These review sites convert like crazy and using WordPress and a slick plugin by Dan Grossman make them pretty simple to setup. It’s not like a review site where you give your opinion about 3-5 similar products and create a Buy Now link for each one (which is also a high converting type of site), it’s quite a bit different. The reviews on these sites are actually from customers of the products (or services). The example given on the Review Site Plugin page is a review site for web hosting providers, but it can be for virtually anything. You can go very micro niche on these types of sites. You could have a review site for just Windows Hosting Providers for example or hotels in Windsor, Ontario, Canada as another viable example.

After you have decided on a product or service you need a theme. A one-column theme works best. The plugin includes customized themes with the download. They are customized for easy integration of each element of the review plugin. Additionally, the themes have built-in support for the hReview microformat! If you aren’t sure what that is, I’ll tell you this, it equates to loads more traffic from the search engines!

On the actual post page is where you will put the description of the product. In the comments area is where a past customer of the product leaves their reviews….or a customer that returns after purchasing it through your site, or in the case of the hotel site…booking a hotel room online.

The comments display like they normally would but the the ratings are integrated into the theme files. You decide before hand using the review plugin admin interface as to what you would like the customer to base the ratings on and what the maximum values are. It’s pretty flexible. The software will then calculate and display an average of the ratings. It will also determine by the ratings if it was a positive or negative review and add those up as well.

To get the ball rolling on the reviews, depending on the niche, there should be a forum for the company or service you are promoting. For example, if you have a hosting company reviews site, you might go to the LunarPages and the GoDaddy forums and ask customers to drop by and tell you what they think about their hosting package. You will get mixed reviews naturally. Do not filter out the bad ones. It’s important that the reviews are genuine. It will improve conversions if there are also bad reviews, believe me.

If you decide to set one of these up and run into any snags, leave a comment and I will try to lend a hand. If you like the hotel idea (and it works well) and you want to set one up for your city, I use TravelNow.com as the affiliate in case you are wondering (same company as Hotels.com). Good luck!

Take a look at some of the other features of the plugin here or download it here…. OR…. TRY THIS REVIEW THEME

More info: Create A Review Site Using WordPress