The Top Three Mistakes That Could Kill Your Product Review

Many of us are familiar with the "extra revenue stream" that writing reviews can give us. There are many ways in which a review can earn you those handy extra $$$ - maybe you write a popular blog and get an offer for a paid review, or you have signed up at one of the review sites which explicitly pay a certain amount per review, or you are using it as a soft-sell for some product or service that you are affiliated with.

Here are the three mistakes that reviewers make most often - and not only does it kill the current review that the reader is looking at, it is much worse... you stand to lose your credibility and the reader flags you off in his or her mind and is likely to not be impressed with any of your future reviews either.

#1 Being a nobody

Sorry to be blunt, but if you want your review to actually carry any weight - not being an authority on the thing that you are reviewing does not help! This goes for anything that you are trying to review - an ebook (information resource), a service, a physical product, whatever, really. Unless it's a casual book/movie/music review where it's purely a matter of taste and not technical evaluation (that demands expertise) - you really should work on being established as someone who knows what he/she is talking about before adding to the review spaghetti on the internet. If I'm reviewing the efficiency quotient of the techniques mentioned in a "How Earn Six Figures Blogging" ebook, how would you evaluate my sense of judgment if you knew that the only blogs I have are either two weeks old with a couple of posts each, or antique ones gathering dust...

#2 Biased Reviews

Don't try to sell the product, give your honest evaluation of it. Your readers aren't dumb, and it's a really big mistake to underestimate their intelligence! If you are over-patronizing the product, or look like you are being unrealistic about its general goodness, then it shows. If you must do it, at least make an attempt at subtlety. Conversely, if you are writing a review to get your competitor out of the arena, then don't flame it outright. Be professional, offer polite criticism, or use sarcasm if you must, but don't be rude - again it shows and reduces your credibility before doing anything else.

#3 Poor English (or use of Language)

How hard is it to run your reviews through a spell checker and then scan it once closely to spot miscellaneous errors? It takes five minutes of your time, and it may well be the most worthwhile five minutes you've spent on that day! Few things are worse than a sloppily written review, and since it is easily corrected, there's really no getting away with it. Proofread, check and re-check before submitting!

There are a bunch of other pro-active tips that are useful - the "DOs" of good reviewing. Unfortunately this space isn't quite enough to outline them all.