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Why You Should Send Me (and Other Bloggers) Your Products for Free
February 20th, 2008 | Posted in Technical Writing, Web 2.0 |
In “FREE: The Economics of Abundance and the Price of Zero,” Wired magazine’s Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson talks about the gift economy and how you can make products free without losing your financial return.
One idea that caught my attention was to give your products away for bloggers to review. With one of his previous books (The Long Tail, I believe), Chris says he sent out 800 copies to bloggers to review. As a result, the web was brimming with buzz and information about his book. Consequently, sales on Amazon led the market for the book.
If you have a product, don’t you want as much Google visibility as you can get? Most people search for reviews of your product on Google before pulling out their wallets. If you want to maximize your online presence, you should send out complimentary copies of your product to bloggers like me. If it’s a product within my area of interest, I’ll review it on my site. Not only will my post reach 850 people, it will also give you Google presence — sometimes on the first page if I SEO the post well.
This technique of free-giveaways-for-reviews is of course risky. You can’t give someone a free copy of a book or software with the agreement that they’ll “say something nice or else won’t say anything at all.” Sure, some people may blast your software and explain how problematic it is. But if it’s that problematic, the software will die anyway.
A while back Scott Berkun sent me a complimentary copy of his book, Myths of Innovation. At the time I was perplexed that he was sending it to me for free. Now when I search online for Myths of Innovation, I see what an astute marketing decision it was. The sheer abundance of search results makes the book look like a much-talked-about, exciting publication. Although I haven’t written an official review, I have quoted from his book several times, and I continue to excerpt from it. It’s an enjoyable read.
If you want to contact me about reviewing a product, use the contact form here or send me an email at tomjohnson1492@gmail.com.
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Tags: Chris Anderson, Free, gift economy, Myths of Innovation, reviews, Scott Berkun, Wired Magazine
February 20th, 2008 at 7:12 am
I’m with you on this one. I’ve been playing a fun new computer game and would love to post a few-minutes-long recording using the best tool for the job, FRAPS, but the freeware version only records 30 seconds. Just last night I was thinking of contacting the company to see if they’d provide me the software for free provided I thank them and link to their website in my article. I’d consider posing the same offer to the makers of this game, but scores of people are already using pirated versions of FRAPS to post YouTube videos so they’d probably do well to remain blissfully ignorant.
Perhaps I’ll give this a try.
February 20th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Tom,
There is another school of thought that says that the only valid reviews are those done by truly independent reviewers. Most respected Consumer product review organizations pay full retail for the products they review so they can be free of any accusations of favor. Asking for people to send you free stuff so you can raise their Google ranking sounds like you’ll only review their products if you can get something for free, at which point a lot of your readers would consider the review worthless.
@Brian:
How about paying the $47 Australian dollars to buy FRAPS and support a Software Developer instead of advocating piracy?
February 20th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
Nice to hear from you, Brian. I’ve found that if you talk with the right marketing people, they often have review copies of their products that they are willing to exchange for a sidebar ad. You might try just asking.
February 21st, 2008 at 12:06 am
TW, you have a good point. Bias in product review is something that is easy to fall prey to. However, I think it’s common practice to send experts your new gadget or book *in hopes* that they’ll review it. I think David Pogue get tons of new toys each day arriving unsolicited on his doorstep. Would you say that his reviews are then biased?
I didn’t mean to come across as if I were offering a kind of pay-per-post deal. Chris Anderson’s point was that if you want to get a lot of reviews and buzz about your book, give a way a ton of free copies to people online. It’s part of the gift economy — the idea that giving something away for free always has some valuable reward.
February 21st, 2008 at 7:01 am
I tried asking and haven’t yet heard back. I surmise that this company, being the developers of software related to video games, has heard every excuse justifying free software. I’ll give it another go, though, just for the experience of negotiation.
I read a very insightful article on this topic yesterday on the blog of Roy Tanck, the brilliant designer who did my main blog theme. He writes about completing an online customer service survey for his new bank where they smartly and sneakily suggested that he blog about their company. I’m impressed at how forward-thinking this bank is.
http://www.roytanck.com/2008/02/15/bizner-experiences/#more-205
February 27th, 2008 at 10:58 pm
[...] the example of another technical writer, I wrote to Hyperionics, the maker of HyperSnap, and requested a free copy of HyperSnap in exchange [...]
March 12th, 2008 at 4:20 am
An update! I was contacted by the good people at FRAPS who were only too happy to provide me with a free copy of their software for my personal use on my blog! They went as far as to zip up a version that was pre-registered to me at the email address I contacted them at. I’m unbelievably impressed and it’s a bit of an ego boost as I feel like my hobby just got a notch more legitimate.
I replied to them with thanks and a promise that my review will be fair and unbiased.
March 13th, 2008 at 11:27 pm
Brian, that’s great news. I’m glad to hear you got a copy of the software through your blog. Way to go.
May 9th, 2008 at 3:53 am
[...] the example of another technical writer, I’m going to start reviewing various software in exchange for licensed software. Hopefully, [...]
August 20th, 2008 at 4:42 am
I think sending out free copies of a game or book to reviewers is a very sound marketing strategy. If enough of the reviewers give you a backlink your page on the item is most likely to outrank the reviewers. Giving you the SERP you need to market your product to the customers first.