Returning products after review?

Muninn

Muninn

New member
Jun 27, 2010
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Detroit
So I was thinking, I'm running a review site of a particular niche of electronics.. I know I could make a much better site and probably draw more traffic if I do some video reviews and whatnot myself, but don't really have the money to be spending on multiple models of these.

First I figured I could just sell one after playing around with and reviewing it as basically brand new for most of it back, but I checked amazons return policy which says 30 days for electronics to return them. I could get the product, take some pictures, do a video review, etc.. and then return it before 30 days and do a different one. Has anyone ever done anything similar to this or have other suggestions on how to go about accomplishing this? Will Amazon red flag you for this over time? Thanks!
 


Without knowing what electronics niche you're looking at (hopefully it is somewhat specific), you're going to have a hell of a time getting the actual product in hand to review. Any retailer will catch on rather quick if you try to pull what you were speaking of. My suggestion is build a great content site around your niche and instead of trying to do all the reviews yourself, make it open to your readers to leave reviews for products. Offer contests to drive in the reviews. But going the route you talked about, the reviews will be few and far between and websites like that can not thrive on rare content. Once you get the authority in that niche, then you can solicit for products to reviews. And if you have any weight in that market, companies won't hesitant to give you stuff.
 
If your site is not large enough to receive review samples direct from the manufacturer, consider contacting local shops and offering to provide a link with the review; i.e. "Thanks to Erotica Ltd of San Fran CA for providing the Fleshlights reviewed."

I've seen car dealerships loan out vehicles for review to smaller web sites using this method.
 
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TVensor said:
If your site is not large enough to receive review samples direct from the manufacturer, consider contacting local shops and offering to provide a link with the review; i.e. "Thanks to Erotica Ltd of San Fran CA for providing the Fleshlights reviewed."

I've seen car dealerships loan out vehicles for review to smaller web sites using this method.
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That's a great idea
 
JarredLv said:
Without knowing what electronics niche you're looking at (hopefully it is somewhat specific), you're going to have a hell of a time getting the actual product in hand to review. Any retailer will catch on rather quick if you try to pull what you were speaking of. My suggestion is build a great content site around your niche and instead of trying to do all the reviews yourself, make it open to your readers to leave reviews for products. Offer contests to drive in the reviews. But going the route you talked about, the reviews will be few and far between and websites like that can not thrive on rare content. Once you get the authority in that niche, then you can solicit for products to reviews. And if you have any weight in that market, companies won't hesitant to give you stuff.
Click to expand...

I figured they might, but maybe with such a large retailer like Amazon they wouldn't among all the returns they get already? If anything, I know a lot of people who I could get to buy the product with their credit cards and I can just give them cash, so I don't leave any of my information on them to catch onto.

Not a bad idea though; I've thought about once I really have it going well I could possibly use my authority within the niche to get manufacturers and whatnot to either let me use and even keep the products. Especially once I had those for free, I could use them in giveaways for contests..

I'm considering opening comments on the reviews themselves, that way there was the extra input from users, but I'll probably stick to doing the actual reviews myself, I like to have control over that aspect and the ability to make them really good.

If your site is not large enough to receive review samples direct from the manufacturer, consider contacting local shops and offering to provide a link with the review; i.e. "Thanks to Erotica Ltd of San Fran CA for providing the Fleshlights reviewed."

I've seen car dealerships loan out vehicles for review to smaller web sites using this method.
Click to expand...

Ahh, hadn't thought of that really. That might work, obviously a place like Best Buy probably wouldn't be down for this, but I can already think of a few local places that might be interested once I was able to prove I had sufficient traffic.

Thanks a lot guys!
 
If you buy it from amazon and return it (ship it back) you're losing on the shipping costs. Instead buy it and resell it at cost on ebay or even craigslist.
 
Yeah that's true, im not too worried about the shipping costs though, they wouldn't be that much versus the value of having the product to review on hand. I guess theres always doing it through Amazon and best buy and other electronics stores through friends willing to help me out.. Lol.

I could go the route of reselling, but these are all anywhere from 200 - 700 dollars or so a piece and new shit is constantly coming out, so I'd assume I'd lose at least 50 dollars or so the second it was used at all.

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I do this. Buy it, review it, return it. Just don't buy 100 items over a year and return them all to Amazon ... they'll cancel your account. Spread your returns love out over many retailers. After some time you'll have enough clout to contact manufacturers directly to request demo units. Video reviews work really well.
 
cheshire said:
I do this. Buy it, review it, return it. Just don't buy 100 items over a year and return them all to Amazon ... they'll cancel your account. Spread your returns love out over many retailers. After some time you'll have enough clout to contact manufacturers directly to request demo units. Video reviews work really well.
Click to expand...

Nice, great to hear someone does the same! So when you say you spread out between retailers I assume you mean you don't get them all from Amazon? I could go through best buy, microcenters etc. I suppose which would give me a lot of room to work with on top of Amazon, using friends and families cards/ names.

Thanks!

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