HonestWatchReviews

The problem

Buying a watch online is harder than it looks. Search results are crowded with thin listicles and sponsored content that rank products by commission rather than quality, and buyers looking for something specific, like a field watch, a watch for small wrists, or a good budget option, struggle to find honest comparisons. The goal was to build a review site that gives US buyers clear, useful guidance, while running on a custom platform rather than an off-the-shelf blog engine, so content, products and future features could all be managed in one place.

The solution

I built HonestWatchReviews.com on Next.js with Prisma and PostgreSQL, deployed on Vercel, with images served from Cloudflare R2. Instead of using WordPress, I created a custom content management system around the Tiptap rich-text editor, so articles can be written and edited directly in the site’s own admin. Content is organized into focused categories such as field watches, small-wrist watches, gold watches, smartwatches and fitness trackers, designer and fashion watches, and budget options, with buying guides, comparisons and analysis aimed at US shoppers. For monetization, I joined Amazon Associates, ShareASale and CJ Affiliate. The domain, DNS and email routing run through Cloudflare. Next on the roadmap is a watch catalog that links each product to its review, and an AI advisor that recommends catalog watches to visitors.

The result

HonestWatchReviews is live with a fully custom stack: its own CMS, structured categories and fast image delivery through Cloudflare R2. The site has provisional Amazon Associates approval and active affiliate partnerships, so the monetization pipeline is in place. Its architecture is ready for the next phase, where the product catalog and AI advisor will turn the site from a blog into an interactive watch-buying assistant.