Hi Guys, Today I have decided to share a post about 6 Ways To Research Verified Customer Reviews. This is something I think is very important. I know a lot of people do very well out of convincing people to buy products that aren’t exactly up to scratch. To be honest fair play to them but in my experience, you really don’t need to.
Instead, you can use your platform to build trust and use your platform to offer genuine, unbiased information that you can still utilize to generate recurring affiliate commissions again and again. In fact, even if you say a product is bad you can still sometimes find that these same customers will buy these products even if you don’t recommend them.
It’s crazy I know but if you can really manage to piece together a good product review it can go either way. You could either generate interest towards another product you leverage your review towards,
or it could be the actual product you review.
In my experience, a big part of this is doing your research. To find out about the experiences of others that have actually used the products from your reviews. For me, this is something I have taken quite a while to grasp but I think I have found some good resources to use to offer this kind of retrospective to people.
Some of these resources which I would like to share
So, with this in mind – Here is my…
6 Ways To Verify Products For Reviews
Table of Contents
1.) Using Amazon Reviews
Some will say that Amazon is NOT a good source of reliable reviews. I would say it depends on how many reviews that the product has. If there are only say 25-50 reviews I would say this isn’t really much to go on. Plus, there is a good chance that a number of these reviews are likely fake. It definitely happens and I think it’s just because people get desperate.
However, if there are say over 1k reviews it is quite the opposite. There is a good chance that a lot of them are genuine. Someone paying for 100’s and 100’s of fake reviews I don’t think so. It is most likely here that there are genuine reviews so this is the good thing but yes as I was saying…
You can even buy fake Amazon Reviews on Fiverr.
THIS is exactly why you shouldn’t trust Amazon Reviews. You can easily buy these reviews on sites like Fiverr and the other thing is Amazon is notorious for counterfeit products. However, I do find you can generally weed out the real from the fake as long as these products have sold well and there is a decent amount of reviews.
Especially if they have earned an Amazon’s Choice badge.
This usually swings the deal for me but ONLY using one website for reviews is unprofessional so continuing on…
2.) Facebook Business Page Reviews
I have only personally picked up on this method recently. If you can NOT find any reviews on sites such as TrustPilot, BBB, or Amazon you can sometimes find Facebook Business pages with Reviews.
This can either be for the company or for the actual owner of the company. For example, on my health website, I had some trouble finding reviews for one product line but I found underneath the owner’s name and 1000’s of reviews for these products. You can get a few that are fake but the strength is in the NUMBERS.
Usually, if you find a good mixture of positive and negative reviews and there is enough of them you can kind of trust they are genuine. Even with the bias that is associated with someone’s own Facebook page if they have the sense to keep both their positive and negative reviews it should offer you an honest look at how consumers are actually responding.
Also, another idea is to check out the other comments on the page. Sometimes people start discussions about their experiences. I have seen this happen a couple of times and these comments seem to be very real and informative.
3.) Actual Website Reviews
I would say be careful with this one. As some websites will only ever show positive reviews. They may leave 1 or 2 negative reviews but my point is if they are overwhelmingly positive you should be suspicious. I know it is not always the case and I would guess (and I think I’m right) that there is something ungenuine about it all when this happens.
Of course, no business owner wants bad publicity on the face of it. Which, is understandable to a degree (I would say), but from a potential customer’s point of view, it’s better to leave all comments of any viewpoint.
If they are generally negative then they probably should ask themselves what they are doing wrong.
If you are a business that can actually generate customer reviews en masse then you can usually get a good mixture of different kinds of reviews. From 1 to 5 Stars. As long as a product is of good quality the company shouldn’t have to worry about a few bad reviews, As long as the majority are positive and if the product is good they usually will be.
I am not a huge fan of website reviews but if there are a good few hundred there and they aren’t all suspiciously positive then I definitely think this is something people can use in their own reviews.
4.) BBB (Better Business Bureau)
So far, this I think is one of the best places to To Research Verified Customer Reviews. You can actually find a lot of different ClickBank products here for example. They use (an A-F) School-Like grading system and since I have come across this I have used it for my own website many times now. I probably visit before anything else for almost every review I’m writing now. To me, it is one of the most trusted consumer sites on the whole internet.
THIS is one place the negative reviews will not be deleted from. Also, I think if you see a company on BBB (same as Amazon Reviews) that is responding to customers you can tell that they care about their reputation. Other companies that don’t respond to people in this manner I am very suspicious about.
Some Health Supplements you can tell are quite criminal like this. They let people fall for their BS, accumulate a load of negative press, and a few months later launch a new product and repeat the process again. You don’t get any of these companies replying to consumer complaints for everyone to see.
It is bad but for me, the guys who do respond give their brand and products credibility which I think is huge.
Note: BBB is only available for companies found in the USA, Canada, and Mexico.
5.) TrustPilot
I didn’t pick up on using TrustPilot soon enough but what I like about this consumer review website is it is available in more countries than BBB.org and more diverse compared to all the complaints that you find on BBB. It uses a 5-star rating system and on here you can find a good mixture of the good and the bad.
It is kind of like Amazon as well really. If it only has 25-50 reviews chances are some are fake but if there is 500-1000 it is a safe bet that a lot of them are genuine. I have seen some people try to use this for affiliate marketing lol but you can usually weed these out with other fake reviews. Depending on how many there are.
6.) Google Reviews
I have to admit that I only just found out about this one. This is that when you go to Google and select ‘Maps’ if you scroll down you can find reviews based on customers experience with these companies. I don’t think this really gets used very much compared to places like Amazon and TrustPilot for example but the great thing is that Google Reviews can only be deleted and edited by the person that posted them.
For this reason, this is definitely worth checking when you write your reviews. Alongside the others, this is 100% a great way to Research Verified Customer Reviews. I can’t really think of any others for now. Any I missed please let me know in the comments but before I go.
Deciding On Which Reviews To Use?
The best thing I think you can do here is just to go through everything. Start with BBB.org and then TrustPilot. After this, you can check Amazon and other eCommerce websites that have reviews. Just be sure to be careful here users can not delete negative reviews on Amazon but they can post fake reviews.
At this stage really start to take note of what people are saying. The good and the bad. You want to form an unbiased review that rather than try to manipulate your customer to buy your affiliate product it allows them to make a decision of yes or no. A good review should work in various different ways – you want to build trust, build interest in your brand, be informative about the products you review and offer your readers away if they wish to make a purchase.
You can read more about this here. It is called the Customer Purchase Lifecycle.
My Final Bit of Advice
Now, if you are in the business of writing Product Reviews and affiliate marketing is your goal. Other than these 6 Ways To Research Verified Customer Reviews there is another thing you can try out. Seriously, try these products for YOURSELF and write reviews based on your own experience. There are ways you can even do this for free.
I don’t mean abusing money-back guarantees either. Instead, you can actually just message the companies and tell them you are a blogger (or vlogger) and you would like to review their products. It is most likely that not everyone will say yes but it is also fairly likely that not everyone will say no. The more companies you ask the better chance you have of sampling their products for free. They may ask you to pay to ship but it should all be worth it.
If you can actually take a photo of yourself holding the product people will think you are credible and you can tell them the truth about what happened during your trial. You obviously won’t be able to do this with every product but what I said about building trust above – THIS should most definitely help.
A good mixture of these ideas and you should be making money in no time.
Which, I hope you do – as I wish you the Greatest Successes
but what do you think? Have I missed anything?
Let me know in the comments section below
Many thanks – from your friend;
Alex B. Chivers
IBusinessToday.com
PS: Are You Currently Doing Affiliate Marketing? If you are looking to get started or need some extra help check out my ebook “Affiliate Marketing and Blogging Tips for Wannabe Entrepreneurs” by subscribing to my email list below ⏬
