This Products' Reviews Blog Makes Over $240K Annually

Hello! Can you introduce yourself and tell us about your business?

My name is John Shea and I'm from Massachusetts, and I'm 38 years old. Currently I focus on making product reviews for physical products over at No Shame Income.

Mostly this means taking a product and sharing insights about installing a product, using the product and my overall thoughts on it. In some cases I also make unboxing videos.

How did you start this business? Take us through the process.

So years ago I watched a friend explode on YouTube so I started following in his foot steps with his direction. I was doing a lot of marketing videos at the time but nothing really took off or went viral so to speak.

Randomly one day I reviewed a couple of office chairs I had at home, comparing a gaming chair vs. an ergonomic office chair and the video absolutely blew up to over 500k+ views.

This 1 single video generated me over $14,000 in affiliate commissions referring people to buy this one chair so I knew I was onto something.

You can see the video here:

I continued making these videos on YouTube then later discovered Amazon had a similar opportunity to place videos directly onto their product pages where I could earn a commission just like I would directing traffic from YouTube.

As of today I've now generated over $400,000 from doing physical product reviews and have made over 1700+ videos talking about all kinds of different products.

How did you get your first initial customers?

For the first year I didn't do much with the blog. I've always felt like I wasn't that good at generating traffic, and honestly I still feel that way.

Most of the visitors come through my email list which I built from product and course sales. I've also written quite a number of product reviews for my site. This has allowed me to rank some articles on Google and get monthly traffic from that.

Since my blog itself has not been the major component of growing my audience, I'll share what has worked for me:

Partnerships

I've found seeking out the right people to work with can be huge for building an email list, launching products, and making an income online.

One example is how I created a course sharing how I achieved all of my success with Udemy and Skillshare.

Years before, while doing my podcast, I'd met my now long-time friend Mike Thomas, who runs an interview show called Mike From Maine. He interviews product creators nearly every day and promotes their products as an affiliate.

I approached Mike with my idea and showed him the success I was having with courses, so we decided to package it up and sell this story as a product.

Sharing all the details of doing this would be another course in and of itself, but the general approach was:

• I create the content and the course

• Mike approached well-known affiliate marketers for promotion

• Brett, Mike's partner, helped created the sales page and sales copy, along with a promotional video

We launched Video Course Cash Kit with the help of my girlfriend (she gave a testimonial of being a total newbie following this course and making sales) and the entire launch did $58,000, split between Mike, Brett, and myself.

From this we had over 1,000 buyers, which I was able to add to my email list and in turn promote more products to as I saw fit.

A great place to seek out partners is by looking around on the internet marketing forums.

I also highly recommend approaching people with a personal video to introduce yourself. You'll stand out from everyone else by doing this.

Since launch, what are your marketing strategies or channels to get new customers?

So I currently teach a program showing others how to start their own product review business.

With that program I reached out to some big name affiliate marketers in the space and designed a webinar that they could run to their own audience as a JV partner.

I'd give them 50% of any sales and I'd do most of the heavy lifting by providing emails and other assets for the promotion.

This allowed me to bring in tons of new course students and make it a win win for everyone involved.

Most of these people I met through networking events or by simply reaching out and having conversations.

I have also done some work with Facebook and YouTube ads, this is a good way to bring in new leads but it can get quite costly. I typically focus more on the JV stuff as it's a much easier way to get your offer in front of hot leads.

How does your business make money?

So I kind of look at what I do now as 50/50.

50% of my time goes into creating new product reviews for products, I earn standard affiliate commissions through Amazon for these.

I also get paid from vendors who send me products both via flat rate and some pay out additional commissions from sales I produce for them.

The other 50% is from my course business teaching people to do the same thing I am doing myself. I charge $997 for my course.

In 2022 my Amazon earnings were just over $187k

From bonus commissions with vendors I earned an additional $30k

My course sales generated me a little over $80k so on average I usually bring in right around 15-20k/month from my review business and course sales.

Before you go, what advice would you give to another who wants to start a business like yours?

Pretty much consistency and taking action, everything I've tried online has taken time and in some cases months to really see any results from.

This business has been no different, I just constantly put in work every week reviewing new products and have managed to maintain quite a nice income while also not doing any client related work because of it.

Where can we go to lean more about you and your business?

You can reach me directly through my website: https://www.noshameincome.com

You can check out my course about how to start your own product review business here:

https://www.facelessproductreviewprofits.com/enroll