How to Get Your Site/Product Featured on Plagiarism Today

Over the years, Plagiarism Today, due to its growth and target audience, has been getting more and more attention from companies that want to have their product reviewed or mentioned on the site. Though PT certainly isn’t a TechCrunch or a Mashable, it seems to have gotten the ear of more and more in this field and I’m very happy about that.

That being said, I would love for you to reach out to me and get me to review your site, service or product. I’d be more than happy to do so. I actively encourage you to write me and let me know what you’re doing because, especially if you’re working as a stealth or semi-stealth startup, I likely have no idea about you and could use the information.

However, of all the companies that write me very few actually get a mention on this site. While some companies, like PlagScan, actually run the gamut and get both a mention and a screencast, most don’t even make it to a blog post.

So, if you’re thinking about contacting me to seek a review of on this site, I want to tell you what to expect and how to increase your chances of getting a writeup on PT.

Step 1: Making Contact

Making contact with me is very easy. Simply visit the Contact page on this site, and drop me an email either via the contact form or via my email address.

Bear in mind though, I usually like to only talk about products and services that others can use, meaning that they are at least in the beta stage of development. If you want my feedback on a project that is in an earlier stage, you may want to check out my consulting services for developers as that may be a better fit.

Basically, any review I do on PT, ideally, will be a chance for the site’s readers to use your offering, not a sneak peek at what it will be.

Step 2: The Grilling

Once you reach out to me, I will be in touch with you soon, usually in about 2 business days and I’m going to come armed with questions. The first round, usually, isn’t that difficult as I’m just asking about the basics of the service and anything I’m unclear about.

The second round, however, is usually much more difficult as I ask pointed questions about the service, who it’s for, its costs, it’s competitors, etc. I’m not out to get inside information, but I’m seeking response on potential issues that I see when I do a review.

The best advise I can give to survive this admitted assault is to know the limitations of your product, know who your competitions is, how you stack up against them, and be able to easily explain what makes your offering better.

Step 3: The Trial

At this point, I then try to give your product a trial run. My goal is to create as close to a real world test as I can. This test will be designed not just to give users an idea of how it works, but also to find any potential flaws in it. In short, it’s usually not a completely fair test and isn’t meant to be.

If your product is relatively inexpensive, I’ll usually ask to pay my own way, but if it’s more costly, I’ll likely need some kind of test access to it for the review, which will be disclosed in the write up.

Often times, after the trial, I’ll have more questions to ask at the end of the test, usually related to the product itself. However,I generally try to keep my actual results under wraps until I write the review.

The reasons is to simply make the review as honest as possible, though if there is anything too extremely bad, such as the product simply not working, I will give you a chance to respond and rectify if appropriate.

Step 4: The Writeup

Finally, after all that admitted headache, I do the write up. Sometimes the test is done the same day as the write up though often times it’s done weeks before. I work off of an editorial calendar that plans posts out two weeks in advance or more. So, it might be that long before it appears.

All in all, the time between first contact and the final article is often three weeks to a month, largely because I try to be extremely thorough about my analysis and make sure that the company gets a chance to respond to any issues I find.

Bottom Line

Is this process long, drawn out and a major headache? Yes. The reason is that I only want to recommend/feature products and services that are both legitimate and useful, at least to a certain group.

However, I’d like to see more products and services featured on this site and that means more companies making it all the way through this, admitted, unfair and difficult process.

So, if you have a product or service that I haven’t featured on PT before and would like me to do so, head over to the contact page and drop me a line. I’d love to hear about it and I’d even be glad to feature it here, just bear in mind what you’re getting into.

I know I can be difficult to work with, but I think it’s for a good cause and that, in the long run, it produces much better-quality reviews.