Review Writing Technique
In this chapter, you will learn the technique of how to write a simple and effective review that generates affiliate commissions and how to create a ‘1-page affiliate website’. This is the next step after you’ve selected a product to promote.
What is review writing? Review writing is a social proof for a product; it is a testimony of someone about the product after the application of product. As a consumer or customer, we usually do some comparisons between products and considerations before we buy something.
Pertinent information can be found in reviews. By doing research on the review articles online, customers will be more convinced to buy something. So, great review writing can boost the sales.
First thing’s first, you need to get the review access from the product vendor. There are two ways to get the review access:
1. Purchase, and
2. Ask permission for review copy
First method is the simplest way – purchase the product and study the product. After you’ve finished evaluating the product, write an article about the pros and cons of the product.
Tip: You can make the purchase through your own affiliate link, so you can get the commission too. With 100% commission rate for the product, you use almost nothing to purchase the product.
However, you must purchase only for the review writing purpose, do not try to cheat the system on the sales you’ve made.
Second method requires you to contact the product vendor to ask for a ‘review copy’ or ‘full access’ to the product. You can find the ways to contact the product vendor when you join his affiliate program. It can be an email address, a Skype ID or a Forum PM.
In the case where you need to contact the product vendor, it is better if you can prove yourself as an affiliate that is capable in generating sales, so the product vendor will provide the ‘review copy’ for free to you.
There are three ways to prove your credibility; all you need to do is to show the product vendor:
1. Your past sales record,
2. Your own site, or
3. Your email list or the traffic to your site.
The fastest way to prove your credibility is to let the numbers talk the deal for you, show them what you are capable of doing. You may attach a file or the screenshot of your past sales record together in the email.
This is without doubt the most convincing proof you can provide.
Send a link that directs the product vendor to your own affiliate site to show the sales page you’ve prepared. This is for him to know how you are going to generate traffic to his site. Keep in mind, to make sure you have the best sales letter put on and ready to be shown.
Last but not least, reveal the size of your mailing list or the traffic to your site. The number of mailing list shows the maximum traffic that you can send to his site, longer list would be an advantage.
Here is an example of the email; you can take a look at how it should be done:
Hi [vendor],
My name is [your name] and I have just requested for approval to promote your latest product Turbo Syndicate.
I was wondering if I can get access to your latest offer? I don’t require a full product access; a review copy will be enough. This is so I can write a honest review on your newest product.
Currently I have over 75,000 email subscribers that I will mail out your offer to. I will also be dispensing my own Bonus offers for anyone who buys through my link.
Looking forward to hear from you soon!
[your name]
In this email, it shows the size of the mailing list to convince the product vendor to give access to the product. Furthermore, it shows the effort that you’ll put in to convert traffic to the vendor’s site by dispensing your own Bonus offers.
What is mentioned in the email may be applicable to someone already in the affiliate business long enough, but what if you are a newbie without any past sales record and small mailing list?
For this scenario, I highly recommend you to purchase the product instead of getting the free access to the product. However, you can choose to send an email to the product vendor and ask for a discount.
Here is an example of email to request for said discount:
Hi [vendor],
My name is [your name] and I have just requested for approval to promote your latest product Turbo Syndicate.
I am new to affiliate marketing and have just started a new website with the intention of promoting your offer. I was wondering if I can get review access to your product?
I would appreciate if you can give me a discount of some sort as my main intention is to write an honest review on your product before putting in my marketing efforts to promote your offer.
Looking forward to hear from you soon!
[your name]
After you already purchase the product or get the access to the product, you can start planning out how you are going to write the review for the product.
Review Writing Technique
As I mentioned, a good review article can increase the conversion rate, and hence, boost the sales as well. From here on, I will lead you step-by-step on how to write a good review article.
First, try to keep the review writing somewhere around 300-500 words only. A review article should be straightforward and precise. Show them only the important things they need to know, such as the pros and cons or testimony of someone using the product. Anything more than 500 words will exceed the attention span of your readers.
Write in the conversational form – a me-to-you tone of message. You don’t have to be formal. Make it more personal and friendly, because the purpose of review writing is to tell them about how you feel about the product.
In your review writing, there are only two things you must put your focus on, which are the pros and cons of the product. Remember to be concise and straight to the point, do not exaggerate on the pros and skip the cons of the product to make more sales.
Insert the photo of product or screenshots from different angles in your review article, readers can see exactly how the product will look like with the visual aids you’ve provided.
Tip: Insert a 5-star rating system in your article as well. This is really common nowadays in review writing. It gives a rough idea to the readers on how would you rate if they were not really the reading type.
Tip #2: If the product you are promoting needs demonstration, insert a video in your review or upload it to YouTube that demonstrates the product. Explain the features and the functions of the product while you are demonstrating in the video.
Tip #3: Insert the pros and cons in the form comparison chart. It is easier to read and compare in the form of chart. Besides, if you are selling physical product, find another similar product to make a comparison chart.
Setup Your Own Review Article Site
The next step after you have finished the review writing, you’ll need a platform to upload your review article – a review article website. To setup your own website is not as hard as it used to be nowadays, with some help from various software.
Follow these 3 easy steps and you can setup your own review article site quickly and effectively.
1. Setup WordPress,
2. Register a Domain Name, and then
3. Host it with your own server
In almost no time at all, your website is good to go. Let’s move forward into the steps.
Step #1: WordPress
WordPress is a software for you to create your own website in several easy steps.
Even though I would like to tell you about exactly how to set up WordPress, but I don’t want to distract your focus on Affiliate Marketing. So, to cut the story short, you can go to WordPress.org, there will be a short documentation on how to setup WordPress and how to use it to start your own website. Or, you can go to YouTube and search for some easy tutorials on it.
This is simple and most importantly it is free! However, there are premium package for business use, if you are keen on better features in WordPress and are not limited to the budget, feel free to go for the paid version.
After this, you can start editing your own website. WordPress is extremely easy to use and to make changes in your content, you don’t need to understand how HTML functions. What you need to do is just some basic drag-and-drop designing work and you can have it live when you’re done.
With only one account you’ve created, you are able to create more than just one website. You can delete the website anytime as well. One of the highlighted features that I think is really important in WordPress is the SEO checking system built-in with the software.
There is an indicator enable you to check on the SEO score your article has scored. If your article doesn’t pass the SEO check, you can always change the keywords in your headline, meta-descriptions, and contents. You can always make a few minor tweaks. The SEO indicator will show you which part in your website is weaker in SEO.
Step #2: Register A Domain Name
You can’t set up a website borrowing from other servers such as Wordpress or Blogger. The customers will not trust your site if your domain name has “.wordpress.com” on it. Hence, purchasing your own domain name is necessary.
One of the sites that you can go to is NameCheap.com. There are other domain registrars, of course, but this is just the one highly recommended.
Once there, you can check on any particular name’s availability. Before we get to that, there’s one thing that you should do, which is actually coming up with a domain name.
The key here is to make it searchable, clear, and easy to be understood.
You can use any words and phrases that are relevant to the product and mash them into one word. For example: Here are some examples of domain name usually used:
1. ______ Review.com
2. ______ Bonus.com
3. ______ Special.com
These are all optional domain name that I usually use.
Come up with at least 10 of these domain names so that you have more to choose from. After selecting the best name available, you can go on to purchase and register it.
After that, you’ll need a website server.
Step #3: Host With Your Own Server
After that, you’ll need a host to upload your website. Here are two reliable host suggested:
1. Hostgator.com – most popular choice by internet marketers
2. BlueHost.com – another highly recommended and reliable hosting solution
This is a step where you can get an official .com website, for instance, whatever.com. Don’t use free blog such as whatever.wordpress.com, because people tend to take a .com website more seriously than a .wordpress.com or .blogspot.com.
It somehow sounds like just another blog. It doesn’t bear professionalism.
Here you go with the 3 steps formula in setting up a website. No more struggling with HTML codes to set up a website anymore!
However, if you are not so keen about using WordPress to set up your website, HTML and Dreamweaver will be another two alternative ways to setup a website.