Finding What to Write About on a Product Based Blog

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When blogging on CG I often get asked how do I find new products to write about, I won’t provide exact sources but I will share how I found the sources that I use.

In the gadget niche there are a hundreds (if not thousands) of sites reporting on all the latest and greatest gizmos. I subscribe to about 200 feeds and monitor them though out the day, especially the less popular ones which often pick-up on new stories that the big boys haven’t seen yet. If I see something that’s new and hasn’t be covered on a load of other sites yet I’ll write about and link to the source I first saw it on.


Trade shows are a great excuse to get out and about and meet the people behind the products that you’re writing about. They also give you the opportunity to get your camera out and create 100% unique content. I went to CES in Vegas this year and will be doing so every year for the foreseeable future which is a great way of enjoying a bit of the revenue I make before the tax man sees it.

I also buy a load of newspaper and tech related magazines, again if the cover anything I’ve not seen much of else where I’ll write about. I find the Sunday papers are often a good source of material (through you do have to wade through a load of crud and celebrity gossip).

Next off are the many gadget shops on the Internet, some have RSS feeds so it’s easy to see when they have new products whilst with others you’ll need to check the “What’s New” page or if that don’t have one of those then they may show new products on the homepage.

Contacts, having contacts at relevant shops is great for getting press releases and early notification of new products. Once your blog is established you’ll find company reps contacting you about their products (a nice source of freebies and competition prizes).

Encourage readers to send links to new things they’ve found interesting, if it’s reader submitted there is a good chance other readers will also like it.

When I’m really stuck for inspiration, I’ll visit any one gadget blog follow a link from there to site with an interesting product and then browse that site for anything else that I think my readers would enjoy. Products don’t have to new to be cool they just have to be new to your readers.

This is how a find things to write about on a product based blog, an information based blog like this one is totally different and maybe a subject for another post.

I’m flying off on holiday this afternoon so comments as always are more than welcome but I may be a bit slow responding.

About Al Carlton

Al quit the 9 to 5 rat race in January of 2007, before then he was a software engineer and systems architect of financial system. Nowadays Al spends the days running his various businesses and experimenting with different ideas and opportunities.
Al can be found on twitter at AlCarlton.

Comments

  1. Perfect timing as always ;) I just finished “bar two pages” a product related site which will give me a chance to review new products, What rss reader do you recommend ?

  2. google’s rss reader isn’t bad - http://www.google.com/reader/

    With all of that reading and keeping up to date, how do you find time to write stuff?

    I know that several of my sites could be improved by me keeping on to of news relating to the relevant products, maybe I’ll have to track down some suitable rss feeds to help me keep on top of things.

    I was going to say ‘I just don’t have the time’ but then I remembered your post about that a little while ago :)

  3. Thanks Guys i will try the google reader :)

  4. Google Reader is the best RSS reader as far as I know. It is easy to use and very fast.

  5. Have a good flight Al, it must be hard at times not to duplicate gadgets, especially having writers - I guess you must have checks in place so that your writers don’t all do the same gadget when something new hits.

  6. Al,where do you get the product or new technology images that you put in the post?

  7. Im not a professional writer or out to make any money with my blog. But I like to read interesting articles and thats why I put good articles on my blog from professionals. They will help people learn stuff and I make it possible for them to find the articles. That’s all I want to do. Heres the link if you like reading good articles.
    http://bizenez.blogspot.com/

  8. Thank you for this information it gave me a couple of ideas :D

  9. These are all great tips.

    For a new blog that I launched at http://www.domainleft.com/ I do a lot of research for it before writing an article. And I sometimes come across an interesting one and then decide to re-write it with a different approach. What do you think of that? is that a good idea?

  10. I have recently discovered your site and I really find it useful.
    Great ideas for writing articles.
    Thank you.

  11. Great tips man.

    Anyway, you’re missing the letter R “monitor them though out the day”

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