Build a Review Website with WordPress!
Tools Needed for a WordPress Review Website
- Domain Name from GoDaddy $8
- Hosting from HostGator $9/mo (unlimited websites)
- ReviewAzon WordPress Plugin to Automatically Import Products and Reviews from Amazon
- WordPress Installed
- WP-Review Plugin $199 (Unlimited website license)
- phpBay Pro Plugin $79 (If you also want to show eBay listings)
- phpzon Amazon Plugin $30 (Only Available if you have phpBay)
- 2-4 Hours for initial setup /a couple hours every week to build your review website database.
Total Time to Setup the Review Website
Setting of the review site with wordpress itself was pretty much boiler-plate. I pointed my existing domain to my Hostgator account, installed wordpress through fantastico, optimized my WordPress install with plugins and then added the required plugins mentioned above for the site to function to my needs. The theme for this site is the same as the DIY Reviews theme, with a few small modifications for colors and the logo. In addition, I eliminated the homepage layout I have used elsewhere and will rebuild a new homepage to display the last5 reviews in each category, when they are completed.
Between Kim and myself, we have a total of about 16 hours into this site so far.
Review Sites are Self-Maintaining!
The biggest benefit about building a review type site is that your site is in a constant state of change, as users stop in and write their own reviews of the products. If you commit to adding one new item EVERY DAY, your review site will continue to grow and attract more visitors based on the ever changing text.
Where do You Get Your Content?
Like any e-commerce site, you get your content direct from the manufacturers, then you rewrite it to make it your own. This is the most time consuming part of the process, but if you set yourself a goal of 1-2 products every day, it will fill up very quickly. I run almost all my pages through CopyScape after rewriting the posts to be sure they are not duplicate posts. As I write this, only 10-20% of the posts have been re-written and the rest are marked for completion throughout the week.
After you have the basic product reviews in place, you truly want to go into them and write your own reviews as part of this process as well. What good is a review website, if you are not writing reviews?! As mentioned above, the rest of the content will come from site visitors! As a matter of fact, feel free to go over and rate some of the items yourself now!
The Plugins Used on the Site
WP Review Plugin for WordPress
WP-Review is a stand alone $97 (single site) or $199 (Unlimited sites) plugin that adds all the needed coding for your visitors to rate your items. It compiles the ratings, organizes your post by the highest ratings, and comes with a a few widgets to allow you to showcase your latest reviews and highest rated items in the sidebar. The plugin comes with a few standard templates to get your site up and running immediately, however it adapts to ANY template easily by adding the code calls to your existing template.
phpBay WordPress Plugin
If you have been around the ePN for any given time, you already know the power of the phpBay plugin! At $79 for unlimited sites, this is by far the best eBay affiliate wordpress plugin for design flexibility, allowing you to show a limited number of items on each of your unique posts. On my theme, I actually hardcoded the [phpbay] tags into my theme, and on each new post, I simply add a single custom field to my posts titled “ebaykeys” which automatically inserts to the code and pulls the related auctions.
As you can see on the site, I have pulled 4 auctions to every post!
phpZon WordPress Plugin
The latest plugin from the folks that brought us phpbay, is named phpzon! Like phpbay for ebay affiliates, this plugin pulls in related Amazon products to your pages! The plugin is $30 for unlimited sites and is only available right now in beta form to existing phpbay owners. After testing it for a few hours this morning, it is POWERFUL and works inline with phpbay perfectly! I have disabled it on my site for right now as I continue to get the site exactly as I want it. When done, it will show a comparison engine of 4 eBay products and 4 Amazon products directly under it.
The Bottom Line on Building a WordPress Review Site
First and foremost… its not a cheap thing to get into in the beginning and the initial cost of $308 total, to develop unlimited websites can seem steep! Fortunately, many of us already have the phpBay plugin and that portion will be eliminated. The main reason I decided to take this method on this site is because Google and ebay have both told us they want us to build review sites, in order to make our content unique and engage our traffic.Ultimately, I will list this new website for sale… and see if there are any buyers in the ebay marketplace, interested in a fully developed Hybrid Golf Network site, with a top shelf domain name!
Promotion of this new site is no different than any other website and I will start at ground level with the marketing and development this weekend. I still have a few other projects I am finishing for others, and anticipate completion within the next day or two.
What Others are Saying about WordPress Review Websites
- From Ian Fernando: Creating Niche Review Sites with WordPress
- From ShoeMoney: Creating Great Quality Score with Review Sites
Do you think Building a Review Website is right for you?
Previously Published Articles You May Like to Read:
- Build a Niche Store WordPress Plugin Review – WPBans
- 3 Full Weeks into my New WordPress Website!
- Pages Versus Posts for WordPress Review Sites
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I have been doing my part to "Build the Internet" since 1994, when I built my first website! Since then, I have built hundreds of niche websites for myself and many others, focused on design, applications, ecommerce, search optimization and internet marketing.
Actualy I did nearly the same the last week. Although I combined it also with a BANS/Wordpress Integration. Currently I’m waiting for my first reviews. Should go live in a few days.
That’s really good, I build something similar over at http://www.odditycinema.com/ a couple months back with my partner. Review sites are great but you have to be passionate about them.
@ Markus –
I had considered adding BANS to the backend of this… but I would have still needed to develop the way of getting the comparison engine I was after. With the phpbay and amazon plugins installed… it does what I was after.
I also have several popshops created and ready to add… just waiting to see if I want it or not, without overloading the single pages and taking away from the reviews angle.
Mark great looking site.
Did you happen to look at the other (cheaper) WordPress review plugins? I like the looks and function of this one but $199 is a lot to drop on a plugin.
Keep up the good work.
Bryan
Hey nice work on the site, I use all those exact same tools/plugins with all my new and existing projects, I just wish i knew how to adjust code like you do, that would be a great tutorial (hint, hint). One thing about BANS on the backend, i was also thinking about setting up a few sites with more of a store feel but only for sites that are a vague or large niche and that would require a bigger selection of items, best to stay niche specific, for now PHPBay works great!
FYI
You can get a $20 discount from the wickedfire forums on the review site plugin if you are a forum member and if you do only buy the single site license you can always upgrade and get the difference back, how nice is that! I also saw a large investment with the tools/plugins but you have to spend money to make money!
Dan
@ Markus – I dont see your site in your link… I would have reviewed for you! :-)
@ Bryan -
I do have one other review plugin but I had a heck of a time ever getting it to work for me. After spending 2 hours trying to get a different doing what I needed… I just installed the WP review plugin and I was on my way.
There are two-three flavors of this plug. $97 for a single site, $199 for unlimited. Both are the same, just different licensing.
Incidentally, I have owned WP-review for more than 6 months and this is the first time you have all seen a site with it from me. :-) (That’s not because I didn’t use it either!)
@ Dan – I reviewed one of your items!
I am always glad to help with coding questions… knowing where to start is another story! There are so many ways to go with WP and it is a highly flexible CMS.
Mark
Let us all know when the sale is on :-)
Mark-
Another good idea. Please keep them coming!
Mark,
The site looks great. And, of course, leads to a few questions:
– How did you get the eBay items lined up next to each other? I’ve also got phpBay Pro and don’t remember an option for that alignment.
– Where did you get the images for each driver that shows up in the upper left corner of eash post?
– About how much are you making from your review sites (the ones you haven’t shared with us that have been up for a while)?
Rochelle
@ Steve – I will post the auction once its up. I will likely start it out at $10k… and just leave it in 30 listing until it either sells or the right offer comes along. I also have a habit of increasing the proce by $500 every month it does not sell.
@Terry – Review sites are insane popular, as long as you write your own descriptions or re-word the ones you use from the manufacturers.
@ Rochelle – Thank you!
You know me… I like to play with the code a bit. In this case, I edited the default phpbay template and added divs. Once in place, I styled them in the site stylesheet.
The images came from the manufacturers and other affiliate programs (Popshops has ALL these images available as well) through CJ and several other affiliate programs.
Earnings from review sites are very much up and down the scale. The DIYReviews site launched 15 days ago, has already earned more than my first qurter goal of $30 (I know, its low…) A 2 year old site earns $700-$750 per month, with nothing more than baseline reviews and a BANS backend. I am going to remove BANS from one of my review sites and try the type of site above instead.
My research into this golf site tells me it should easily earn +$1k per month, within 6-8 months. Until then, I am going to start driving PPC at it over this coming weekend and see what kind of success I have in that area.
Mark
Thanks for the absolutely great post. I love the look, but since I can’t drop 10k to buy it, I guess I need to build one. Couple of questions about the post.
1) How easy is the Review Plugin to use and modify. You have helped me a lot before so you know that I am not a code wizard.
2) Second and more general in nature. You indicated that you were going to “I eliminated the homepage layout I have used elsewhere and will rebuild a new homepage to display the last5 reviews in each category, when they are completed.” This is kinda like what you have done on the nichestorebuilder site where you have excerpts on home page.
Is there a setting in WP that allows you to just show excerpts on the home page or adjust the number of posts that will display on the home page?
@ Brent –
I truly dont want to sell the site right away, I would rather prove it and earn from it for awhile forst. The high price is in case someone wants it more than I do!
I have considered putting up several other site sites in different markets and selling them cheaper for the cash.. but I want to be sure the method of building is worth it to the buyers first.
1) The plugin itself is VERY easy to modify, but coming from a developer, that doesn’t say much. The instructions and forum he has are very good, and i was actually able to add it my own theme in less than 10 minutes, with 3 chunks of code he supplied in the instructions. Everything after that was just styling to my own tastes.
2) WordPress will ALWAYS look for a file named home.php inside your theme folder. If it finds it, it will use that as your default homepage. If it does not exist, it uses index.php (inside the theme folder) to layout the main page.
Its hard for me to explain in this comment form, but in the end, I will have a two-column homepage, that shows all the different review categories, with the 5 latest reviews in the specific category, showing beneath heading. I actually hope to have the page done soon… so i will post it up when done.
on this site, I just use index.php and use the button with each post. This site (nichestorebuilder) is in the midst of a redesign I have been working on for 2 months… someday, I will finish it.
Mark
Hi Mark
Great post and pretty much reflects what I’m up to myself. Amazing how things have changed in 6 months.
PHPzon might only be in beta but it is one very nice plugin. Can’t wait for the first release.
With regards to PHPbay I discovered a geo-ip plugin yesterday. This is unbelievable as it displays auction listings based on ip address which effectively gives your site access to every English speaking market for eBay sales.
Hopefully this will translate to a doubling or trebling of earnings potential.
@ Mike – Yes, I have the Geo plugin but have not used it yet. I have several local sites and may use a combination of the review plugin with the geo targeted phpbay plugin, to deliver a “Local” reviews site.
Mark
Great post!
WP is the future for aff sites.
BANS is good – but not that good compared to the power of wordpress.
I think your example can be done for free without so many expensive plugins though.
@ Taoski –
WP is strong for sure!! Building a review site can be done by hand as well… it just takes more time and a bit more knowledge of html, etc.
For myself, time always relates to money at some point, so investing 40 hours building the framework for a site versus spending a couple hundred dollars once, and 2-4 hours setup time per site, makes a difference in the longrun.
I look at plugins as nothing more than tools… After using them a few times, they have paid for themselves in time savings alone.
For sure… there is always more than one way to achieve the same results.
Mark
How did you get the thumbnails to show up on the font page? The default install doesn’t pull in images to the list of posts on the first page.
I’ve been working on building a review site in Joomla, but scrapped it when I saw this post. This little plugin is perfect for what I was looking for.
@ Dan –
I just positioned the images at the top left of the posts, installed the lightbox plugin, and sized them to 60%
Most default installs will show your thumbs or even full size images… if you are using the < ... the_content ...> code from WP.
On the diyreviews.net site, I did it differently, by hardcoding the main page and using the wordpress custom fields boxes instead.
Mark
Hi Dan,
How exactly do you get $20 discount from wickedfire forums on the review site plugin if you are a forum member?
And Mark,
How to buy phpzon from phpBay?
They don’t seem like selling it anywhere on their site!
I already have phpBay with me.
@ GB –
To get the phpzon, sign into your phpbay account at: http://www.phpbay.com/store/member.php. It will be listed on the right side of the screen as a $30 plugin addon.
Mark
Amazing Mark,
I just don’t see any $30 plugin addon written anywhere on screen!
I am brand new to this but I already own the domain name I want to use`with wordpress.com (the hosted one) How do I move that name to an offsite host like you mention here?
thanks
@ GB:
The $20 discount link from the WickedFire forums is here:
https://www.wpreviewsite.com/buy?code=wf2008
@ Dan,
Totally off topic – I used to work with a Dan Grossman at BMW. Are you, by chance, a former BMW employee?
Rochelle
I am thinking of creating a couple of sites along this line. Is this wordpress theme available as well?
Mark
Good post, I have the plugin myself, I converted one of the default templates to BANS in a mind of integrating the two together but as yet I have not forced myself to sit down and build the site :)
Ben
@ Scott -
I have not made this theme available… alot of hand coding involved in it to get the main pages working the way I wanted.
@ Ben -
Its a winner man!! I think I have regged 4-5 more domains in the last week alone, just to work with this plugin and model.
M
Mark,
Great site and thanks for sharing your knowledge.
New to niche store building I am leaning towards PHPbay and WordPress.
I have seen your BANS/Wordpress templates but havent found any for PHPbay/Wordpress.
Are there any basic templates or themes out there you can reccomend for a beginner?
Thanks!
@ Sean -
One of the major benefits of phpBay, is that it works with ANY wordpress theme.
Welcome to the site as well!!
Mark
Mark,
The part that confuses me about this is that if you don’t have folks submitting reviews (and I see very few on the golf site), then how is this site different from any other? I’m not really sure how the review plugin has anything to do with your success on this site. It looks to me like you’re building a very nice, well-optimized, product description site in a good niche. Reviews are really playing a part. Am I missing something?
@ Beth –
Being new, and in the “Off season” for golf, it may take several months for the site to gain traction in the community.
The reviews will gradually build up over months of visitors, versus all at once. There are a few that I put in myself, but there have also been 3-4 user submitted reviews.
Once the reviews are a steady part of the commenting stream, I can flip a switch in the plugin admin and sort all posts/clubs by their popularity as well.
I will be posting later today about doing this same kind of site with BANS as well – I owe it to BANS to continue working at making it work out, regardless of the lack of G love!
Mark
Hello Mark,
I had written to you before too.
I want to know if I am making my this new review site of mine on the right lines?
Whats the best blog for windows based servers, that is not PHP?
What an excellent write up, idea and implementation of plugins. Good work and good luck with your project.
@ John –
Thanks – the site is actually much better than I anticipated as well.
I just checked out your site as well – great info!
Mark
Do you sell any templates for a project like this? Or any themes you can reccomend from anywhere?
Thanks
Phew! I did it! Your recommendations and tutorials are WONDERFUL!
In one evening I changed my (basic, blah) BANS site over to a WP +PHPbay +WPReview Site :)
I moved the old BANS “store” over to a sub-directory that people can still get to from the main WP site – not sure if I want to keep it like that or not.
Now about the redirects…..the plugin you mentioned doesn’t seem to be working with the WP 2.7 – can you recommend any other good ones?
I wish you continued success!
Correction – the redirection plugin works just fine.
User error :)
Mark,
Just following up on a comment earlier in this thread. You talked about driving PPC at your review site. Any results you’d like to share with the group.
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