Writing your own product reviews is a must if you want to grow your Amazon Associates website and earn more referrals. Here, we discuss the importance of only reviewing products that you own and suggest some ways to get hold of review products more cheaply.

As a participant of the Amazon Associates program, it’s not only important to advertise suitable products to your visitors by using Associate Links, but also to write your own product reviews, which will help increase traffic to your site and increase the credibility of your content. Reviews create trust and make you a more authentic blogger, since you are actually testing products extensively and creating your own photos.

If you’re satisfied that a product has proved itself, you can recommend it to your readership with good conscience. You’ll also have built up product-related expertise, which is a great value to your visitors – you know exactly what the product is particularly suitable for, whether it’s really easy to use, whether it’s quiet or noisy, whether it lives up to the manufacturer’s promoting in practice.

You know what you’re writing about. A review with this sort of expertise, with exclusive product pictures, will mark you out from the competition. You can also answer product-specific questions. Taken together, creating reviews of this kind gives you extra advantages:

1. Your visitors quickly work out whether you really had a product in your hands or not. This creates trust, which in turn can have a positive impact on your revenue. Google will also notice that your reviews contain new information, which can have a positive effect on your ranking.

2. You can create your own product images that are not already found on the internet, e.g. from different visual perspectives. These add a lot of added value for prospective customers. New product pictures are also of benefit to Google and therefore can improve your ranking.

3. You also have the opportunity to create a product video to separate you from the competition. The video will underline the authenticity of your product review and give your users a good overview within a very short time.

Unless you want to create an ‘unboxing’ video, it isn’t necessary to buy a product in its original packaging. The Amazon Outlet Store offers a good way to get thousands of discounted items for your reviews.

Once you’ve reviewed a product and you have no further use for it, you could sell it on at portals. You probably won’t recoup the original price you paid, but you won’t have to settle for much less.
Another alternative is to access the required products directly from the manufacturer. This approach is, of course, very much dependent on what you want to test and how successful your blog or website is. Some manufacturers will be more than willing to send their latest products to review for free, in order to reach your blog’s engaged, specialist audience.

Finally, it’s even cheaper if you borrow the product. There are websites and shops which offer products for rent: or you could ask your circle of friends or acquaintances. There are always opportunities to get products cheaply, or even free of charge.