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Despite the impression you might glean from a casual glance, the internet isn’t just a distribution network for cat memes, conflicting news reports, and petty social media spats. It’s actually the greatest resource humanity has ever known, allowing us to stay connected (even through challenging circumstances) and — very importantly — do business.
And the great thing about doing business online is that you have so many options. This blog demonstrates that very point with aplomb, detailing so many money-making tactics that don’t require you to have a job or need you to leave the confines of your home. In this post, we’re going to look at yet another one of these tactics: making money through reviews.
So how can you make money through reviews, and why would you want to add this method to your business strategy? Two excellent questions. Let’s get started on answering them.
Put affiliate links in your review roundups
Usually honed for SEO, review roundups can be fantastic for attracting readers. People are always looking for help comparing things (particularly products), and you can step in to serve as the expert. That in itself won’t bring in much profit, even with intrusive ads littering your website, but there’s a much more graceful and potent option: affiliate marketing.
Big companies that stand to gain a lot from their prospective customers can easily justify paying people for delivering qualified leads, and industries that focus on long-term business — such as SaaS or gambling — make this clear. Here’s an example: if someone looking for a new online casino conducts a search, they might well happen upon a roundup of new sites to give them the information they need — and if they choose a well-reviewed site and create an account, the owner of the roundup page will get a small kickback drawing upon the value of that customer.
Get paid for product and service reviews
Very simply, there are services out there that prompt you to review certain things in particular ways (you might need to produce short blog posts, for instance, or even talking-head videos), and will pay you to do so. More often than not, you can get a free trial of a service you’re tasked with reviewing, or can be sent a free product to test.
If you want full control over what you review (which will always be far better for your credibility), this approach isn’t for you, but it’s a viable and consistent option that you can always return to in the event that you need to make some money fairly quickly and easily.
As for which site or sites you should use, there are so many out there that it’s difficult to say, but you should always look to find trustworthy services such as UserTesting because you really don’t want to produce a review only to discover that you’ve been scammed out of any money.
Create and monetize a review brand
If you have a personality that shines through in the content you create or you have a unique perspective to offer, you could do really well through creating your own review brand. Your task would simply be to review things you buy and use — you could review a breakfast cereal, for instance, or your new phone, with the lure being the quality of the content.
Building up an audience through consistent production would eventually attract brands, so you’d start receiving free review samples and incentives, but the biggest opportunity to make money would involve monetizing your brand through selling merchandise or even using crowdsourcing through a platform like Patreon (if not Patreon itself, which is a solid option).
Why should you make money this way?
So, now that we’ve looked at several ways in which you could make money through reviews, why should you try any of them? Well, reviews are powerful things that are always in demand, so you’ll always be able to make money somehow — and if you can reach the level of a trusted reviewer, you can monetize that in various potent ways.
Think about which of these approaches might work for you, and give it a shot. If it doesn’t suit you, you can stop and try something else — but if it does, you’ll have a new way to cash in.
