What do we think of product reviews?

[Notorious V]

I just agreed to become an affiliate reviewer for Vibereviews.com

I know doing product reviews on blogs can be controversial, what do you guys think?

This probably wont be very lucrative for me, since I doubt my readers will actually buy things, but I will at least get free sex toys!

Has reviewing worked for you?

[Jessi]

I think product reviews on sex blogs work out really well. They can be expensive, so I want to know what others think of them first....and as long as you're reviewing a variety of products, then you're introducing your readers to things they may have never heard of before or weren't really sure if they wanted. You have the power to convince them a product is great....or if it really sucks, you save them the money. The sex blogging is completely different, and although I don't like reading reviews at all on regular blogs, I do think they can be successful on sex blogs when they're not overdone.

[Evan]

I haven't done any reviews.

I read them and as long as they aren't just promo's they're fine by me. At least mention downsides - if there are none say so. A review that doesn't at least look for them I don't think has much credibility.

Because I haven't done one I don't know how sales of the products go.

[flashgordon]

I do book reviews. As long as the review is relevant to the blog and not simply a paid review for some random body cream (or whatever), I don't see why not.

[CodrutTurcanu]

Well, doing product reviews is not a bad thing provided the product must have value proposition and obviously it must be relevant to our readers.

[indietravel]

I think that reviews have to really fit into what you're doing in a blog. I see some people who talk about their days, frustrations and relationships then drop in a five sentence "review" of something. It's crazy.

Reviews have to fit the voice of your blog; they have to have a natural place. If you're looking to do reviews and you don't have a product/service oriented blog it might be good to do some groundwork first. Some posts that are like reviews or covering the topics in the preceeding weeks.

This thread caught my attention as we're launching twice-weekly reviews starting from tomorrow. Our blog & podcast (The Indie Travel Podcast (http://indietravelpodcast.com)) has built up from one-a-week travel advice to five-days-a-week publishing from us and other contributors. We've been working on it for almost two years now so it's so nice to see it grow.

We've been including reviews forever, but not really monetising them. Now we've set up affiliate links to capitalise on them...but I refuse to give good reviews to bad products: blogging isn't my main income -- the audience comes first and always should.

[Mottster]

On our blog, Kitchen Garden Today we conduct on going product reviews. Since, the products we are reviewing take time to fully determine if that product is good or not. As others have stated, it needs to be relevant to your blog.

[bsd13]

Blogs that do nothing but product reviews remind me of slick, 2am USA network info-mercials. They leave a bad taste in my mouth and I feel dirty for just having wasted my time reading them.

The problem is I just can't buy into the idea that they've really used 99% of the products they are promoting for any appreciable amount of time and yet they feel it necessary to tell me how great it is and that I should throw my money at it/them. No thanks.