One of the questions that I get asked the most is how people can receive free products for review. I have been reviewing products for a few years now, but only more recently did we expand our review section into The MotherLoot where it could receive separate attention from the work that I do here.
Really, anyone that has a blog can move into the product review niche. I just wanted to share some things that I wish someone had shared with me when I began receiving products for review and some ins and outs of the product review niche. Of course, folks that focus solely on product reviews may have some stellar advice that I can’t offer you here, but I will certainly try my best.
Start reviewing what you have. If you have not done any product reviews before, one great way to begin venturing into the world of reviews is just reviewing the items you already have in your possession. Look around at the things in your home and review the items that you would hope to receive for your blog. Want to review the latest drugstore products? Start a blog by reviewing what you use in the morning to get ready. Want to own the latest technology gadgets? Start with the laptop you are working on. Of course, you want your niche to fit well with your site so try picking products that would interest your readers. As a family blogger, our readers are interested in the latest toys and tools to make their days easier & more productive. I started by sharing tools that I used to clean my home, not intending to ever receive products from companies. Many companies saw my comments about their own particular products and my experiences with them, and I would begin receiving requests to send me products. That is truly how all of this started for me, just writing about my experience with items in my home.
Put together a set of terms for review.When companies contact you to review one of their items, be sure to have a standard procedure for reviews. Here are some examples of procedures you could use:
- It is a requirement by our company that we be able to keep the product that we are reviewing.
- It is requested that we be able to offer one of your products to our readers in a giveaway.
- We require a fee from your company in order to do a review.
- We request that you provide a discount code for orders that can be placed online.
- We request items that fit with our readers. We are a _____ site that caters to _____. Please make sure your product matches the efforts on our site.
Make sure that your terms are very clear and that the company understands what is required of them. These terms can be made visible on your website or you can just have a document ready to go and email the companies that you are interested in working with.
Streamline your product review process as much as you can. Now that you are receiving requests for products, what are some ways that you can streamline the process? My suggestions truly come from trial and error through my past experiences with companies.
- Set up a seperate email address for your product reviews so you can keep track of what is coming to you. If it is set up in a different email address, set up an automated response that lets the company know that their request has been received. At this time, it is also appropriate to say, “We receive many requests for products and will try to respond to you in a timely manner. If you would like your product to be immediately seen I would like to provide our advertising rates.” This will give the company an option to pay you for prompt attention and lets them know that you have received their request without them hounding you repeatedly through emails.
- Word your mailing address so you know if you requested the product or not. I won’t give away my secret, but I have a very separate wording for products that I request. There have been weeks where we receive product after product and I can’t remember what I requested and what I did not request. Establishing a specific mailing address that lets you know it is an item you genuinely wanted to try will help you when multiple mailings start coming in.
- If you are doing a giveaway with a company, request that they mail the product directly to the winner. Trust me, it is so much hassle to have the product shipped to you and then reshipping it to the winner. It is expensive, not timely at all, and one extra step that you don’t want to be dealing with.
- Keep track of that paperwork. Keeping the winner(s) information in a file along with the PR contact who handled the giveaway will be of great help to you if there should be a snafu with getting shipment to the winner. Hang on to this information for awhile because I have had errors occur months down the road. At this point, it can be time-consuming trying to hunt down that person who forgot to mail shipment to my winners.
Decide how you will handle products that you don’t like. Of the twenty requests or so we receive each week, we only pick one or two items for the review site because I try to pick things that we would actually enjoy reviewing. Because of this very reason, you won’t see a lot of negative reviews on our site because it is products we really know we will love. There have been the occasional bad products though and we try to review those honestly. There are times though where I have chosen to not do a review and emailed the company privately instead. One company in particular sent me a giant box of their cleaning products that caused me to go into a fit of asthma when I tried them. Rather than bash them publicly, I sent them an email and said, “I am sorry, but these products did not work for me. The scent in them was too strong and caused me to have an asthmatic reaction. I am happy to review them, but wanted your company to be aware.” Instead of posting a review, they took my feedback privately and forwarded it to the team who developed the products with the recommendations that they come out with an unscented line.”
Don’t forget to stay true to yourself & your site. It can be easy to get caught up in all of the loot, but you need to remain true to your readers and the intentions of your site. Our website is family-focused and shopping for family needs fit with our site. Shopping did not fit with a frugal blog though so that is why we chose to move the reviews to its own separate section of the site. If you are conflicted on if it is a good move or not, try to be more heavy with the giveaways rather than the reviews themselves. Nothing makes a reader happier than that email from you letting them know that they won something on your site. It keeps people returning to your review blog if you are sharing the products with others.
Another way that you can stay true to your mission is by donating the items to charity or participating in charitable drives in your community with the items you have received. I am working on a big donation to our local shelter and am so thrilled to be able to pass on some of these wonderful products to others. The items that reflect
our mission and goals will be reviewed, but the majority will be donated or given back to our readers. I feel lucky to be able to give in ways that I could not necessarily do on my own and I hope that others can benefit from our relationships with these companies as much as we have.
Do you have any tips or questions on product review blogging? Leave them here and we can start discussing!
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Speaking of product reviews & giveaways, I just wanted to let you all know that we are offering a brand new giveaway to our readers! Two lucky winners will receive a copy of Build-A-Bear Workshop for the Nintendo Wii. This is a family-friendly game perfect for young children. The game is for children three and older. Put your entry in over at The Mother Loot today! The contest ends October 28th at 8PM EST!!
Thank you so much! I have been wondering if I should start contacting companies directly.
All of this information is great!
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What a timely article! I decided to launch a review site because of the argument you wrote about: as a frugal blog I didn’t want to encourage my readers to go shopping. I feel so much better now that there’s a separate channel to handle reviews.
Your article is incredibly helpful to those like me who want to start doing reviews and want to handle them properly.
Thank you!
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This is awesome Amy! Rob gets products free and for review all the time without even trying. I will share the list you made with him. Thanks for taking the time for sharing what you’ve learned with us!
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This is EXCELLENT advice. I have none to add. Very thorough, and pretty much how I run things on my site! I gave you a Stumble.
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I think it is so important to always stay true to yourself and to what you want your blog to represent/reflect. For the bloggers that don’t know where to begin, Mom Select is a great place to start (www.momselect.com) and also check out your favorite companies’ blogs – so many have them these days like Graco, etc. Start COMMENTING and before you know it they might be contacting you for product reviews!
Steph
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This would be fun to do and I like giving review already.
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I am receiving questions through Twitter so I thought I would answer them here….
Q: Do you charge for a review?
A: No, I don’t personally charge for a review, but larger websites do charge. Instead, I limit the amount of products we feature and we are working on creating ad space on the review site where companies can pay to have their product shown by advertising with us. If you are charging for a review, it might be good to be transparent about that with your readers so they understand how your fees work.
Keep ‘em coming!!
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From commenter Barb:
Your product review how to article was very nice. I’m so glad you took the time to write it because I was wondering how people get the products so thank you for that. I do wish you could make your text larger on your site as it is very hard for me to read it.
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As always, you have put together such a wonderful, thoughtful post! What a great how-to guide for the many, many bloggers out there looking to start reviewing products. I get this question all the time, too, and now I can just send people this link! THANKS!!
c
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Great advice – thanks! I am inspired to start reviewing something that I am wearing every day. I have one question…in our blogs, if we put the ‘#’ sign in front of the brand name, will that make it more searchable (i.e. Google?)
(and to Barb – you can increase the size of the screen you are viewing by clicking in the bottom right corner – if you are using Explore – look for the 100% and a symbol that looks like a magnifying glasss with a plus + sign in it)
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I like the idea of keeping track of your items. I need to do that because I absolutely have a lot coming these days. I’ve been a reviewer for a few months now and began just the way that Amy spoke of, it really wasn’t hard. I have gotten some awesome items to review with more on the way.
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Oh and I Retweeted this and stumbled it too.
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It is a requirement by our company that we be able to keep the product that we are reviewing.
We require a fee from your company in order to do a review.
Both of these requirements of companies will undoubtedly cast the question of impartiality on the integrity of the blog’s review of said product.
Keeping a product is the same as receiving payment for your post, implying that you will be more likely to give the product a favorable review since the company is essentially “paying” you to do so. By receiving such payment, a company receiving a negative review will undoubtedly remove you from their product review list since you have essentially been paid for it. They don’t pay for negative advertising.
Eventually, you will either be doing all positive reviews and you will not be trusted by your readers or no one will send you products and you will be forced to pay out of pocket for products to keep your blog going.
Other than those two points, excellent article.
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New York City’s Watchdog-
Excellent points. I should clarify that we do NOT charge companies for reviews, but we do request a sample of the product. Most companies do not want the hassle of shipping back (unless it is a top dollar item) and that is when it is great to be able to make a charitable contribution. I don’t think it is wrong for product reviewer’s to keep the products they review. I think you just need to be clear about your terms with the companies you are dealing with. They also must understand that just because they give you a product does not mean that they will receive a favorable review. We do pick products though that we think our readers would be interested in so usually they are products that are going to get a favorable review anyway.
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In regard to NYC Wathdog’s comment, I personally don’t receive payment for reviews, but if someone does, I think that they need to be transparent and say so. That’s not to say I don’t receive thank you’s after a review goes live.
And I tend not to review products that I cannot keep. For several reasons, with two kids, the products are often a little worse for the wear after a good trial. And two, it really is too much of an expense of both time and money to return a product.
I also tell companies that though not required, an additional product (sent out by them) to use as a giveaway usually gets greater attention from our readers.
When you develop a good relationship that goes both ways with a PR rep or company, they will come to again and again with new products or campaigns.
Great article, Amy. You included a few details I hadn’t thought about.
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Great outline of how to set up your review process.
I do agree that if you receive payment you do need to be transparent about that relationship.
As for companies that would like a review but don’t want to give you the product? I think in that case they do owe you something for your time.
It is not a privilege to get to review products. These companies are looking for moms who will talk about their products. They are gaining links and buzz about their products.
I feel that as women we often devalue our time. How much time did it take to use the product and write a review? What is space on your blog worth?
I’m not entirely sure that companies deserve free advertising for their products. Either you keep the product or you should be compensated in some way–even if it is a donation to your favorite charity.
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This is a great post! Amy, thanks for tons of information.
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As far as keeping products compromising the integrity of the review, it is certainly possible to diplomatically handle a product that perhaps wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. I have seen Metropolitan Mama do a great job at that.
And yes, my reviews ARE all positive. If I receive something I absolutely hate, I email the PR person and tell them in a constructive manner so they can convey that message to the appropriate party. Then it’s up to them if I write a review or not.
Usually I would not. But this has rarely happened because I do not accept products that I can tell I will not care for. As Amy says, once you start doing reviews, you get so many pitches that you can pick and choose and find the ones you know your readers will like.
But yeah, full disclosure is always wise.
Amy, I love the idea of donating extra products. I am going to start doing this!
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Thank you so much for the excellent advice!
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Mamma- I so agree with what you have said here. I thought that reviewing was going to be so much fun (which it is), but very few things in life are free and I don't feel like the products are necessarily "free." There is so much work that goes into testing a product, putting together info about where to get the product & pricing, and compiling our feedback on it. I find the giveaways to be a little less tedious, but enjoy getting to interact the companies behind the products for the reviews.
As Musings of a Housewife said, I believe you can still be diplomatic about the products even if you are keeping them. And as we get more offers, we get the opportunity to be more selective about choosing quality items that we know our readers will enjoy reading about.
Loving this discussion!
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Great article! I agree with the comments you made about making sure the product fits your audience. I learned that the hard way several weeks ago. A company wanted me to run a giveaway for their product, but the product really was not for my audience at all. So the contest turnout was really low, and I think both I and the PR firm were disappointed. So I second that advice!
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What a fabulous post. You make some great points. Im still wondering about the fee to review products. Is this common?
I always figure my “payment” is the product itself.
xox
Cindy
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Cindy- I don’t see very many bloggers charging for reviews, but sometimes sites that are a network site do charge a fee.
I do think though that offering advertising on your site would be a great way to market yourself to a company in a very reputable way. They want a relationship with you already, why not ask if they are looking to advertise?
We are still streamlining our process so this discussion is really great for me too!
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I’ve been wondering about this very topic.
This is COMPLETELY off subject but it made me think of you, but I got a coupon insert in the mail today and the lady on the front looks just like you!!! I thought it was so funny. Anyway, hope you’re having a good day=)
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Thank you for a wonderful article. I’ve been doing reviews for a little while, but I’ve had some lingering questions. You’ve answered them for me. Thanks!
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Amy, thanks for sharing your experience with us! I truly appreciate your thoughtfulness and genuine desire to be helpful!
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Very timely post, Amy. Thank you! I’ve just decided to start doing some reviews, so your tips are very helpful.
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I get people asking me how to get into product reviews all the time. I’m going to start sending them here. Great tip on keeping a separate email account!
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Loved your post. It had great tips on beginning a product review process. Thanks for helping others.
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Hi there,
Lots of valuable information here. I do have 1 question, though.
What do you do with all of the products that you do not end up reviewing (they are either unsolicited or you do not like the item)?
Do you just keep or donate them, or do you send them back?
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Thanks for the tips
Penelope's Oasis
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Amy, what great insight. I haven't started reviewing yet, just doing my research and your post was perfect. Thank you!
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Great article! I’ve just started blogging, and have thought about adding product reviews for green products to my site. I’m definitely going to put these tips to good use. Thanks.
.-= Michelle´s last blog ..Ditching the Junk Food =-.
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This is awesome info! Just wished I found it when you wrote it! LOL!
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Great information. I’ve been reviewing various products and services for a while. But, just for general information and was wondering how I could expand it.
One thing I was wondering. Who do you contact at the company to get them to send you products or services to review?
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Oh, I SO agree about having the company ship the winner’s prize. It saves so much headache for the blogger.
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Great tips.I need to start doing more of this. Thanks!
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