Reader Question: Writing About Products You Don’t Own
A reader emailed me a few weeks back asking about how to write for his own niche sites. He said he felt uncomfortable writing about products he’d never used before.
Now, I’ve covered this before on the blog.
What was interesting about this case is that he was already writing articles for other people.
He was doing the freelance writing thing and had no problems with that. Yet when it came to his own sites, he didn’t want to write to sell.
Here’s how I approached the problem:
- Think of yourself as another client
- Think about the “moral decision”
When you write for hire, you’re in a fixed-mindset. You think, “As long as I write what I’m paid for, I’ll do it and the ethics of selling are up to the buyer.”
When it comes to yourself, you think, “Should I be writing this to earn money? Doesn’t that make me a sneaky salesman?”
The way I explained this moral quandary to the reader was this:
When you work for someone else, you don’t do anything wrong. Sure, you write about stuff you’re not an expert in. You might write about baseball caps or something for a 500 word article. Now, you’re probably not an expert in that.
But what you do when you’re hired to do that is this:
You’ll research so you can write to the level you need to. You’re not an expert, but you’re not just going to write, “baseball caps are made out of titanium and they give you x-ray vision so that you can see through hot girls’ clothes.”
You’d be fired if you did that, because it’s all lies.
Most people wouldn’t even think to try and get away with that, so what they do is research the subject and then write about what they know. Most employers enjoy this.
When You Write For Yourself
When you write for yourself, you have a bunch of other questions in your head.
- Am I too salesy?
- Is this unethical?
- What if I haven’t used the product?
- Am I an expert or a fraud?
- What if someone knows more than me?
- What if my Mum sees my “girls lingerie” review website?
And a bunch of other things that don’t matter.
Go through the exact same process as you would when you write for a client. Obviously don’t lie and say, “I’m a twenty-something guy who loves wearing lingerie” and “I use all of these products myself” if you don’t. But if you make sure your writing is filled with facts and you maintain your integrity, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with promoting products.
If I were to write:
“This computer tablet is ideal for travellers because it’s lightweight, it has a great processor and it’s actually got a headphone jack so you can wear earphones” then it doesn’t really matter if I own the product or not. It doesn’t matter if I’ve never actually used a tablet or whether I’m the ghost of Steve Jobs himself; either the information is truthful and useful or it isn’t.
Providing you’re in the former camp, you can build a niche site – or any site – and fill it with as much information as you want.
You’re Just Another Client
When I started to write my own product reviews for niche sites, I felt weird about writing about products – even ones I owned. There was a disconnect between “freelance me” who could write about anything and “Jamie who builds niche sites” who had a problem pulling the trigger on anything because I felt like an imposter.
Here’s how I got over this in a simple mental exercise: I pretended to be a client.
Every night before I finished working for the day, I’d write a list of things to do as though I were hiring a freelancer. (Imagine you can’t work for a week and you have to get a friend to cover for you.) Then I’d give the imaginary freelancer a list of jobs to do; I’d even send myself an email with the tasks.
The next morning, I’d get up and check my emails and task lists. Right there would be the list I’d sent the night before, right along with the other emails I had from real clients. I’d just sit and do them all as though the emails I’d received the previous night were from any other client who I’d never met.
Over time, this segmentation helped me get over whatever block I was facing.
Of course, the work is the same whether you’re the boss or someone else is.
The Solution
The aforementioned reader emailed me back pretty quickly. It turns out that his problem came from thinking about projects for himself and freelance projects as two different things. Once whatever ramblings I’d jotted made him see how a typical freelance article he was writing was exactly the same as an article he’d put on a niche site, whatever block he too had dissipated (or, so far as I’m aware it did.)
Final Thoughts
Most people get hung up on the idea of writing about products they don’t own because they think they’re crossing some ethical boundary.
In reality, if you’re worried about that ethical boundary you’re probably not going to cross it. Lying about products is obviously bad, but when you write an article praising a product or critiquing it, you’re probably basing what you say on facts.
Facts aren’t really subject to ethical dilemma: You’re telling the truth or you’re not.
Anyway, use the exercise above if it helps, otherwise make sure to research and write your articles according to facts and your own particular sense of ethics. Chances are it’s not as bad as you think.
(Also, guys and girls who are into dodgy fake stuff don’t generally suffer from worrying about it.)