Of all the services we have been providing in the international market, content writing is the first service we launched here in iPresence Business Solutions. Since 2001, we’ve been into various Internet Marketing and business-related forums such as the Warrior Forum, Black Hat World, Digital Point and Wicked Fire just to name a few.
Forum members who are looking for ways on how to supply their blogs and money sites with high-converting and high-quality content for the cheapest possible price, if not for free, are always on the look-out for a newbie content writing service provider.
Why are they on the look-out?
Simple.
To ask for a “review copy”.
A review copy is a custom-written article based on the requirements set by the “reviewer” (or “vulture” if you like) for free. There are forums, such as the Black Hat World, that discourage free review copies because some obvious forum members abuse it. Sometimes, you can’t help but feel that these serial sugar-coated service reviewers have defined “review copy” as a “free copy” when it’s not supposed to be like that. A review copy should either be a pre-written or a pre-made article that is readily available on the writer’s portfolio or a custom-written article paid by the reviewer at a discounted price.
We’d like to give some tips on how you can be assured of a genuine review from a forum member who does not have pre-made boiler templates for his review or testimonial once you deliver his review copy.
1. Set some gate-keepers on who can only request a free review copy.
Sometimes, there are service providers who just decided to dance the music in order to easily get along with the forum members and its patrons. But if you don’t set some clear and just requirements as to who can only get a free review copy, you might just end of as an “abused” service provider.
For those who are interested in a FREE review copy, it’s ideal that they:
- should have at least 1000 helpful posts
- should be a forum member for an x number of months (or years if you like)
- should not be providing the same service
For those who are interested in a review copy at a DISCOUNTED PRICE, it’s fine that you don’t set any eligibility requirement. After all, people tend to act and behave more appropriately and seriously when they pay for it.
2. Review the threads started by and posts made by the reviewer.
As I mentioned above, there are some forum members whose reason to live is to request for free review copies that they can use on their money sites or wherever they need it to. Keep in mind that you have two goals why you are giving away review copies.
Primary Goal: To win convinced and satisfied reviewers and make them as your buying customers.
Secondary Goal: To have reviews (or testimonials if you wish) that you can showcase either on your website or on your sales thread in that forum.
Before you give your nod that you’re going to write a free review copy for any member, spend a few minutes in reviewing the member’s previous posts. Do you see any trend in terms of the member’s habitual or regular request for free review copies? If so, it’s more likely that that member is a vulture (that’s my modest way of saying horse’s manure) and not an honest reviewer. Don’t risk your chance of trying to convert that freebie-seeker into a buying-customer if a big percentage of his posts are “I sent you a PM for a free review copy request” instead of “PayPal transaction ID: 5787xxxxxx. Please check your PM for the details of my order”.
We hope that this blog post has helped you if you are planning to launch a sales thread on high-traffic forums. Please understand that this advisory does not say that service providers should only give review copies to those who will literally buy your service after you delivered them a review copy. This is only a soft-reminder that you should always market with care without going too far from your primary goal. Remember, you write content that converts. But even if you are the writer of the highest converting content on planet Earth, you can never convert an ultimate freebie-seeker who has a strong belief to a lyric of a song – “the best things in life are free”.
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