Partners Blog Spotlight: Gadgets

You will notice our Performancing Partners network is continuing to grow nicely so we thought it was time to dive into the list and take a look at the blogs that are available to advertisers. Today, seeing as I am a complete geek, I am going to look at Gadget blogs.

One of the tough things about the more techy blog topics is the need to know a great deal of details about a wide range of product categories, otherwise your blog ends up reading like an endless stream of press-release puffery. Is that keychain really revolutionary or did you just copy and paste some more BS Mr Blogger, hmm?

One way to avoid having to know everything about everything is to focus on a “niche of a niche” as Mobile Mentalism and RIMarkable have done. The main benefit to this is you can completely cover your topic extremely well and become an authority (or *the* authority).

RIMarkable

RIMarkable is about the much loved (and addicting) Blackberry device. You could say RIMarkable is in a niche, of a niche, of a niche! If you want to keep abreast of this gadgets news and rumours then this is place. Talk about blogs that own their niche, if you wanted to link to a Blackberry blog would you point to Engadget or RIMarkable?

While it took a second glance to realise what I thought was navigation were in fact sponsored links the template is crisp and clean and the content light hearted and certainly works for the audience.

Mobile Mentalism

Phone fans are known for their appetite for both specs and pictures. Mobile phones are now both a serious multimedia / productivity gadget AND a fashion accessory. Mobile Mentalism manages to offer both in spades. The pictures are BIG so the blog will probably appeal to broadband users rather than being read ON a phone but this does mean you get to see every little detail.

Red Ferret Journal

Of course it doesn’t all have to be serious, earnest, hard core tech, the gadget niche is fun too. This is the area covered by the funkily named Red Ferret Journal which reminds me of a gadget-focused BoingBoing. Best of all the Partners ad is displayed well above the fold, heh.

Fosfor Gadgets

As the gadget crowd are almost certainly going to be web savvy (being classic early adopters) design as well as content does matter and you need your RSS button right in your face. The blog needs to work well in Firefox but also probably Safari and obscure PDAs too. I can’t speak for if this works in other browsers and devices but something about Fosfor Gadgets design appeals to me, go take a look.

I particularly like the little box in the top right of the page that tells you what the blog is about. It’s a good little tip for any blog, make sure within seconds your visitor knows where they are, what they can see and why they should stay. As well as the RSS feed link it is sometimes good to link to your top content in an area such as this.

Summary

For anyone with an electronic product to sell Gadget blogs are a perfect place to advertise. The people who read these types of blogs tend to go with their wallets half open. Unlike some niches, it doesn’t matter that they already just bought a gadget, gadget fans are always ready to upgrade. In fact just browsing the blogs today could work out quite expensive for me unless my wife intervenes.

The trick with the gadget category is to not just be a mirror for the “name” gadget blogs and actually produce original or at least uncommon content. This is especially tricky as these blogs thrive on product reviews, doubly hard for those on a budget. It’s good to see Partners gadget blogs managing to inform, entertain, and look good.