How do you create reviews on products you haven't used?

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Im struggling to create review post because I have never used the product myself/dont have the money to buy the product.

Do you just rewrite someone elses review and try add in information they missed?
 
built said:
Im struggling to create review post because I have never used the product myself/dont have the money to buy the product.

Do you just rewrite someone elses review and try add in information they missed?
Click to expand...

Pretty much.

You can hide the fact that you don't have much of an opinion by listing technical details about the product, statistics that support the purchase, mention similar or competing products and mention their flaws (this implies the current product doesn't have these flaws), etc. Throw in a handful of pictures, etc.

There's ways to fluff it out that will still be relevant.
 
Another value add I've seen a bit more lately on some review sites but not tried myself yet is 'aggregating review ratings from all over the web'. It's a really nice trust thing for your site 'this isn't just my users it's all the users' even if your advanced scraping algorithm is just you averaging the ratings on 5 obvious popular sites. I'm going to be testing out way to do it in a more automated fashion for my latest project.
 
You're basically just going to bullshit your way through it if you don't own the product. I'm guilty of this too.

But the goal with these types of reviews isn't to get them to read it so much as click your links. I'd they read it that's great, but reviews like this are everywhere and very few of them add any value.

Just create the best content you can and format your content for the click.
 
If something that could be returned, buy it, review it and then return it. Of course, make sure you keep the packaging and product in working condition :wink:
 
Don't recommend a product unless you really believe in it. The internet is filled with crap. Please don't add more.
 
Youtube. I used to literally just type out (almost) word for word reviews by lesser known youtubers. Worked well for me.
 
When I have had to write a product review in the past, I would follow a few basic steps.
  • Create a list of what your review needs to cover (introduction, specs, uses, conclusion, etc)
  • Find product reviews of the product that you're reviewing
  • Open up the most relevant product reviews you can find (usually 10-20)
  • Using content curration techniques, pull the best information from the reviews
  • Write, write, write, revise, write.
  • Make your review 10x better than all the other reviews.
Nhgjob brings up the interesting point that the internet is full of crap. In that case: your goal is to make better crap. Just be careful, crappy content may just come back to bite you later.
 
Amazon Reviews!! That's what I would do if I were you, read some reviews etc.. then clump it all together concisely.
 
One good trick is to look at the medium reviews

5 star reviews are often spammy / the publisher, store owner, or product owner writing or paying for reviews
1 star reviews are just shitheads dissatisfied with SOMETHING, most of the time not the product itself.

So stick to 3 and 4 star reviews and you hit the real content and good talking points.
 
I myself will look at multiple reviews on YouTube. Often I find myself writing IN MY OWN words what it is that they are saying. If the opinion I am going for is the opposite of what they are conveying, I often will just rewrite their intro to the product and then reverse some of the things that they may say about said product midway through the review. You will find yourself pausing the video here and there to keep up typing but it works quite well.
 
BigWhite said:
Often I find myself writing IN MY OWN words what it is that they are saying.
Click to expand...
Using words that the customer would use is a powerful technique so I would be careful of writing it IN MY OWN words.
 
You can write a review on a product without using it. As a reviewer, your job is to present them with the facts and let them make their own decision. Without using a product personally, you can still cover:

  • what the product is, what it's used for
  • what are the ingredients, how does it work
  • key features, product details
  • what's the price/guarantee/offer
  • what are the common complaints for this product (found on the web)
  • alternatives to the product
  • pros/cons
  • who should buy this product
 
Here's our standard template for product / service reviews. There's endless ways to format your review, but this is what we'll do if the client doesn't specify what they want:
  • Intro - talk about the problem the potential buyer is facing and introduce the company / product / service as the solution
  • Features / Benefits: list the features of what you're reviewing.... but, most importantly, describe the benefit that the end user will receive from each feature. Readers don't actually care about the features, they just care that their problem will be resolved
  • What Makes It Different: This is all about that USP. Tell the reader what makes this product / service different / better than their competitors.
  • Plans / Pricing: obvious
  • Potential drawbacks: A review isn't a review unless you're transparent about what's not-so-good about the item. Don't try to hide it. Be fair and upfront about anything that's lacking.
  • Conclusion: This goes back to grade-school English.... "tell me what you told me." Summarize the entire article again and make your final recommendation, if any.
 
Here's how I approach writing product reviews for products I don't own:

I simply put myself in the shoes of someone who is in the research & comparison phase of buying the product or one of its competitors / alternatives.

This isn't hard to do, we all do it naturally. The last time you were in the market for something you probably looked at specs, compared brands / models, read reviews on amazon, watched videos, etc until you had gathered enough data or read enough stuff to help you make a judgement and decide what to buy.

So do the same thing, but now just take everything and organize it into content and voila you have a really helpful and comprehensive review that distills down all the most important information for a potential buyer.

The most obvious way to do this is to read through Amazon product reviews. These reviews are a gold mine of info. If there's a specific issue or annoyance then make a note of it (just copy paste it into a big file you build as you go around reading/watching stuff). If certain types of users are complaining that the product wasn't a good fit, but another type of user is saying it was perfect for them - you now have an important point to highlight in your review.

Aggregating reviews, adding tech specs, videos, etc. can all be worked in there to to fill things out.

This does take time and effort, but you can learn a LOT about a product pretty quickly and get a good feel for how the market is reacting to it and what its general quality is. Before you know it you're pushing 1400 words of high quality review content with little effort. The effort was in the research and gathering, the writing takes care of itself at that point.

My 2cents.

Good to be here!
 
Also a good idea is to include media.

So search for some youtube videos, maybe one of those unpacking things, some more pictures that might not be in the original review, etc... and add them.

Go all fancy and even add alt texts/titles.

Or even schema markup.
 
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