Four types of websites bring income for the average net-prenuer: content sites, sales sites, advise sites, and review sites. Of these, we will discuss review sites in this article.



A review-site is basically a website or (preferably) a blog where you review products or services on a regular basis. Advertisements are placed on strategic locations so that people who visit your website click on them when they see a product or service in which they are interested.

Reviews can be of anything, beginning with book-reviews up to software reviews. The only precaution to take is to review in an area (or areas) where you can do so authoritatively and where you can keep giving new reviews as long as your site is alive. Here are the advantages and disadvantages of review sites:

Advantages: Most power-users on the net, before they buy a product, would prefer to go to a review site and get information (pro and con) from someone who has had hand-on experience with that product, service, or software. The trend is only going to increase. Thus you will never have a shortage of visitors to your site.

Another advantage is that advertisers display information that is related to the product range, which will result in greater click-through and greater revenue for you. What is more, many people who sell the reviewed products would provide you direct ads where you earn high revenue if a customer clicks and purchases a product. Thus a review site can bring in multiple streams of income if it is set up properly.

Precautions: Unlike a content site where most of the content will remain useful for years after they are posted, a review becomes outdated as soon as the product reviewed becomes obsolete. While books might remain in print for a decade, software or electronic products might have a shelf-life of only 3 years, by which time a new version of the product or a new product by a competitor might overtake the first one.

This means that you should pick up a product-range where you are in continually in touch with the latest. This can be something as simple as reviewing free software. It does not cost you anything other than your time, but a review site for free software will attract plenty of users and also plenty of software-advertisements. Those who look for reviews of freeware often buy commercial package and this will bring you additional review.

Setting it Up: Setting up a review site is slightly different from setting up a content or advise site. This is because people who come to your website for review of a product would like to read your review of related products also. Thus whenever you review an item, you should see that all relevant and related reviews.This means that each review should be linked with related ones.

If you use a popular blog software such as WordPress, then you will find it very easy to set up a review website.

Persist, and you will find that a review of practically any useful topic will eventually bring you good net-income.