- 1 -

Send. Another review submitted and another free piece of semi useful gadgetry bought and paid for with very positive, but not too sickly praise.

It used to feel like such a pleasantly banal way to make a few extra dollars. Making money from a hobby, or more accurately a fetish or obsession, is a dream that rarely comes true.

I wonder if everyone else who manages to make it a reality finds it as underwhelming after a while.

The reality hit after only a couple of years with the realisation that the reviews don't have to be believable, nor overly flattering. Each product has a positive characteristic, and the review should reflect that the reviewer was pleasantly surprised, or when appropriate, proven wrong, by this unique characteristic. Simplistic products possess "ease of use". Cheap or poor quality products are "affordable" or "aimed at the budget conscious", and so on.

Some products are genuinely brilliant, however the real problem with reviewing genuinely brilliant kit is overdoing it. If you bang on about a product too much, you're less likely to get a shot at a competitor's equivalent product for fear of unfavorable comparisons.