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Comment by intro-b | Hacker News Reader

I think there's still a niche for a Wirecutter-like site. But I don't know what it should look like, and how it should function without invasive affiliate advertising. I like reading high quality reviews of practical goods as well as more specialized things. Right now, I just Google search "name of product" + "reddit" and browse through threads to get a general consensus of a product.

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I think you can have affiliate links, you just run the risk of ruining your credibility. I also think it might be difficult if that's your only source of income.

I wonder if anyone has tried giving their top picks away for free, but charging for the review and methodology? I feel like I'd be suckered in. When I'm shopping I hop around and look at a bunch of reviews. I'll then try and find YouTube reviews to see the product in context. Especially, if it's a site that comes up over and over I'd pay to see pros/cons and comparisons. No idea if that would scale to a business, though.

Consumer reports does that. For example https://www.consumerreports.org/vacuum-cleaners/best-vacuums... has top picks, but https://www.consumerreports.org/products/vacuum-cleaners-289... doesn't show the ratings scorecard unless you're a member.

Consumer reports is like this but is subscriber funded vs affiliate or avert model

Q: Would you trust, or find useful, thumbs up reviews from people you follow online? Say you could see a collection of stuff people endorse via Twitter/IG, would that be of value to you?

Kind of. The only issue is that I only use Twitter/IG for personal friends and not "influencer" level people.

I think some of kind of organized curation would be nice. For instance, I follow https://fivebooks.com/ a lot, which asks subject matter experts on their recommendation. Something like that for nice consumer goods would be cool.

But wouldn't it be prone to the same co-opting by anyone holding the bigger bag of money like the endorsing that already exists, just adding to the noise of the influencerdom?

"Friends" and average nobodies already turn scummy as soon as RandomCorp throws in some kind of stupid referral incentive. Celebrities and has-beens can't be trusted when addressing consumer goods. Leveraging social media to bridge the gap between them is what brought us influencers.

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