Gadgetory

okay hello everyone I am just gonna play some Call of Duty in the background I will be playing what I'm talking but it's just some old food to have just something that you can look at while I discuss this topic because it can be kind of dry if it's just me looking at you telling you about things so I have something I guess divert half of your attention but the topic of this video will of course be about sponsorships and just getting free stuff that's essentially what it is but it's not I don't want you to mistake that for just charity because they're they're giving you products to review they expect you to promote the product in some way or showcase it in some way or use it in some way that benefits the company as well as your channel and it didn't start receiving free items from companies until I had about 30,000 or 40,000 subscribers that was when I really started seeing a bunch of mainly companies from China trying to reach out and send things like charging packs what's the other how Bluetooth speakers I still get a ton of emails from companies wanting to send Bluetooth speakers those kinds of things I did one of them that was that was it I just wanted to do one get it out of the way I think that's kind of something that every tech tuber has to go through that whole Bluetooth speaker stage but I got that out of the way around thirty or forty thousand subs and then from then on out I just every now and then just started getting these random fairly well-known companies reaching out across the board just wanting to either let me know that they could send stuff to the channel for me to review or that they wanted a separate video on a certain you know certain product they were releasing but AMD AMD raid on reached out to me and sent a and R X 480 if you've been around for a while you you know about that but they sent one to me as a review sample long before the ark story was actually released so that I had plenty of time to run my tests and everything to be quite honest with you I didn't actually run any of my rx 40 tests until like the week before so it was just kind of sitting around and I hadn't done anything with it so I was teasing it a lot and you know getting everybody pumped up for it but I didn't actually run any tests until I think the week prior so even I didn't know how powerful the card actually was and I wasn't disappointed with the car I mean is a great card and I think that it's probably one of the best price to performance cards currently on the market but with that said I think that that sponsorship was the the most noteworthy I think that is a big milestone for science to me because that was the first time that a company as big as AMD had ever reached out to my channel which at the time wasn't very big I think I had 50,000 subs by that time now in terms of how you go about getting these sponsorships you can do it one of two ways you can either promote similar products and expect other companies to want to compete with that product keyboards for example I have tons of people not wanting to send me gaming keyboards mechanical keyboards for the simple reason that I've already reviewed like three of them in the past month and so others are saying hey look at our keyboard it's cheaper or it has you know this feature that this keyboard didn't that you reviewed earlier so that's one way I would say that you can try to kind of rally some sponsors behind your channel or at least companies that would be willing to contribute products that you can review and use and do whatever way through giveaways things like that I don't recommend trying to sell products that you've been given for free I think that's that's just kind of Shady I don't I don't condone that I don't I'm not going to do that myself when I sell computers that I've built I'll sell them on Craigslist usually what I'll do is I'll give them a pretty sharp discount and I'll say hey look all of these parts were just given to me for free so that's why you're going to get it for a good price the only parts I'm charging you for the parts that I paid for and I'm just because I built it you know a couple weeks ago this is I'm just going to charge you at face value what it cost me to build I don't usually charge for labor or anything like that and I sell a lot of computers that's where a lot of my old parts go actually I sell them on Craigslist and things of that sort we were really nobody in the face of other channels that have 200-300 thousand subs we're actually coming up on that as you know that's really crazy that were that were almost to that point now but you know back then I think was a little before the summer started here in the northern hemisphere I was around 30 or 40 thousand subs and we were growing we were growing fairly fast but we didn't have enough in my opinion to justify a company as big as AMD sending a card to the studio to review before and even been released it wasn't just like it was a free card to review it was a it was a pre-release card that I could test myself and formulate conclusions on before anybody else could buy one just straight up on the market so that's the first way you can pick up company sponsorship start off with something like a mechanical keyboard pair it to another mechanical keyboard later on and then you'll slowly start to see those other companies who produce the same kinds of mechanical keyboards want to compete with you now you're only going to be stuck in the mechanical keyboard Department so what you'll have to do if you plan on sticking with that I guess course of action is purchase something like a I don't know purchase an Asus rx 480 and just kind of hope for the best you know review that card run the benchmarks and make the video look as professional as possible because these are like your interviews you're basically interviewing with all of these companies that have to do with the topic pan in every video that you upload because I mean as long as the video is good and people receive it well they're going to end up sharing it with their friends eventually you know word will get out that hey this new channel is reviewing these cards and he's doing a great job this company might hear about you and say hey we want to send our product to you and have you do the same thing because we thought you were professional in your video now the second way to obtain free products company sponsorships review products things of that sort would be for you to go out and ask for those products specifically by either going to the website and emailing the marketing department any you know whatever however you want to do it if you have contacts phone numbers try all those methods I will say my personal experience I have I don't have as much success in that realm just because I know when I email a marketing department if it's like let's say NZXT if I email NZXT is marketing department I think it's marketing at NZXT comm don't quote me on that but you get the point that's just their their umbrella marketing email so when you send that email to their marketing department it's going to get sifted through by a bunch of different servers and someone's going to land on that email until skim it and they'll say yeah throw it to the side or maybe they'll forward it to the you know the head of the marketing department or something like that that would be a good case but most of the time they're just going to be sifted through and then sorted and then probably trash and that's just that's just the nature of the companies they don't have time to focus on on the little guys really and that's that's I mean that's still what I am I'm a little guy right now so until I say until you get to around 100 maybe 200 thousand subs going out to companies and asking them for products most of the time you're going to hear the words sorry not right now maybe some other time that's usually what I hear so an NZXT by the way has told me that they told me that back when I had forty or fifty thousand subs but I haven't tried since then I just I don't know maybe I maybe I will try and txt makes good products so that's the second way to do it it's not always going to end with the yes in fact most of the time is going to end up with a No but there are other companies that that I have been successful in that case with I will say I've had about an 80% failure rate with that option it even at this point I mean I can ask some bigger companies and all most likely get a no and that's just because they already have their there you know they have their group of people that they always send things to by default and adding any other channels to that or any other people to that just kind of complicates things there you know and just they just they like sticking with who they already know does a great job I don't blame them for that it's it's hard to break that that shell but I will say I've had success with other notable companies deep cool was a company that I reached out to you personally about two weeks later I received an email back from one of their marketing marketing leads and she told me she's like hey do you want the deep cold genome case what color would you like she said you know we'll send you a power supply too and an LED light kit you know they were really cool about it and it has a lot to do with PR so the only money they're losing essentially what they're paying for the advertisement on YouTube is the product they're giving away or products so you know deep cool genomes like 200 250 bucks power supply 50 bucks LED kit maybe 20 like they're only spending maybe 300 350 bucks for a potential audience of you know well over a hundred thousand people so that's that's a chance they're willing to take especially with come with the YouTube channels that that they see have been growing quite fast lately and at the time I think I had 60 or 70 thousand subs and we were going we were gaining about 10 to 20 thousand subs a month I mean it was growing we're still doing that we're still on that on that track now which is which is phenomenal and I hope it stays that way I don't that's why I don't change the format of my videos because no that's what most of you want to see as long as I keep putting out content you like hopefully the channel will continue to grow so that's why I've been sticking mainly with technology but I keep the name science studio because I don't just do technology and I hope someday I'll be able to kind of transition to to the point where I can do both freely but that's a whole number that's whole nother video so deep cool was a company that I reached out to that responded that was very positive about it an ADIZ if you guys remember the entities AI crystal review and the bill that I did with that again I don't know which side but it'll be in one of these sides here click that card the entities AI crystal it's a beautiful tempered-glass case I reached out to them actually saw that case on new egg and at the time it was like a hundred and twenty bucks sounds like I actually want that case for computer built I was like well let me try my luck and see if they'll just be willing to send me one because that I'll tell them the parts I'm gonna include in it you know what I plan to do with it I'll make it look good for him and I sent the email literally the next day they said sure we'll send you one and in fact a couple weeks after that after the you know the couple videos had been released and they noticed that it got a quite a lot of attention compared to I guess what they expected I mean the video had maybe thirty forty thousand views within the first couple days so I think they appreciated that fact two weeks later I asked them for another AI crystal they were happy to send another one so once you once you do get a product from a company to review or showcase or you know do whatever with again it's going to be contractual whatever you talk about in your emails make sure to stick to those guidelines and now this is where the roads diverge when it comes to companies giving you products to review you can choose to be either truthful or a kiss-ass okay there's no other way to say it you can either kiss ass and hope the company appreciates the fact that you do and ends up sending you more and more stuff until the until the point where you become a clone for the company or you can tell the truth and hope your viewers appreciate the fact that you are telling the truth even when the truth hurts for the company in question now I'm not going to sugarcoat anything here and tell you that when you tell the brutal truth it's just going to work out for you perfectly companies are going to hate hearing that okay especially when they know that you're fairly big in that you reach of a wide audience and that the audience is going to receive that product and probably the same way you did and end up not making the company look all that great at least when it comes to that particular product and the company's not going to be very happy about that's just the truth no one wants to hear that they don't no one wants to hear that their products bad but that that's what it will come down to and in most cases the company will be understanding I'm not going to say they're going to be happy but they'll they'll at least appreciate the fact that you had the guts to do that and that you were honest no matter what and that you were willing to compromise on your relationship with the company for the sake of telling the truth they always say tell the truth tell the truth it always works out for you in the end it might not when it comes to the company but in most cases your viewers will appreciate it so coming from science to do coming from me tell the truth if you're interested in reviewing products you need to make this decision before you do anything else you need to tell yourself no matter what you will tell the truth about the product you're reviewing even if it's a blitz let's say it's Intel alright and it's a it's a new processor but the processor is you know just just terrible I don't know what about the process will be terrible but the performance just isn't anywhere close to what you expected and it was just hyped up and you know this and that so you're disappointed with the CPU but in the video all you do is talk about how good the CPU is right so now other people are going to go out and buy the CPU based on your word only to find out the CPU isn't all that great I'm using Intel here because until the IPC change from haswell's guy like really wasn't all that impressive so I'm hoping that cobby lake is we're just just hoping that it is but just use Intel as an example here so people going to find out that what you told them basically wasn't true I'm going to come back to you and say Greg that was a lie why did you lie you're dishonest and they're gonna unsubscribe to you and then you're gonna lose your viewer base and then as a result of losing your viewer base you're going to lose your company sponsorships so by doing the untruthful thing you lose both your audience and your companies that back you up but by telling the truth all you potentially lose is the company so keep that in mind the goal here is to never give up and never compromise on video quality on your review standards keep all of that intact especially if you've received good feedback from your audience and from the companies in question it's always a great feeling when you have both company and viewer base support it really is nice because someone in my position a lot of companies that want to send me stuff but I can't I can't take everything I can't use everything some things I just frankly don't want but at the same time I don't want to flood my audience with a bunch of stuff that I know they really don't care about so computer builds is a big thing for us right we appreciate computer builds so whenever it's something like Ramji scale just got on board I reviewed their keyboard and mouse they liked the review even though it's a bit critical a few things they appreciated it and they said hey by the way if you want any memory for any PC let us know we'll send it to you so gee skills on board right so if I want to build a computer I'll go to g.skill and I'll say hey can you send some of your Trident Z RAM maybe four four dims with four gigs each for sixteen total and hopefully they'd say yes you know and then I would feature all of the parts I obtained from companies plus stuff I have to buy out a pocket in the build and just say look all these things are running great or talk about things that I was disappointed with and just keep that relationship going because you're your audience is going to appreciate the fact that you told the truth and the companies are going to appreciate the fact that you even showcase the product in the first place we're even willing to accept their products but then that you were truthful and provided constructive criticism in the process so that's essentially what I wanted to talk about in this video just discuss the things that I've been through personally with regards to other companies and receiving products for free or either by condition or something like that now straight up sponsored videos or a totally from topic and I'm very wary of doing that dumb one I've only done one sponsored video that was that be candid video and honestly I mean it was a pretty compelling offer I didn't think that the app had nothing to do with science I thought it could have been I thought it could be I think it still is actually a good way for a lot of people to communicate with each other ask questions about PC build any kind of tech questions they have I thought it was a pretty good medium for that and that's why I was willing to promote it but had it been something like again gardening tools there's no way I mean they could have offered me 20 grand there's no way I would have accepted the $20,000 for the sake of showcasing gardening tools on science studio there's no way you have to be willing to make those compromises for the sake of keeping your audience happy because your audience is what ultimately makes you money it's what keeps the companies around as so keep your audience first and the companies will have a reason to stick around as long as your videos maintain said standard this is science studio be sure to ask questions and other things in the comments I'll do my best to answer as many as possible and I'm sure other people who are kind of familiar with this topic can help you out as well thanks for learning with this