Why becoming a product reviewer is not as easy as you thought – Part 2

Writing product reviewsThis is the second part of why becoming a product reviewer is not as easy as you thought (check the first part if you haven’t read it yet). This post covers when you’ve already got your sponsored review product and going to write a review about it.

Most comments from my friend would normally be something like “You ONLY need to do a review?” or “SIMPLY write a review and you can get/try those new products? It’s so EASY!?”. So let’s find out why it’s not really as easy as everyone thinks.

Why writing product reviews is not as easy as you thought

  1. Time management
    You need to spend enough time using the product you are going to review. I normally give 2-4 weeks to myself to be familiar with the product. You also need time to write the review itself (for me, this could take 1-3 hours, depending on the size of the review). Even after your review is already published, you need to publicize the post (twitter, facebook, blog commenting, and other strategies). Not to mention the time you need to carefully spend writing emails to the vendor.
    Managing time is easier, considering if you are still single, not working full time, and you don’t have other commitments in your life.
  2. Energy
    Whatever you do, it’ll always take your energy. Sometimes it’s harder to test a product if you don’t really like the product. At times, I have to test some features that I don’t normally use just for the sake of reviewing it. Reviewing software is harder because there are more things to test for and more things to play with. Not spending enough energy on this will hurt your review, badly. No matter how smart you are covering it up, your review will speak by itself.
  3. Language barrier
    It can take me hours or sometimes days to write a full review of a 1000 words. This is because English is not my primary language, so often I have to re-read my review a lot of times. Spelling & grammatical errors, limitation of words used, and dull expressions can often be seen in my posts. No matter how hard I’ve tried (even when using Microsoft Word spelling & grammar checker tool, you’ll still notice a few errors on my posts, I’m sure). Because of this, it takes me more time + energy to write reviews, especially long ones. You may have a similar problem like mine.
  4. Wisdom
    When writing reviews, you need to be somewhat wise. Know what to say and not to say. It’s hard at times because you want to maintain a good relationship with your sponsors but at the same time you need to honestly say what you need to say about your vendor and/or their products. You need to write both the good and the bad points of the product. However, don’t say it like “This product sucks to the max, don’t even bother looking at it!”. Instead, say what the good point about the product is and why a consumer like you would want to get it. At the same time, write why you wouldn’t want to buy it or what things can be improved to make this product more sellable. This is a very good feedback to the vendor.

    At times, I often rejected some products to review simply because I couldn’t see any positive things about them or why people would want to spend their money on the products. It’s safer that way than having to write a “fake review” which will hurt your credibility.

On the next posts, I’ll write on how to ask for review units and also how to do a good review (based on my experience anyway). Feel free to comment or ask questions :)

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