BEST WAY TO PROMOTE A SITE

". . . the best way to promote is to pick a niche product you are familiar with, and promote the site to those in the niche either by a email tip or discussion forum links."  B. Myers.

REVIEW PRODUCTS ON YOUTUBE

from Brian
I was talking today with an acquaintance who manages the electronics department at Walmart, and he told me that I wouldn't believe how many buyers - including some older ones - will come in, see what models of TV or whatever are on sale but then they'll pull up YouTube and watch reviews right in the store before deciding whether to buy or not - or which one to buy. According to him, this has become almost commonplace, especially in the last year or so.

I knew they were using the Interweb in store to compare prices, but I didn't realize they were watching video reviews too. And if they're doing this with electronics, they're probably doing it with other products like kitchen and home appliances, auto, garden, etc.

It's not hard to figure that a buyer doing this would be looking for the most information in the shortest amount of time, maybe even filtering their search to exclude longer videos, so it might be a good idea to lose all that "unboxing" footage (which is utterly boring anyway) and cut right to the chase with the features and your rating of the product. Or, you could create two versions of your review - one with just the "meat" and another that goes into more detail.

Once you establish a reputation as a reviewer, you can usually get things on loan to review. Until then, you might have to use a bit of ingenuity.

You could purchase something to review and then return it - but you didn't hear that from me. Or, purchase the item and then resell it immediately on eBay, Amazon or Craigslist - which in some cases could bring your cost down to nearly nothing, or a very small outlay. Sometimes you might be able to borrow something from a friend who owns it, and in the case of some items like cameras, if you have a relationship with a B&M store you can often get short-term loaners. Some items can also be rented.

I'm sure there are other ideas than these as well. In fact, just thought of one. If you were a member of a club - say, metal detecting - you could probably arrange with other members to borrow or collaborate with them to create reviews of their gear. This might apply to other clubs - e.g., car clubs, motorcycle clubs, etc.