I’m pretty much a newbie when it comes to this, but I do have some fabulous information, resources and links to pass along. These are things that helped get me started and have continued to bring in new and exciting opportunities.

First, when I started reviewing products, I did it because I wanted to. These were products that I used in my everyday life. Products that made my life easier, that worked exceptionally well, were a great value, or things that I just plain loved. I wanted to share my experience with these products. In the beginning I didn’t receive any products to try.

Then slowly, requests came tinkling in. First it was from Gerber Smart Sips. Then Baby Banz and Leg Huggers mentioned on Twitter that they were looking for blogs to review their products. Any chance that I saw, I jumped on. Sometimes it worked out, other times it didn’t. But the best part was that I was discovering fun new products that I hadn’t tried or hadn’t heard about before.

Getting Started

Back in November I stumbled on Elementary Spirits, and Barb has shared an invaluable wealth of information. In fact, I can safely say that I owe most of my PR success to her. In 2010, she started a PR Monday series, which dives into everything that you ever wanted to know about PR for a blogger. Including BlogFrog, Lijit and Understanding Blog Stats. It’s a lot to take in, but there is so much wonderful information.

PR Peeps That I Recommend has been by far the best resource that I’ve come across. Barb was generous enough to list some PR contacts that she works with, so that other bloggers could contact them! And contact them I did. I received responses back from almost everyone on the list, and even if they didn’t have any product reviews at the time, they added me to their mommy blogger list. Which paid off big time, since I had the opportunity to interview Jeff Corwin.

Also Finding PR Contacts has bee a great help. Just a quick Google search for the nae of the company and press release almost always turns up some contact information. And if all else fails, you can try contacting the company directly (although you will have better results with this if the company is on the small side).

Partnering

Signing up with companies that help pair mommy bloggers with products has been very successful for me too. I’ve received a number of contacts because I’m listed over at MomDot.com under PR Friendly Bloggers. But as I’m writing this post, and browsing through MomDot.com, I’ve realized that I have missed out on some of the best areas of the site. They have tons of great resources, including a form you can fill out so they can share your blog with PR reps. In fact, just go here, to see all of the posts related to Blog Resources.

I’ve also had some luck with MyBlogSpark.com. And again Barb has a few other suggestions over Product Reviews: How to Get Started.

Being an Ethical Blogger

And of course, don’t forget that if you are reviewing a product, you have to disclose if you received the product for free, or received any other compensation from the company to review it. Not only is it the right thing to do, the FTC made it mandatory last year. Once you’ve committed to being an Ethical Blogger, make sure that you add this button, so everyone else knows too.

Finally, in the 6-ish months that I’ve been blogging, I’ve had a lot of successes, and a number of companies that declined my offer to review their product. Mainly because my site stats aren’t as high as they were looking for, at the moment. But that will change. The more I’m blogging, the more reviews and giveaways that I do, the more guest blogging that I do, the higher my stats go. And I love watching that number grow. So I’m patiently waiting and when the time comes, I’ll contact those companies again. And I’ll keep reaching out to new companies and PR firms. Because you can’t be successful if you don’t try, right?

More to Add?

This is just my run down of resources that have helped me greatly, but I’m sure there are more out there. If you have a post about PR in blogging, product review, giveaways or anything related to this topic, please link it up. Or if you just have sometime to add, leave me a comment. I’m always looking for more resources and I’ll check out each and every link I receive.