I hear what you guys are saying and from the outside looking in it may seem like product reviewers get "free" stuff. It isn't free, its fee for service. When Jiffy or any other company signs up with me its made clear to them they are getting an honest review written for my audience.
It takes work to write and edit an article, gear and skill to take quality photos/videos and money to build and host a website. My work isn't free, but I also need something to talk about on the website otherwise things get stale. It's more of a quid-pro-quo arrangement.
I hardly think my Rogue review is glowing - in fact I didn't use the word awesome even one time!
I aimed to write a balanced, well researched article. My intent is to provide quality and useful information for readers and folks in the market, not to paint Jiffy or any other brand in some glowing light. My real client is you guys - and if you don't feel like you can trust me to be sincere I might as well close up shop.
But I'm also not out to slander anyone. No one who does content creation professionally is going to ruin a companies reputation, and in turn ruin their own, by writing negative or provocative reviews. If a product has an issue or a fault, I'm more likely to send it back and work with the manufacturer on fixing it. Readers likely won't hear about it until its right, if they hear about it at all.
Yeah there are some bad apples out there that just push product and that makes it harder to sift through the BS. Its unfortunate but thats "influencers" for ya. Some people are going to have strong opinions either way about reviewers and there's really nothing I can say to sway them. I guess this response is just to clarify how I operate and maybe address some questions of whats going on behind the scenes.