SNM058: 7 Steps to Creating a Great Review

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seven steps to creating a great review on today's episode. Today's episode is brought to you by ECM Rush started in 2008 with one mission. To make online competition fair and transparent, with equal opportunities for all. To find out how SCM Rush can help you compete with the big boys. Go to serve no master dot com Backslash ECM rush today. Are you tired of dealing with your boss? Do you feel underpaid and underappreciated? If you want to make it online, fire your boss and start living your retirement dreams now then you've come to the right place. Welcome to serve no master podcast where you learn how to open new revenue streams and make money while you sleep. Presented live from a tropical island in the South Pacific by best selling author Jonathan Green. Now here's your host. One of the quickest, easiest ways to start making money as an affiliate is by writing creating reviews for products that have really nice affiliate programs, and there's certain products out there that are simply amazing. Whatever industry are in, there are the gold standard or the products that use and believe in certain products that I talked about a lot. Thrive themes. Graham Early Convert Kit I talked about for two main reasons. One. The phenomenal products that I used. Just last week, I finally transition my entire website to thrive teams, and I couldn't be happier. It took me an entire month of work, but it was really, really, really important to me. And talking about the product comes so naturally when it's something you use and believe in. The other great thing about these products is they have wonderful affiliate commissions. So not only do I recommend things, I believe, and I also get paid a little bit now, not everything I talked about RECOMMEND has an affiliate commission. Unfortunately, Scrivener and I've talked dozens of people in the bike screaming doesn't have a program. The program is so cheap, it's almost not worth it. Most of the time, you could get it on sale. It's $40 normally, and usually you can get it for anywhere from 20 to 32 depending upon which promotion is running with it. Always a discount. So there's not a lot of money in there for them to share anyways, and it's a great product, so I recommend it, but it's really great. Thio get paid for something we're gonna recommend anyways. And when you're just starting out, if you have no Blawg, no Web site, no following, you could still make money as an affiliate falling this very simple formula. And we talked a couple episodes ago about large jacking, which is the idea of creating review and adding and bonuses before product comes out. It's a very powerful technique. It could be very profitable, but I prefer to go really in depth fire views I all the time reviews, probably every two or three days. Just last night, I was thinking about buying a new chair for my desk. Office chairs are crazy, expensive. When I think of an office chair, I think of something that's like 100 $150 a little bit of money. But it's something to be sitting on all the time. Man. Top on this one review article. The top chair. They're talking about $1200. I was like, Whoa, that's 10 shares to me. So expensive. So I started looking at, like number two and number three and where I live, as you know, it's very hard to get stuff. So I have this chair that was on the list of the seven best share. So I was like, Wow, that's amazing because my chair I bought it. It was the only chair on this website that seemed half decent. It was like the only option. I didn't choose it amongst many, many other options, but doing more research, I discovered that this branch is very popular. Unfortunately, mine is wearing out. I've only had it for maybe a year or less, but part of the seat it's wearing out where my legs my thighs rub against the front of the chair. The leather is starting to wear off a little bit. I think it's because the chair's not really designed for how you It's like a video game chair. They say, I don't know because it's an office chair. But anyway, I was reading all these reviews not to go too far off the subject, chasing that rabbit about the new game chairs and off person's office shares. But we all read reviews all the time. We talk about reviews all the time, how important they are on Amazon, and these principles understand the structure of a great review can really make a difference. Sometimes I look up a product, I'm thinking about buying something, and there is no good review to read. There's a wide open space in writing reviews and honest reviews for approximately people are talking about. So I want to take you through the structure of a review in today's episode, so you can then write your own reviews. Now you can use this structure in multiple ways. A lot of this comes from a great article from the authority hacker Web site. A post a link. I love this podcast episode, and you can see there a more detailed analysis. But there really seven simple steps. The first is having a summary box at the top. A lot of bloggers. We go right into writing a really long review. And in fact, if you see the original version of My Gram Early Review, which I originally didn't have a summary box, and it's a very long review, it's almost half the length of one of my books, so people sometimes just want to look and go. Do you like it or don't like it and thinking about this? I read a lot of videogame reviews, and I want to know before I dive in. Did they love it or hate it? I don't want to read 30 paragraph to fight at the book. The game is terrible. So having summary box at the top, where you list some key information, you give it a star rating on how is the price? How well does the product work? How easy is it to use a couple of things like that? A quick summary that's two or three sentences should be inside of your summary box. You also wanna have lots of stars, and then when you're doing pros and cons, do two columns on the left, your pros on the right, your concert like a green icon and a red icon. That way, people can say, This is what I like it. This is what I don't like. Andy. An idea of a summary box. You could really look ATT. Any good review out there? You could certain look at my grandma, the review and ah, couple other use. I have coming out. The summary bucks really helps people to know very quickly if you're recommending or not recommending something. The second key to a great review is empathy. Sometimes when writing a review, we want to be objective. We want to sound like we're very professional. And so we write a review in the third person. We write it very distant, almost like we're a robot, so that it seems like this is a totally unbiased review. People want to connect with you. They want to know who you are and why you like something or why you use something in my gram. Early review. I start off talking about how I'm a writer, and I never thought I would need to hire or pay for spell checks off. It seems ridiculous. Seems crazy to me even now. The fact that I recommend it sounds crazy, but when I think about how much content I run through Graham early, it's amazing. I've already run through almost two million words in the last two months and grabbed me. I just pumped everything through every email. I write every block post. I write all the notes for every podcast, every book I work on, constantly working stuff to Grandma. In fact, have a backlog every book I've ever written. I'm trying to push through Graham early and then release a new version has a new ad it. So I'm always doing that stuff When you start off your review, start by talking about who you are and why you thought about this product. Why interested you and how it affects you. The more of you you injected in the beginning and review, the more people connect with it, they want to know that it's a real person. That feeling is very valuable. One thing I hate is what I'm looking at a review, and I can tell the person's never read the product and it's a really generic review and they're just trying to push their feelings, but they're not giving me any value. First, see, when you write a great review, people will want to use your affiliate Lee, because your information was so valuable. This is why I only real products I really use or having depth I was thinking about. My friend has a launch coming up this week for a very interesting product called Funnel Spy and what it allows you to do is go to someone's website, would have a bunch of products for sale and analyze and see their sales process and see what their funnel looks like. I thought This is amazing. This is something I would love to promote because I want to use it. I think it's very valuable. I'm always looking at reverse engineering, funnels and understanding the science that people are using but so usually tow analyst finally have to buy someone's entire product by other products just to see their final. I've done that before, so I found this very interesting and I said to him, I'd love to put your product. I got to get a review copy So probably comes out in four days. I'm gonna have to spend at least a couple hours today really kicking the tires on this thing and seeing if it works thing. If it does what I want it to do. If it does, then it's very easy for me to write a solid review of it, and that's what I'll do. But without access to the product, I wouldn't promote it. It's too hard to pretend a lot of marketers do that. They recommend a product they don't know if it works or not, and then when it doesn't work, they get burned. That happened to me once, a long time ago, I learned my lesson. Once you get past empathy, where your connect with your audience telling a story about you, you want to talk. What who the product is for. Not every product is for every person. Graham really has a pro and a free version. And for most people, the free version is all they need. It breaks my heart to have to say that, but the truth is, for 99% of people listens. Podcast. The free version meets every single need you have. You never need to upgrade. You have to worry about the professional features, the plagiarism features and the kind of advanced language features like telling you for using the word too much and recommending metaphors. You don't need those features. You just need something to check. If your grammar and spelling has mistakes, not to try and improve the quality of your writing, it hurts me to say that, but it's the truth. Graham Early works really, really well for people that are making money from their block or making money from books. Then it makes sense to use a pay tool because you want to take you right in the next level, but it tell you making money doesn't make sense. It's not a necessary investment, So being honest about who it's four is much better. We when there's an affiliate commission where we're getting paid at the end of the review, it's There's a temptation. There's a temptation Thio Focus on the profit, which means we want every single person reads Overview to eventually buy the product. That's not what you want, because you'll turn off so many people instead say, Here's who this is for years who it's not for whatever market urine. There's this really cool yoga program that I mentioned in breaking orbit, and only I only mention it because it popped onto my radar site to have ah woman's list. Us thinking offers for my new moms in my new mom list, and my girlfriend's really do yoga now after yoga before, I think it's really great, really Great yoga program. But it's a lady's yoga problem. Not all most sugar programs are for men and women, this one specifically targeted at women, and so the program is designed based on women's bodies. They have different skeletons or whatever. So stretches air a little bit different, I guess. But either way, it's all the marketing. It's purely for women. So if I reviewed that product and said this is for everyone than all the guys who read that and then went to progress, this is weird. It's not for guys, and it would hurt. My credibility would lower my sales. It's better to be honest with who it's for you it's not, for there are certain products that air for everyone in there. Some products that aren't most products are only for a small group of people, and the more you say who this is for who. It's not who this product meets, the more you build trust and you'll actually Salmore because you're actually selling it to the right people. People will be happy with their purchase. The next part is going from through the pre cell and the product introductions. So you start saying this product is awesome. It solves thes problems. It fixes these problems. If you have problems with your spelling or if you've gotten a negative review for your grammar on Amazon, then you have to check out this product. Here's what's so great about it and then go introducing Graham early. That's how you introduce the product. For example, if I was talking about convert kit, I would say if you're struggling to organize your emails if you want Thio grow a real business with long term strategy. If you're unhappy with your email is now. But you're afraid to move because you're gonna lose so many of your followers. Here's why convert It is amazing. Converted is the best product, has the most amazing automation and lets you move over your entire list, no questions asked. They don't hassle you about moving your list over. It's very easy. It's a wonderful feature. Such a lifesaver. That's how I would go through my pre sale and then the product introduction. Just talk a little about the product. What it does. What's so great about it in the next step, you as your talk about features and benefits you want case studies on my gram? Early review. I talk about how it's really great for plagiarism checking. It's really great for checking different things, and each time I have screenshots of me running a test. The other way of doing that is to talk about a specific story. I did this and this happened. Those types of elements are very valuable. The more you can have an interesting story as part of your view, the better. And case studies are very valuable, and there's so many features in any different products. So if I was doing a thrive themes review, and I certainly will be putting out a new, more extensive one in the very near future, I would talk about each different, really amazing feature and out tell a story. Oh, my friend runs a really big campaign, and he just launched a product about teaching Children to read. And here's a test that he ran on Dr Themes automatically. That helped boost how much money he makes. So I would talk about that feature and someone specifically did, or someone else who had an opt in, or how increased the number of conversions. I could talk about what I switched my website to thrive themes. The website became faster, ran quicker, smoother and a better experience. I could talk about real stories that's more interesting than just saying Dr Teams is very fast. That's one way of saying what I could say Dr Team spent at my website. Here's the two tests More interesting. You also in Step six. What to list alternatives, and you can say these or similar products. So for Graham early, there are a couple of similar products. I talk about Hemingway sometimes, which isn't a full competitors, having we really just checks to see if you're boring or wordy. Your sentences are too long for no reason, but there are some other products out there that are similar Graham early and so I would recommend them or talk about them. Why I like or don't like those other products. There's always a competitive. You could say this is what's gonna bet for thrive themes. I could say some of the competitors or similar products would be lead pages optimized Press two and DV from Elegant Deems. Or I could even make mention Genesis thing. Now each of those handles some of the things thrive. Teams does think about Thrive Team's en tous Ah, bunch of other things that comes with all these other really advanced plug ins. And that's why it's my favorite one stlead. Paige is really good for squeeze pages, operate presses and okay, Temple and use it for very long time. It slowed down my website, had some really good, has some really good template, design and sew. You talk about each everything. Debbie is really amazing. Elegant themes. It's a really cool page builder, but I found it very difficult. I actually struggled what I tried to use. My friend owns it and I said, Send me a copy So let me try it out. It was too hard for me. That's why I turned into Thrive team so you could talk about alternatives and what you like and don't like about him. Sometimes alternates are good. Genesis theme is a good alternative theme because it's a lot cheaper than thrive themes. It's more affordable for some people, and it's very good, and I use Genesis theme from my author. Pending websites, there's some key elements you wanna have interspersed throughout the entire review to make it really valuable and to help your audience really connect with it. The first is that you want to have a lot of images. My gram Early Review has an insane number of images, lots of lots of screen shots. The number one giveaway that someone didn't really use. The product reviewing is that there's no screenshots. I'm thinking right now about my thrive themes, review and this to speed test, and I'm wondering if I still have a screen shot of one of my old speed tests from the previous designs. I can compare the fast in the slow because people want to see that I'd want to see the before and after these little elements are really important. So I'm thinking about those and the more images you have that you actually took actual screen shots, not images. You just grabbed up Google, the better. That shows people that you really used it and they get to feel like they're coming with you on a journey. They trust you more. You just wanna have icons, especially in that summary box at the top. Have icons for each of your different categories. Have a little icon for your price. How many stars at a price? That's really expensive. How many stars do you have or you don't have an icon of each of the different stars? Maybe have a section called like ease of use or support all these different categories that important people like, How good is this product in different areas and you won't have a little icons, more icons? You have more professional, it feels about the page. Additionally, you want to divide up your review into subsections. And if you look at the Gramercy Review, you could actually go to each different H to tag each different little header section at the top. There's table contents. You can click and go to whichever section you want, so you could really move around the article quite easily. Sometimes people go. I'm interested this product, but I'm only interested in one features. They want to read your review of that feature that happens to me all the time when I was looking at upgrading screen flow and I used screen flow five haven't upgraded six. I waited a year. You waited a year and 1/2 to upgrade, and I was looking yesterday at six and has all bad reviews on the APP store, so I haven't upgraded in six. I probably won't for a long time. I was looking for a specific feature, and only one review mentioned it very deep into a review and mentioned batch export for me batch process is a very important. It's the same reason I just updated Dragon updated to Dragon. I think it's a version six now or something. I'm not sure, but they just released a new version last month, and it has batch exporting. So when I record this podcast episode, I then would have the final MP three version the file file. I get back from the auto editor. I immediately put it into Dragon. I click a button and it converts. It creates a document that has a transcript. It's not perfect, but it's pretty close. And that way, instead of spending a huge amount of money, I can quickly generate an okay transcript and add it to the page. People open that up and get a rough idea of what I'm saying. It's not perfect, but it does have what I said roughly like 90 95% accurate is pretty good. The same thing Screen flow and I found both of these in little reviews. So I wanted to look for a very specific feature because when I make a video course instead of having to record an episode export recording episode export export for some videos takes 40 minutes. It's a much of downtime invested my flow now instead, with screen for five. I record All 12 episodes are all told videos, for course, and it can hit, export and go leave and come back and it's done. It's much better workflow for me, and it's very much increased. My productivity makes me feel very comfortable. My product creation. It doesn't take me three days now. It takes me one day so really speeds up part of the process. I found that by reading reviews, he wanna have these subsections to make it easy. Make sure, of course, again that you have stars. You can Adan Rich snippets plug in as well that, like put stars the one when your review appears in the Google listing. Stars appear under it. But you also wanna have stars on the actual page. So my reviews. There's three sections for stars. You know there's depending on the product. It could be their customer service. How good is the pricing? How usable is the product? User friendly? Is it different things like that and you're different categories. Give them stars or maybe just one overall star rating. It's very, very important And then, when you're comparing pros and cons, pluses and minuses, make sure to side by side columns. All of these elements will be very valuable and one of the things that I'm a big fan of and that I add into my reviews that you won't find other people talking about it. I really like custom. Image is, it helps people to take a product seriously, where they can see a picture that looks like a software box or a picture that looks like a burke and three D. If it's a book, these three D images help to massively increase conversion. All of my products, anything you buy for me has a three D image, whether it looks like a magazine or it looks like a set of DVDs, that little image makes it feel real. And when I'm buying products, I looked for the same thing. So I have that Tons of studies confirm it, but a lot of products they don't have their own three D shots or the three shots are terrible. So I create my own custom shots for a couple of reasons. The first reason is it increases sales. The second reason is it makes people feel more excited about the Prague, makes it feel more real to them, get more engaged in the review, so gives a better experience to the reader. The third reason is Google Image Search. If I create an original image, it has the product name. It's more likely to appear at the very top of Google image search results than anything else if you have the same image as everyone else. If you're just using their logo of their product banner, your link will not appear at the top of the Google search results. So having unique images taken the time to create your own three D images around box shots, taking your screen shots and given them all names and alternative names, I'll turn the tags that kind of match the Proctor match. Your key words will make a really big difference. These key elements help you with both S. E O, giving a high quality review, engaging readers and also get in the sale of the end if you believe in the product. Another thing that's very valuable that not everyone else does, And this is how you consider yourself is create a really valuable bonus. I mentioned this in the lodge jacking episode, but I want to mention it again for any product I recommend. I always want to give people more value, even though giving a review and really analyzing your product is a way of giving someone value helping to make the right decision. I always want to find more and more ways to increased the value I give to people. So I'm always thinking what would be really valuable and will be a great bonus to give to someone who decides to buy my feelings. Think Hey, thank you for in this review. If you decide to buy through my feelings, I want to give you a special thanks. Some people do bona shopping anyways, and so I'm designing couple of cool bonuses for my thrive themes. Review. I'm designing some really amazing template, so you'll be able to design a membership site that looks just like mine. In a matter of seconds, you'll be able to use some really amazing squeeze page templates, thrive teams is amazing, and they have some great templates, but they're not a lot of templates out there right now. There's only 1/3 party set of templates. They're very expensive, and they're not that good. To be honest with you, I can actually create better once I'm in the middle of creating better ones. They sent some designs to Ah, designer I work with is really good program with our teams. And I could send you this file. You just click upload if you found the tensions and suddenly have really amazing pages, so it actually increases the value of the product. And I wanted to create something increases value. Now when I recommend convert kits, something I've been working on that is gonna be a really amazing bonus. Is a set of email templates I'm gonna share with you emails that I've used in real campaigns that are very valuable and kind of cover different situations. There's the indoctrination. Welcome to my list type of sequence. There's the Here's what Here's what I'm all about here. So I am type of sequence. There's the codicil product sequence, how to get a review sequence, a couple of things like that and put together So you get like, 20 or 30 a m o templates. That'll be very valuable when you're setting up your first campaigns and I might also include some training videos to walk you through, sending convert, kid all the cool things that could do that might also be really, really helpful. Originally, I was just gonna d'oh training on how to use it, but I thought, that's not that great. It's okay. So I always think, What can I d'oh that goes beyond what everyone else does? Another product that I'm falling in love with right now is affinity Photo for so long. I've been using photo shop, and I hate that. I talk about photo shop and show so many demonstrations of votes up, so I know most people can't afford it. It's so expensive. Photo shop. When I bought it as part of a product suite, if you paid full price was like $1400. Fortunately, I was able to get student. Teacher Edition was working on my masters of the time. It was still like porridge and $5600 thing with $600. But now you have to pay just for Photoshopped $30 a month. It's expensive, it's so expensive, and I've always felt bad about showing a product, and I know most people can't afford. I got very lucky that I bought in to have a forever price or whatever. So affinity Photo's been on my radar for a while. I've been mentioning it, probably a couple of months. Ever since serving Master came out. I've always been recommending as an alternative to photo shop, but I started using it lately and honestly, it's a superior product. It's amazing to me the practice only $50 which is nuts. It's so much cheaper for six weeks of Photoshopping get a lifetime of affinity photo, and I originally thought about as a bonus, I would give away like some training videos, but I've been going through their training. It's actually pretty good. The only problem is it doesn't really cover the stuff that I do in the order that I do it. So it'll have a big section on really advanced stuff and then buried in, and I had to find the little things, the things I do the most. I don't really edit photos. I edit graphics. So is being a picture that I took of someone that editing a really added something. I want to look like a book cover, so I'm adding a text to the top or I want to make a banner. So I'm all about filling in a color or copying a color from here, moving it over there, that type of work, almost like working with cartoons. So I'm trying to think of a really valuable bonus to create so that people who go through my link and decide to buy their affinity photo getting additional value but is actually an amazing product. I'm using it all the time. More and more. I'm trying to get to the point where I don't open photo shopped at all anymore. So each time one open photoshopping go Wait, how can I want to do? It's an affinity and slowly, slowly, I'm moving over. And the problem is that if India's so intuitive, I'm tryingto have to unlearn all these bad habits. I did learn from Photoshopped. Photo shop does a lot of stuff in a way that's too hard. I wish I could really describe why affinity photos easier to use, I was trying to explain to my friend the other day it's hard to explain. The real value is that it's just as good as Photoshopped. It cost 50 bucks. That's the best to values. The third thing is, that's actually better. Easier to learn. It's more intuitive. They're training Videos aren't organized very well. Unfortunately, basically, just have a big website with 100 videos on the page in an order. It's not the most well structured, but you start watching them. You get a lot of value. So even as I'm thinking about products I want to review or talk about, I always want to think of ways to give people more value. I always want to give more value than anyone else so that I get not only the people that just want to read a great review, but people they're out there bonus seeking. The other element is the coupon market. If you can write a review of a product and there's a special coupon, you and people do this all the time. Every time I bought two byproduct. If on the checkout form it says, Do you have a coupon code? I merely top into Google type products group coupon code. Like everyone else, you can get coupons that are tied specifically Tosto Pro Lab. The company does my CEO. If you use my coupon code. Serve no master. You get a 10% discount. Why wouldn't use it? Save 10% and I get marked as the affiliate. It's a win win for both of us, so people also search for coupons. So if you're in your review, you can attack those keywords of people. Type in the most the product Name. Proud name plus review. Prat named plus bonus and proud name Plus coupon. Those air very common searches for any term. Now again, you don't have to have a strong presence or any phone. If you write a good review and put on your block and it's very eloquent, it will start moving up the rankings. If you want to follow this formula and create a video review, you'll have the same experience. You could do very well and have a popular review on YouTube for certain products. I watch the video reviews I was watching him and what was watching video reviews two days ago, A Prada or yesterday's watching a bunch of video training. Sometimes you're watching, and you just want to see them do one little thing to make sure the product can do it, so videoviews could be very valuable because people just watch you a real time watching, using the tool, explaining what different things are. It's very, very valuable, so these different elements can be great. And throughout your review, if you do a block and a video, you can have that video inside your blogger. Different pieces. The video. You can integrate the two things very well, but without any website with no money for hosting with nothing else, you could record a video with just your webcam. Or even though I could just record your screen using Camp Studio, which is free screen recording software, and you just use the microphone built in your computer. You could make a rough recording, throw it onto YouTube and you can generate real revenue. So this is a way to make money with no assets. And this is one of the quickest ways to start generating amazing revenue. And those are the seven steps to creating a great review. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Serve No Master. Make sure you subscribe, so you never miss another episode. We'll be back tomorrow with more tips and tactics on how to escape that rat race head over to serve no master dot com forward slash podcasts Now for your chance to win a free copy of Jonathan's bestseller Serve No master. All you have to do is leave a five star review of this podcast. See you tomorrow. Thank you for listening. To serve no master podcast, head over to serve no master dot com back slash podcasts right now to find out how you can win a free copy of my brand new book.