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Make Money off Reviewing Novels?

by GregtheWriter
13 replies
Has anyone ever had experience or know of anyone who has been able to make money off writing story reviews on novels, movies and video games?

I am a writer and I love storytelling and the art of a well-woven story. Whenever I get done reading a novel I really love or seeing a movie I really love, I find myself asking questions and I'll look it up and read more about it.

Anyone else have this experience?

I was thinking of throwing a website up based around this concept, and monetizing it via affiliate programs like Netflix, Amazon and a few others.
#make #money #novels #reviewing
  • Profile picture of the author xfairguy
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    • Profile picture of the author GregtheWriter
      That's a great concept, but it's similar with Infobarrel where you can do that.

      I am talking about owning my own website, probably a blog, and doing video reviews of various stories in their various mediums I stumble across.

      I'm going do it regardless if it makes money, but I was just curious if anyone ever had any success with websites about movies or books (I know some have with video games)
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      • Profile picture of the author sethdrebitko
        I'd narrow the focus down more to specifically what types of books, then look at who exactly reads those books. Once you have your customer profile you should know other forms of media/product that your audience would be interested in.

        By making it personal and building a community around your opinion (through the help of a mailing list probably) you could even start to cultivate your audience for the books you are writing.
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      • Profile picture of the author talfighel
        Originally Posted by GregtheWriter View Post


        I am talking about owning my own website, probably a blog, and doing video reviews of various stories in their various mediums I stumble across.
        So register your own domain name.

        Then start video taping yourself on camera and then when your videos are ready, upload them to YouTube. Then embed all your videos into your website.
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      • Profile picture of the author Lloyd Buchinski
        Originally Posted by GregtheWriter View Post

        I'm going do it regardless if it makes money
        You don't hear much of that kind of talk around here

        I have a site based on that kind of attitude. It's still one of the most pleasant to write for, and it's finally earning enough to pay for its domain registration and its share of the hosting. It took about 3 years to get even that far.

        I'd say go for it since it's tied to a significant interest. Something positive could come out of it.

        best wishes, enjoy it
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  • Profile picture of the author GregtheWriter
    In terms of stories, most of them would be of the dark variety (whether the genre be fantasy, scifi, horror or whatever it is, always with a dark or tragic bent to it). As that's my favorite type of stories to read/watch/play video games about lol.

    I think it could be successful, I've followed a youtube person who all he does is create videos of reviews about movies he's watched and he seems relatively successful.

    I'm not overly worried about exposure, I'm pretty good at SEO and many of the keywords get multiple thousands of search and from a cursory glance do not look overly competitive.
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  • Profile picture of the author johndetlefs
    It's funny, I had this exact same idea a couple of years ago, and ended up benching it. Amazon kinda has the book review thing down now, and you'll be competing with the reviews on their site, and they have a lot more of 'em!

    I thought that it might work for professional type books, but they weren't the books I wanted to review.. I wanted to review David Gemmell / Raymond E Feist type books.

    At the very least you'll have a lot of fun re-reading all of your favorite books!
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  • Profile picture of the author GuruGazette
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  • Profile picture of the author pogospring
    Have you thought about reviewing a higher ticket item? Since books are generally under $30 your commission rates are going to be pretty low when you do sell one.
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  • Profile picture of the author gabibeowulf
    I'm pretty sure you can do it... but you need couple of things in place.

    1) Build your following

    It would be easier if you make niche sites. Like fantasy books.. or cooking books.. or whatever else you're passionate about. Buy ads, bring more leads, keep them entertained and pitch them new reviews. I've seen this model in action... Works quite well.

    2) Build an authority site like Goodreads

    You need to invest a lot more to get it started, but in the long run, I'm sure it will pay off.

    *** As a side note, my gf runs a 1) type of site and makes some money on the side. She's not doing it full time, but if she were she would make a full time income.

    -Gabriel
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  • Profile picture of the author LilBlackDress
    Just to note, the New York Times and other authority sites have MILLIONS of links to their book and movie review sections. And while you are trying to get noticed they are building even more links. In order to compete in the rankings if you are looking for organic traffic, you would have to really drill down to find specific keywords and it is not easy.

    So you would pretty much have to get yourself out there with social media and build a following. And then you would be reviewing books and movies that earn pennies in commissions. If you LOVE it, it may still be worth looking at.

    Just things to think about.
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  • Profile picture of the author GregtheWriter
    A lot of the books I read are a bit older and don't have as much hype about them. Some of my stuff would though.

    I imagine the biggest initial boost for my traffic to come from social media channels, but also for bigger book series (take a fantasy epic for instance), I can break it down into posts that are character information, world information, cool stuff about that world and so on to tap into the lesser competitive keywords.

    So I'm not too worried about it. The project is definitely more of a passion project than a make money project.

    With that said though, I think I'd try to pitch more like Netflix deals, I hear their affiliate program pays like 10 bucks per a free signup which isn't bad. I know there's a few other deals on there too that pay pretty well.

    We shall see though...
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