Is buying physical products & creating lots of forms of content with them feasible?

[4potato]

I'm trying to get back into the affiliate space and wondering if my math checks out. I want to create a brand new website reviewing products, say tools/storage, and will be willing to put a bit of money in it, and possibly do YouTube as well, since why not .

Say I buy 2 DeWalt drills, 2 Milwaukee drills and 2 Makita drills. For each brand,an entry level product and top of the line product. I can do head to head comparisons, roundups, entry vs high end same brand comparisons, single product reviews for all, plus review the batteries, carrying cases, charge times, chargers and so on.

For about $1000-1500 worth of product I can see about 8-10 good pieces of YouTube content and 8-10 blog pieces plus unique images with a DSLR good for sharing on social media.

Is this not a no brainer?

Let's say I get 1% conversion with 1% commission, what do I need, 10k traffic per single product review to break even?

Now the math isn't even that simple because one product is used multiple times in multiple pieces of content.

And then there is website valuations, if I bought 10,000 dollars worth of product to review, eventually made back $500/month but sold the site for 20,000 I'm laughing right?

I'm surprised how many websites don't buy physical product to review and still use amazon images and rewrite product descriptions and do basic roundups.

If I really went all in with this, starting with drill/impact kits ($2000 for 20 pieces of content), not to mention recouping a bit of money reselling the drills on second hand local marketplaces, do you think I'd see better then 1% traffic conversions? The conversion rate is where I get dizzy on my math. X amount of people will click my links to amazon, then from there X amount will buy. Is 1% of visitors making a buy way too optimistic if content and reviews are extremely helpful and good?

 

[bernard]

@4potato Depends on how much of a scope you have.

I think the biggest issue here is that gadgets and gimmicks and even tools, get outdated pretty quickly, because new models are coming out.

On the other hand, some stuff don't get outdated that fast, check out Treadmill Review Guru on Youtube, that's a lot of investment as well, but their models will stay the same for a long time. On the other hand some of their reviews have like 500 views for a treadmill which is a huge net loss value wise for that one review.

In your calculation you should also add resale value though, because most quality tools will be able to be resold, which makes it all much more doable. As such, even a tool at $1000 might only have a real cost of $700 (resale) and then if you buy it through your own affiliate link you can get something back even.

You can also ask to borrow or buy them used or have them sent as gifts etc, but try to avoid the latter because it won't be authentic then. In some cases, go into a store and snap some photos, go to a showroom or something. Ask for people who own the product in Facebook groups and pay them a small amount to send you images.

It definitely works for SEO as well and soon to be requirement with the Product Reviews update.

I think the reason more people don't do it is that the overlap between people who like to be in front of cameras and people who can build SEO websites is not that big. It's extrovert/introvert kind of thing, but if you can do Youtube, then do it, because it kicks ass and honestly much easier to get traction for a good review than SEO.

 

[Ryuzaki]

And then there is website valuations, if I bought 10,000 dollars worth of product to review, eventually made back $500/month but sold the site for 20,000 I'm laughing right?

If I fronted $10k of my money, filmed a ton of youtube videos, took and processed a ton of pictures, had a bunch of content written and formatted and published, then had to build links and do marketing and wait, I wouldn't really be celebrating over selling the asset for $20k.

I know you're not really suggesting to sell it and you're just playing with numbers, but $10k in profit for all that with nothing else to show for it, in my opinion, is worse than having a rinky dink day job. If this game plan is contingent on selling the asset and losing the cash flow (which was low to begin with), it's not really a "business", in addition to you doing most of the work.

If I was going to do something like this, I'd intend on this being a growing asset that I hold for a much longer period of time. In which case it'd likely become very worthwhile. But not at the start. At the start (and why people don't go through this effort) is that there's much easier ways to make money. I do think that once you hit a certain mass and velocity (size of business and traction) that it'd really grow. But to get there in a reasonable amount of time you won't be able to do all of this by yourself for a starting spend of $10k, you know.

 

[4potato]

I guess what I'm worried about is not seeing ROI on initial content. Writing it, filming it, reviewing drills and circular saws, but the space being competitive and just getting no views or not making my money back on the purchases. That's why I'm hesitating and trying to run different numbers, selling early is more of a last ditch "get my money back" situation and not the end goal.

I think I am going to go for it. I started an out of town job working 21 days on, 7 off. I'll have a bit of money to use from working overtime so I can review some new products.

My 2 niche ideas are pretty far apart, the tools as mentioned, and the other would be tech tools / software that I could review, screenshot and film from a PC. Not sure which one I'll end up going with. I could probably stretch my dollar a bit further doing software reviews but it may also be more competitive. I've never done camera work but not opposed to it.

I wonder a lot how physical product people on YouTube do. One guy on YouTube 'Project Farm' does fantastic tool review roundups. Best chainsaw, best angle grinder etc. He does many real world tests and most YouTubers don't seem to have blogs. The best of the best reviews get millions of views. I'm over here hoping to get 10k eyeballs per article to break even and maybe video views would be gravy on top.

 

[MrMedia]

Most people never start because success is not guaranteed.

You state that you are ready to go all in on this so why not really go for it and build a long term asset as Ryu suggests rather than a quick flip.

A focus on the short term ROI and early exit plans suggests this is not a project that has long term planning at its core. If this is the case be careful - you could lose all your cash in the short term.

However - if this was a long term play then time is a valuable friend.

Truthfully to me it sounds like a bad idea but maybe thats just because I hate Wire Cutter style knock off sites that are just so generic and bottom scrapping for those AMZ dollars.

 

[bernard]

What you can do is buy one (1) product and do a kickass review of that, like make the review to last the next 5 years. Make that review so good, that nothing else will ever compare, and people won't even try.

Pick a product you know intimately and which has a certain price point where people care enough and something you are passionate about. Maybe a childhood hobby.

Interview people, collect unique data, dig up facts in academic papers, read books, get user experiences from Facebook groups etc.

Then publish blog, youtube, Reddit etc.

If you enjoy that process, then great, but you'll have a baseline for what a perfect review looks like.

A lot of youtubers started this way btw, like Best Ever Food Review Show, which was just reviewing some local sandwich or something.

I don't really understand, but people and particularly Redditors, just love people who go way above and beyond being nerdy about one product.

If you do decide this, then make sure you bring the personal story and the passion. Go watch Jim from early Income School videos, I think he really encapsulates that mindset and strategy.

 

[eliquid]

If you are going to do this, this way.. then it needs to be something you want and need too.

Because if you are going to spend $10k on tools, they need to be tools you want. Not just "any ol tools" because if this all bombs/fails or just breaks even, at least you have tools you can use later.

Do you currently need a new planer, personally? If so go out and buy 4 of them and use them and video it for your reviews. When done, get rid of 3 and keep the 1 you like the most personally. Now you have content and a shop tool you needed and know its the one you want since you got to try all 4 out. If you need a planer, don't do reviews on impact drills. Get it?

Same with anything. If you are going to spend $10k on a travel blog, stay and travel in places you want to stay and travel to. Meaning, if you are a beach person personally, don't blog and spend money on hiking in the mountains and then blowing all that money if it doesn't work out. If you go to the beach and review those, at least if it breaks even or bombs, you got something out of it.

Also, doing it this way... you will come across genuine too. People know when you are being fake, so do something where you get something out of it too.

 

[thisishatred]

Just to sort of provide an example of a person doing what you're talking about - albeit, building upon a brand as apposed to a quick flip.

Jim has a good example of putting into action what you're discussing with his Backfire.tv website/brand/youtube channel.


Round of up 8 rangefinders example:

Individual review examples;

Example of round-ups with scopes published via a blogpost with embedded youtube videos.
https://backfire.tv/best-rifle-scope-under-500-10-scopes-tested-head-to-head/

When Jim wanted to get rid of all of these scopes, rifles, and rangefinders, I believe he created an excel spreadsheet and allowed folks to essentially get them at a reduced rate of like 10% rather than returning them to Amazon or where-ever he purchased them from.

Edit: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kUeCi7UKcioPqrVMb8yAkWOMY35jsTS_tzBV1nxFM7k/edit#gid=0

The above is the excel spreadsheet.

 

[bernard]

That rangefinder review has 500.000 views btw.

 

[4potato]

Lots of good advice so far, thanks. I was thinking along similar lines of selling some of the tools for some money back, but the goal would be that each product reviewed supports itself after X amount of months. And yeah some of the youtube product reviewers have average hundreds of thousands per video, but I think youtube funnels a lot of traffic to a very small percentage of top youtubers.

I'm actually thinking of starting this on a domain for my local contracting/construction business. Instead of a typical "toolreviews.com" type blog. Might be a crazy idea but I think the exposure to the brand is net positive, even if not entirely same audience. I'm going to start reviewing what I have, I spent part of the day reading how to take better product photos, and went and bought a few things for my setup.