[Insomnia]

Hi,

Seeing as many of the people on these forums have a reasonable amount of experience in both computers and the internet, I decided it would be the best place to ask a question...

Q. Is it viable for my friend and I to start up and subsequently run a computer and hardware review website?

After finding ourselves with a reasonable amount of time and money on our hands my friend Kenny and I began thinking that maybe we could start up a computer review website.

I will elaborate further if need be, but please leave your advice!

Thanks!

[katana]

sounds like a good idea, there arn't many australian hardware review sites that i know of

[Insomnia]

Yeah, thats what I was thinking

[alex]

Have you arranged to have etailers and/or manufacturers who will supply you with test components? You'll need that base of support.

Sounds like a damn fine idea. Kudos for having a go.

[Insomnia]

This is one of the reasons I posted...

I have no idea how review websites get their products. Do they get them from retailers, or directly from the company?

[dr john]

You could come to an arrangement with a local supplier or two, and give them free advertising in return for a short loan of equipment. (The stuff that becomes their display item for example.)

I used to write for computer mags, and a few manufacturers sent me things to review, once I had a track record of publications of course. Then some of the magazines had manufacturers ship things to me. Some companies have a review sample that does the rounds of magazines, who then ship it to their reviewer - I had one printer where I noticed about ten shipping labels on top of each other, for example. At one time I had six printers in the house and hadn't used my own for over a year.

Once you've done a few reviews via a local supplier (or your own latest purchases) to show manufacturers, you'll need some web stats they can look at online to see that you do get visitors.