At Irreverent Gent, our mission is to create informative and engaging content with integrity, which means abiding by what we call the three Ts:
Thoroughness, transparency and truth.
To that end, here’s a breakdown of the methodology we use to create our content, and the business model that supports it.
Our Methodology
How We Create Review Posts
“Have these guys ever met a product they didn’t love?”
It’s a fair question, asked by anyone who’s noticed that our reviews tend to come down on the side of liking – and often loving – the products we write about.
And unfortunately for us, the answer to that question is a resounding “yes.”
We’ve come across far, far too many products that failed to live up to either their own marketing hype, our expectations, or both.
In fact, we’ve wasted an embarrassing amount of time and money over the years on everything from books and audio programs to clothes, workout equipment and countless other commercial goods, all in the pursuit of looking good and living well.
That’s why it’s so important that we only bring to your attention the stuff that works – to keep you from wasting as much time and money as we have.
Below is a breakdown of how we endeavour to do that.
1. Writing About What’s Worthy
Sure, we could write extensive reviews of all the products we’ve tried and then discarded, only to conclude that you should stay away from them. But why bother?
We don’t want to waste your time or our own, which is why we only invest time writing about products we truly believe can help you look good and live well.
As such, for the most part our reviews are de facto endorsements of products that we think can help you build self-confidence, which explains why the majority of reviews you see on our site are generally positive.
To give you a little more insight into how we decide what products to write about, here are the key principles that guide what we do.
2. Honesty & Transparency
While we’re not going to waste our time writing about products we absolutely don’t think you should try, we believe strongly that it’s important to be honest about a product’s pluses and minuses.
No product is perfect, and while we only write about products that possess more strengths than flaws, we also think it’s only fair to explain what those flaws are.
Besides, the things that we believe are flaws you may see as strengths, or vice versa.
We believe the only fair and honest way to review a product is to throw all of our thoughts about it on the table, and let you decide whether or not you agree with me.
3. Personal Experience
Our team of style-obsessed writers and editors spends all day everyday scouring the internet, reading reviews, and testing as many products as we possibly can.
And our standards are like Seth Rogen at a Phish concert:
High as hell.
We pride ourselves on being savvy and extremely discerning consumers.
So it’s important to us that if we review something, it’s because we’ve actually tried it and found it beneficial.
While there are no guarantees that a product that helped us will also help you, all we can do as writers, reviewers and human beings is share our own life experience.
It’s then up to you to decide if you think your experience with the product will match our.
How We Create Product Round-Ups
When we put together a product roundup, our goal is to help you find the best combination of high quality and great value.
Here’s how we do it.
1. Survey the Market
The first step is to do a thorough survey of the market to find all the products that look like they might fit the bill.
2. First-Person Testing
Whenever possible, we personally test products to assess their quality, and share our honest, unfiltered thoughts about their pros, cons and overall value.
And when we test something out for ourselves and deem it worthy of our readers, we affix our “Reviewed and Approved” badge to it:
This is our 💯 percent seal of approval, and can’t be bought by brands or stores.
3. Online Research
Because we’re a small team of service-journalists with a limited budget, it’s not possible to test every product on the market.
So we’ve developed a thorough method for evaluating a product’s merits online.
We assess pretty much every piece of data we can find about each product, including (but by no means limited to):
- Features
- Dimensions
- Pros and cons
- Price relative to similar products on the market
- User reviews
- Editorial reviews
- Ratings on review aggregators like Trustpilot and the Better Business Bureau
- Comments on social media and online forums like Reddit or Quora
Affiliate Relationships
In the aforementioned interest of truth and transparency, you should know that we use affiliate links on Irreverent Gent.
Here’s how that works:
If a product is good, we recommend it.
In many cases there are links from our post to a store where you can buy that product. If you use our link and end up buying that product, we receive a small commission.
This, I think, is a fair model.
You end up with a product that I truly believe will help you, and I end up with a small commission at no additional cost to you.
As long as we’re open and transparent about it, I think this is fair.
And speaking of transparency, here’s the full disclosure from Amazon that I’m legally required to share with you:
Irreverent Gent is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.
Now that that’s all out in the open, if you don’t agree, and you’d prefer to purchase a product I recommend without my benefitting from it, fair enough.
Here’s how to do it:
Simply open a new tab and Google the product name.
You’ll quickly find a place to buy it online, and the store you purchase it from will have no idea that I had anything to do with your buying it – and, thus, won’t share a cent of the purchase with me.
(Of course, you could also go physically buy the product at a brick and mortar store, which again will not benefit me in the least.)
If you have any questions about our Review Policy, Affiliate Relationships, or the criteria we use to select which products we write about, feel free to email me at [email protected].
