I have fully shifted away from doing my own research on what to buy to going to recommendation sites. I've always thought I had an astute ability to detect fake reviews (and I was probably right for the first wave of low effort paid reviews). What made me change was the following: 1) Companies and consumers cooperating in huge, fake review rings, 2) product search at places like Amazon becoming totally undifferentiatable, and 3) the lack of trust in tools to combat them (fakespot, etc).

I now just go to a recommendation site that earns income through affiliate kickbacks. I use Wirecutter [0], Rtings [1], plus a handful of smaller forum / community sites for categories those don't cover.

I actually think this is an enormous opportunity for several huge categories:

1) Tool reviews: especially with the rate of battery innovation, there is a huge opportunity to have thorough reviews and category recommendations of both consumer and professional tools.

2) Camera / DSLR / video - There's no lack of thorough reviews in this category, but making sense of it is near impossible unless you're a professional.

3) IoT gear - This isn't hugely important to me, but similar to cameras and tools there are a variety of systems that lock users in, and getting recommendations based on which system a user already has would be relatively simple.

I have found these categories to be lacking not only in trustable reviews, but mostly in updated recommendations. Even if reviews exist, it is up to the effort of the user to read them all and build up a knowledge base of similar options to select from. Each of these categories have a high enough volume and purchase price that affiliate fees could easily support a recommendation business.

[0] - https://thewirecutter.com

[1] - https://www.rtings.com