How to be a reviewer.

Hey everyone. So I've gotten asked more and more often how to get started doing what I do. I have to admit it is a pretty interesting path to get here. Myself I kind of stumbled upon this whole review thing by accident. Maybe fate who knows. Really one day the two things I've always been really good at just fell together in the most awesome way.
   People will try to tell you that nothing is free when really there is a lot of things that are in fact free. I truely believe that free samples are the most efficient form of marketing there is. Think about it. I want you to buy my product. I can spend billions in advertising trying to create a buzz or a following get you excited and you might pick it up on a whim, or you might not. This product could be absolutely wonderful and you may be a loyal customer for the rest of your life because it is simply that amazing. But only if you take that step and try it. Instead you could give some of your product away and trust that it is awesome pay far less because instead of advertisement its just production costs and you can be sure the customer is trying the product.
    I used to spend a lot of time surfing the web finding free stuff. Its exciting really and there are quite a few sites that put it all together for you. But those are few and far between though I had scored some doozies like 40lbs of free meat delivered to my door for example.  My first job in fact was giving away free samples. I have always loved marketing so when I got a chance at making a 10$ credit to a vape shop I just ordered from to shoot a video provided I liked what I got it just clicked and for awhile I stuck to reviewing vape stuff. Marketing wise this was the smart thing to do. To have a niche. Something you focus on but that just isn't me. I come from a long line of "jacks of all trades" its just in my blood, so I decided to put my finding free stuff skills to work so I could share my opinions with all of you. It makes sense, I live off of reviews anyway I may as well contribute.
   So back in the day I would simply google free ____ whatever I was feeling like at the moment. Search through pages of scams to find the golden egg. The actual freebie. In retrospect I should have started a blog then, but that seemed kind of dorky. This was like 16 years ago, man everyone would be reading me by now. Not to mention the awesome list of real freebies I would have accumulated by now. Some are still around but they aren't the same as they were like teenfreeway.com there used to be all kinds of samples there. And then there are the make money websites like inbox dollars which is real and does pay just be careful to either spend nothing or make it worth it. Like there was one time I signed up for a trial of a discount shopping program it was like 5 bucks they sent me a 100$ visa gift card and hooked me up with another program with a free trial that sent me an 85$ check. I canceled them and made 180$ for really doing nothing. More often than not people forget to cancel and they make a killing. And yeah inbox dollars is tedious but that random 20$ check saved us more times then I can count.
   But why waste so much time when I could be helping others too. So I found two sites that I'm on almost exclusively now. Tomoson.com and influenster.com. they are quite a bit different but have the same core principal. Social media is king. Give people a product and get them to talk about it, reward them for being more visible to the public, make money!
  Now on influenster they are the ones who actually chose both who and what you get. You fill out your profile and earn badges in your areas of interest and do some reviews of stuff you have already tried while having a large reach via all the social media sites and they will send you a package. Then it's like a game. There are many tasks you can perform that earn you points towards badges and chances at various prizes. Then there is a survey at the end and you are done. Tomoson on the other hand you chose what you would like to review and apply. They chose who they would like and send out either their product or a coupon code to you and then you do whatever tasks they say (you can do bonus tasks too if you choose) usually including a review on your blog, sometimes Amazon too, and posts on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. You'll need all of those accounts plus a blog page and either a pay pal account or amazon prime (or both PayPal can be used for returning your shipping fees or paying you) once you get the items you have about a month (unless otherwise specified) to complete your review and any other tasks the company decided on. Sometimes there are preresiquites to applying in the first place which usually includes having a certain amount of friends or followers on specific social media sites (Facebook and Twitter are the big ones) I've been surprised a lot of the time by finding products that I've considered buying before and getting to test them out with my only commitment being an honest review. Yes honest. There is no point to falsifying reviews. You will lose readers and as for the company they may send you more stuff but really what's the point of getting more crap you don't like?
   I usually include a ton of photos with mine and honestly the easy stuff is the hardest to review. Electronics are probably the easiest. You can list the specs and say how it worked or compare it to something similar. Supplements and skin stuff are probably the hardest because of the quick turnover needed, sometimes they don't work that fast. If you don't complete your tasks your ranking goes down too so make sure its something you can do. Now you can also always just review stuff you have tried before. You can do so at your own pace and get a following built up. You can do blog reviews or YouTube reviews or even amazon reviews if you like and companies will start to contact you. You can also directly contact companies if you would like to try their product and may have some luck (though that is by far the farthest route). You pretty much just need a computer and your opinion and the ability to get people to listen to you. Some companies will even pay you for your opinion but that comes later and is a personal choice. If you have any questions you can always comment below or look me up everywhere on the internet. :-)

Liquid Chalkers

I received this product for free to review

Hey everyone, well the idea behind this product is that its a marker you can use on chalkboards and then erase it like chalk. Great idea and it honestly worked beautifully when wrighting on the chalk board. The colors were fresh and crisp. It was easy to get the chalk ink flowing too and I didn't get the creepy feeling I get when using actual chalk so that was a bonus. Then I went to erase it. It wouldn't erase with the chalk board eraser.

It wouldn't erase with a wet towel. I finally got it off of my chalk board with some spray on alcohol. On the plus side this could be used along side of regular chalk for things that would otherwise be rewritten or carefully erased around otherwise. I also tried it on my dry erase boards and honestly they are way better than dry erase markers, they definitely erased more cleanly and didn't stain plus they don't die an early death if you don't cap it tight enough. Apparently they work differently on different boards so perhaps a real slate would work perfectly otherwise you really couldn't use it as your only form of chalk. The colors are wonderful and vivid and it came with 8 red green purple blue white yellow orange and brown. If you have a dry erase board I haven't found anything that works better. If you'd like to pick them up yourself you can do so here.

MeasuPro IRT20 Temperature Gun Non-Contact Infrared Thermometer with Laser Targeting

OK this has some really cool features.

My husband is an HVAC tech so this is actually a product that I am familiar with using. It had the battery included I love that little fact since so many things don't and sometimes they don't actually say so when you buy online so that was a great little extra! Anyway the temperature gun is very easy to use. Its easy to identify hot and cold spots and of course the temperature of any given thing but what I like about this one is you can turn the back light and the laser off and on.

You can also switch between °c and °f so that's cook but my husbands has a laser that moves I suppose to show the spread of the gauge where its hitting whish I suppose has its own benefits but its annoying and you can't turn it off either. This one even the kids can use and I don't have to worry about them blinding each other with the laser light. It is very light in weight so I doubt you'd notice any extra weight in a tool bag or purse even. The packaging was very easy to open so much so I could even put it back in to store it and protect it in between uses. It has the same accuracy as my husbands temperature gun too so I'm guessing its pretty accurate. Heck it was even easy to install the battery! I did receive this for free for testing and reviewing it but the price it is currently listed at is really good I'll say at 20$ I really don't have a single complaint. If you'd like one for yourself you can pick not up here.

DKnight Magic Box Bluetooth Speaker

I received this product for free to review.

OK so this is my first Bluetooth speaker so sorry I have nothing to compare it to.  First off it is super easy to pair with a tablet or a phone. Seriously turn it on, turn on your Bluetooth and its there. Click it and you're connected. I was especially impressed by this as my previous experience with Bluetooth was like an hour long ordeal trying to connect a headset to my ps3. Also you dont even need bluetooth devices just an aux cord plugs right in that way too!

Now I made sure to fully charge the speaker when it came before trying to use it (the red light turns blue) and yes I used a wall charger to do so as I don't actually have a computer. Does take the standard mini usb charger though so thats a plus. The sound quality is really good and depending on the device you connect it to the sound can be pretty loud too but that was something weird about it. I would have thought the speaker would go as high as it would go but idk. The distance it works over is pretty big too I've connected it to my phone and left my phone in the bedroom (open door) and used the speaker in the bathroom while I took a bath and it worked great until my phone decided to go into sleep mode or something equally stupid and the music stopped but that 

Has nothing to do with the speaker. I really use it a lot and I've had it about two weeks and I haven't had to charge it since the first time so that's pretty awesome. 

The kids like picking it up and running around with it while its playing and there is no difference in sound quality. I have not tried to use it for a conference call yet but have tried hooking it up to the ps3 hint the key code is 0000 to make it connect, PlayStation is the only thing that has asked so far and I can hear people on it better than I can with it playing through the TV but it seems like I break up a lot so the sound quality isn't maybe the best when it comes to its microphone. I like how you can skip songs and change the volume from the speaker itself. Its super light and works a lot better in the car than the stupid thing you plug in your phone and use the radio signal with. Its kinda grippy too so it doesn't slide around too much. It could use more volume and bass but the thing is tiny and wireless so I'm not going to fault it there. I have really enjoyed having it. If you want to check it out for yourself you can pick it up here.

Dinosaur T-Rex Room Guard with Motion Sensor

I received this product for free to review.
OK this toy is really cute! There are some things to keep in mind though... I tested this toy out because I have multiple children so I was wondering how much trouble this was going to cause. The batteries screw in which you know is kind of a pain but a huge bonus in the long run since the kids can't take out the batteries themselves. The projection works great, its easy to focus it with the arm of the T-rex and the on and off button is easy to use. Its cool that they store the disks inside the back of him too but the latch is a little hard for me to get open so I'm hoping they will be able to do it themselves. I know this toy is supposed to be mostly just standing there while you use the features of it but kids tend to actually play with toys and well one of mine likes being mean to his brothers so... The claws on the feet are a bit sharp and could stand to be filed a bit. And aside from the focus arm for the projector the jaw is the only other part that really moves. It can bite. Not just fingers inside the mouth either pretty much anything that you put it near. Of course the jaw doesn't move on its own and uncreative mean kids could simply use it as a blunt object but I also worry about potential Dino attack play potentially leaving real bite marks and bruising. The Dino alarm feature is pretty cool too it roars in a few different ways but keep in mind if the feature is turned on it will continuously make partial roaring sounds as long as the toy is in motion which could definitely get annoying fairly quickly. The disks also are a bit difficult to get in and out of the projection slot. I'm kinda going to have to recommend this for older children or those without siblings or as a great gift for someone else's kids. I do think mine are going to have a lot of fun with this and heck I may too (already thinking of setting it up outside the hall to scare the heck out of them if they decide to sneak out of their room at night before giving it to them) the pictures of the dinosaurs are cool but I do wish it said the names on the image so I don't have to look it up every time they ask "what kind is that one" I recommend grabbing some rechargeable batteries to go with this one too. I will be adding some pictures and videos later but as I've just finished checking it out myself... I figured I should go ahead and post this. If you'd like to pick one up for yourself you can grab it here.

BeeSili Super Silicone gloves

I received this product for free to review via tomoson.com

Hey everyone!
Now this one I'm doing for a very awesome company so if you want the businesses you deal with to have a social conscience this is a good one! See they actually do a lot of work for people with PTSD. They evem have a program that helps people deal with it so that's just awesome! The product in question is pretty freaking cool all by itself too. I was going to do a video with it showing how crazy heat resistant they are but I have been dealing with an abscessed tooth and am in a lot of pain so you'll have to take my word for it for now. The first thing I did with it was used it in place of a spatula when browning beef just cause I could. I also used them to drain spaghetti in the pot. My only issue with them is I couldn't take a pot lid off with them on so unfortunately I can't toss my old potholders in favor of these but hey I can grab a baked potato out of the oven and that's good enough for me! Theres really much more positive to say but my head feels like its going to explode so If you'd like to try one yourself you can pick it up here. (Pictures when the face swelling goes down)

Farfaria

I received this product for free to review.

Hey everyone! Its giveaway time!! And this one is a good one too!! If you have little ones you know there's never an end to the bedtime storytelling. We love it too of course but sometimes your throat gets sore. This reading app is so cool! There are tons of stories at many different reading

levels and there are options to either read it yourself on your own, have it read the stories aloud to you while you turn the pages or to read the entire book automatically. They are beautifully illustrated too and the kids can save their favorites to read over and over again. Now this is a subscription service but you have the option to pay monthly or yearly or even get a lifetime membership or just use it for free (though you only get one story a day that way) they have the app available for both android and apple. The kids really love it! They read or listen to the stories all the time. I love how its all clean stories and nothing is too scary. Plus the fact that they can read any story in it regardless of the level since the app will read it to them. I like getting to cuddle with them and enjoy the story too. They honestly listen better when the tablet is reading than when I am. I think its because it doesn't wait for them :-)  So this company is awesomely offering one of my readers a free 3 month subscription!! Just use the handy widget below and share this out so more people get the chance. In the meantime you can always check out the app for free here! Good luck!