaker. Speaking engagements are a great way to earn money and get out of the home office.

3. Offer your services as a consultant. Consulting offers you the chance to meet one-on-one with companies and individuals to help map out a plan of attack. You can do this in person, by phone or through an online forum.

4. Offer your services as a mentor. Mentoring or coaching allows you to help your readers reach new heights without actually giving financial or business advice.

5. Offer your services as a tutor. Tutoring allows you to make money locally as you meet with individuals on a one-on-one basis to instruct them on how to do a specific task. This would be a great option if your blog focuses on a local audience, or you can find a way to tutor via video conferencing.

6. Offer your services as a workshop instructor or leader. Workshops are great for those who love to teach and travel. Workshops can be held anywhere. All you need is a willing host, a few attendees and enough materials to pass around.

7. Offer your services electronically. E-courses allow you to work once and reap the benefits over and over again. There are usually two types of e-courses, self-study and teacher-involved study. During the self-study, students work at their own pace by following everything you’ve given them in the e-course. During teacher-involved study, students interact with you on a weekly basis with question and answer segments, instructional tips and grading.

Place ads on your blog.

1. Place relevant advertisements throughout your blog. Advertising is the easiest and fastest way to earn revenue on your review blog. The ads on your blog should be relevant to both the products you review and your target audience.

2. Use ad networks. Networks--like Google Adsense--offer the simplest way to generate income. Just place a script on your blog, and the company’s program finds and implements ads that meet your content’s theme.

3. Sell individual ads. Personalized, individual ads are more difficult to obtain. They should only be sought by high trafficked blogs, but these ads can be far more lucrative than ad networks and affiliate programs if done correctly. They require you to seek out advertisers, collect monies, place ads, and remove ads when the ads have expired.

Tips & Warnings

• Give honest reviews.

• Include photos of the object or service you’re reviewing.

• Put your comments on moderated status to prevent spamming.

• Respond to questions left in the comment’s section of your blog within 24 hours.

• Don’t oversell. First and foremost, your blog should be informative.

• Don’t include a lot of sales hype. You want people to trust your reviews.

• Don’t misrepresent yourself or the product you’re reviewing.

Resources

• Cafe Press
• Photographer's Edge
• Zazzle
• Affordable Online Store
• Online Meeting Rooms