Tech Reviews are Part of the Marketing Machine
Reviews used to be the main tool for curious tech/game/entertainment consumers to decide if they were going to buy something. Magazines thrived on them, hoping to secure exclusive coverage of the latest upcoming game or tech product to put on their cover in order to boost readership, and the bigger writers in the industry could bring in true mainstream-level audiences.
The democratization of publishing access through the internet changed everything, and fragmented the market for reviews into a million tiny pieces. If you want detailed information on a new game or peripheral, you have dozens of quality choices now. From official overviews made by the company themselves, to YouTube, to Instagram influencers, and even Amazon product reviews.
It’s never been easier to find hundreds of opinions on and pages of information about new things. But that plethora of information has also made some consumers more skeptical. “Aha,” they’ll say, “but you only like this product because you were paid to review it positively!” They then walk away from their keyboard satisfied that they’ve revealed some grand conspiracy…when the mechanism was always laid bare for anyone willing to look.
I’ve been reviewing tech products and games in some sort of professional capacity since 2002. I started out working for a small local computer magazine published in the state of Oregon, writing three game reviews a month. I’ve since done everything from national online internet coverage to a tech-themed radio show. For the last five years I’ve been a truly independent reviewer without any direct corporate support outside occasional review units, as a pseudo job hobby alongside my day job in audio production . In all of that time, I’ve never personally known of anyone being paid money directly for a positive review.
However…
The reviews mechanism and the consumer product marketing machine are linked together, and they always have been. Even in the golden days of gaming magazines with the classic “separation of church and state,” where marketing and editorial were two unique departments…tech reviews are an enthusiast media product that ultimately exists to support a consumer industry. Reviews can be an art in and of themselves that helps push game or product design forward…but even the most lofty of written or video criticism is still ultimately helping someone decide whether they want to buy a fun toy for entertainment.
The current state of things has muddled this relationship in many new and exciting ways. Influencers often are directly sponsored to do ads for products, but in a casual capacity that makes them look like normal users of the product. Reviewers increasingly rely on getting early access to products in order to get the clicks/views necessary to survive as ongoing businesses, since a late review always runs the risk of being less relevant to the day-one purchasers that still drive as much as half of lifetime sales. As the corporate infrastructure that used to support creators gives way to more independent voices and small businesses, many creators have also had to turn to affiliate links for revenue support. While I personally think that last relationship is a little too over the line for me…I think that it can theoretically be done in an honest and ethical way.
A lot of popular online tech video content relies on obscuring these relationships to make the opinions presented seem more “honest,” while then hiding the reality of things in small descriptive text that’s mandated by the FTC or an a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it disclosure preceding tons of flashy video that might make you forget. But all tech content supports the machine, whether it’s positive or negative in tone. Review videos, game streams, and even my headphone articles are all ultimately a type of marketing material that just happens to not be produced directly by the company making the product. I’m taking the time to share my opinions that are informed by years both reviewing stuff and working in the audio production industry, yes, but the ultimate end goal is still to help people decide whether to buy something.
It might surprise you to learn that I consume just as much review content as I produce, and some weeks I spend more time reading and watching criticism than I do writing it. I find it genuinely entertaining, and I’m also curious about what others are doing in the space. If I’m reviewing a product, I don’t seek out other reviews until after I’m done, although on some rare occasions where I’ve noticed something weird I have checked in with others or sought out corroboration.
Animated GIFs in this article created by the author from a trip to a local wetland.
The line between marketing and review material has never been more blurry than it is today, but a few folks out there are truly and consistently honest about where that line is and I think they deserve attention. In particular: The Techne, ACG, and Gamers Nexus on YouTube. These channels are completely transparent about the complex relationships I talk about above, and balance modern production value with an off-the-cuff style and frequent surprising earnestness in a content world increasingly obsessed with beautiful images and custom gamer setup videos.
When I started out writing online headphone articles in my “modern era” five years ago, I was doing it for fun and as a way to flex my review muscles in a more enthusiast context. As soon as I started monetizing things through the Medium paywall, I crafted a set of rules that would allow me to feel ethically good about what I was doing, but still participate. I didn’t ever monetize a review based on a free review sample. I always disclosed everything I could about the relationship. And I never took money directly from a company, relying solely on reader donations and the Medium paywall, (along with significant funding from my own other job), to fund this.
As a learning and exploration opportunity, it has been great. I established some good relationships with companies based on the quality of my writing and the passion of my small dedicated audience of 4200+ Medium followers and my hundreds of thousands of quarterly Google hits. HyperX in particular has been great to work with, encouraging a level of honestly and transparency that’s really impressive.
Unfortunately, as a pure business, tech writing hasn’t been remotely good to me, and I find myself now back at the beginning in terms of revenue. Things peaked around December of 2019, and for a couple of months the Medium paywall provided a viable profit before tanking as the pandemic rolled on. My readership didn’t actually decrease during that time, as folks were looking for headsets to work from home, but my revenue plummeted by over 90 percent starting in May 2020. It went back to the 2017 level of “Alex doesn’t come close to breaking even but keeps going anyway.” Then, poor leadership at Medium made me pull all my articles out of the paywall…and here we are.
I’m back at square one. I understand that all online content creation is essentially gambling, and most content creators don’t end up making a living. I’ve lived that experience for five years. There’s so much content out there that even the good stuff has a hard time rising to the top. I’ve had numerous companies mistake my content for that of a fully corporate-backed, full time employee. AKG even credited my writing simply as that of “Medium” in their marketing for the K371BT in spite of the fact that Medium is just a publishing platform anyone can join that recently lost much of their paid editorial team. I was never on that team, and I was never on Medium’s payroll. I’ve been funding this out of pocket for years and I’ve made a loss ten months out of twelve. So it was pretty surreal and demoralizing after everything that’s happened to see AKG marketing a product based on my review without a link to it and with “Medium” as the writer.
The cynical side of me says “You’ve been writing good marketing material for all of these big companies at a loss for years out of your own pocket with nothing to show for it…” and that’s absolutely true. It makes me sometimes just want to delete all the work and step away from the internet for a while. The calmer side of my personality has usually prevailed, but I’m honestly getting pretty tired of being a part of this machine for no real upside. I got started doing it because it was fun and it was a way to express things about my hobbies, and I still do tremendously enjoy games, tech, and audio. But I can’t help but feel weird about continuing to feed these industries while they benefit dramatically more than I do. They get a big PR and financial upside that handily erases any fun I might have had writing my articles. My content looks just like the content paid writing staff create at the few tech publications that still remain, but often makes no money.
I’m not quitting. I’m just trying to be as honest as the YouTube channels I mentioned above, and tell you where my head is at. If you take one thing from this weird blog thing, please remember: All reviews are marketing, and even if you enjoy them as entertainment like I do, they still exist to support a big consumer industry.
I’ve had donate buttons available outside the Medium paywall here on my site, and to the few that believed enough in my work to support it, a huge thank you. I had hoped that more folks would support truly independent tech journalism, but I never got into this to make money. It only got depressing once I saw Medium erode away my monetization during a period of increased readership and world strife, and as I’ve seen the increased benefit large companies get from my content while I get nothing. That’s not very fun.
I’m not saying you should give up your tech-themed hobbies or never trust a reviewer or influencer again…just be aware of all of this. This is all set up to support consumer industries where you buy stuff, and a lot of the people like myself propping it up who genuinely enjoy these things aren’t seeing a benefit from it. I’m grateful that the internet has allowed anyone to get in on this madness and helped break up the monolith of a few publishers being the only ones with access.
But the system has also made sure that only a few folks make money. And everyone else is left to write blog posts like this one on a site that costs them $25 dollars a month while pondering where to go from here. If my voice drops out of this pile, ten more will take its place.
I’ve got a review of the delightfully horrific Koss Pro 4AA headphones coming out later this week, and I’m going to try and write some more of the long form gaming pieces I used to enjoy but that no one ever clicked on. I need to start having fun with this again, and thanks if you decide to stick with me. Go support other small creators like me too, even if it’s just by looking at their stuff. It means more to them than you can ever realize until you’ve been engaged in this side of the chaotic machine.
