I have a buddy who writes for several blogs. He tells me he gets free stuff all the time because he reviews products for companies. His blogs are now well known enough that companies come to him and ask him to review their new products.
This sounds like a pretty sweet deal but I have written product reviews and no one contacted me. So I asked him to explain what his system was and he said it was pretty simple. He laid out three steps to follow that should work for anyone.
First: Review Things You Already Have
This may sound lame but the whole point is to practice writing product reviews. For instance he has a bunch of card games he plays with his kids. So he wrote reviews of those card games.
The idea is to figure out how to write reviews that are easy to read and pretty enjoyable. You gotta have style that people can relate to.
No one is really going to make a big deal about your blog when you review products everyone already has but this is a chance to practice and make mistakes. He said he did this for about six months. And there were times when he felt stupid for doing it but he kept on plugging away.
Second: Review New Products as You Buy Them
My friend collects CDs and DvDs so he also started writing a movie and music review blog. He wanted to get into the habit of writing like a music and film critic so he reviewed every disk in his collection for a year.
But he buys 2-3 new disks a month, movies or music, and so he started writing reviews for those new purchases. Pretty soon his blog started picking up some followers and that was pretty cool.
He also stayed with what he knew. He is a big horror movie fan so he concentrated on those kinds of movies. When he wasn't buying any new DvDs he would rent them from Red Box or Netflix. His only rule was to keep reviewing the movies and music.
He also struck on the idea of reviewing movie soundtracks. A lot of them have pretty cool music and that went with his collecting interests too.
Third: Review Your Reviews
I'm not sure I understand this part but Rich says he goes back and looks through his old reviews. If he finds one he doesn't like he writes a new one and redirects the old review to it. That way he improves the reviews he has already published. He says his readers like it when he changes things up and points out new details he missed in his early reviews.
One day he was working on a new review when he got an email from a company that asked him to review one of their DvDs. It was some little company I never heard of.
Rich also writes book reviews and he says authors contact him every month, offering to send him copies of their books.
So now that he is making a name for himself as a reviewer he can pretty much count on people sending him free stuff. And since it's usually stuff he would buy anyway he saves money on his collecting interests. You can't beat that, can you?
