The products blogs I found just by googling for reviews of certain kinds of products are very niche. They put a lot of time into bringing you solid information about the kinds of products or services they review. But there is always the lingering worry that the small review center is actually biased, whether through payment (bribery) by a company to give a good review, or perhaps the blog is actually run by a marketing employee that works for the company! Both are huge violations of business practices and are illegal. But no doubt, on the more popular blogs, the advertising dollars have to come from somewhere.
A friend of mine followed "http://www.beautyreviews.co.uk/" religiously when we lived in London for a semester last year. The blog reviews beauty products found only in the United Kingdom, and we, being Americans, were at a loss as to what to buy when we arrived. Some brands are international, but most were completely foreign to us. Revisiting this blog, I read the "about" section more carefully:
"All our reviews are independent, we have no affiliation with any of the brands listed and we're always delighted when you submit your comments too! ... If you are a UK distributor or shop and would like to have your products reviewed, or are interested in sponsoring or advertising on any of our pages, please contact us at info@beautyreviews.co.uk."
This seems innocent enough. But sponsorship and advertising imply that funds are being transferred to the owners of the blog, at no place is it stated that the blog operates not for profit. I do believe that many small product review blogs operate to be the selfless information sources that the internet has come to thrive on, but like anything, it's sometimes difficult to sift out the biased information from the unbiased.
