Getting your YouTube channel sponsored sometimes seems like an impossible goal. Sponsorships are the main source of income for video creators as they can be highly profitable. Besides helping you earn money, getting sponsored can also help you craft qualitative content for your audience. But how do you get YouTube sponsorship if you are just starting out? How much do creators get paid for sponsoring videos?  If you’ve seen even small YouTube channels getting huge sponsorships and are wondering how to get sponsored on YouTube, worry no more. It’s decoded here in this article.

To get sponsored, you need to make sure your channel covers all aspects that the sponsors look for. Read on to know how to get your first sponsor and grow your channel big.

What are YouTube Sponsorships?

In simple words, YouTube sponsorships mean collaboration between YouTube creators and a brand where both of them reap benefits in the deal. YouTuber will get paid for sponsoring the brand and the brand gains more exposure by the promotions. For a YouTube sponsorship to be successful, both parties have to benefit from the collaboration. For example, if the audience of your channel is not relevant to a particular brand, it won’t see any value in collaborating with you. Relevance is the major aspect essential for YouTube sponsorship. There are more ways to earn YouTube sponsorships and are as follows.

Prerequisites before reaching out to sponsors:

Quality of Your Content

The most important aspect sponsors will pay attention to before collaborating with YouTubers is the content of the channel. To earn the interest of big sponsors, you need to have quality content uploaded to your channel that engages and entertains users. When you reach out to a brand for sponsorship, the first thing they will look for is relevancy and quality content in your channel so that they can assure that their promotion would also be qualitative. Contrary, if your content is not qualitative, it is a clear sign that your YouTube channel is not ready to receive sponsorships yet. Focus on creating quality content on your YouTube channel that will help and entertain your viewers.

Content quantity

Having just 5 to 6 contents in your channel won’t serve as a good portfolio to attract sponsors. To get a sponsorship, you need to have a good number of videos so that viewers get an idea of what’s going on in your channel. Having your old videos on your channel is actually a good way to show your audience how you evolved over time. It will help people to strengthen their perception of you as a hardworking and motivated creator which makes it easier to find sponsorships for your YouTube channel. Additionally, first-time viewers to your channel will want to browse through your content to decide if they want to subscribe to your channel.

Use Business e-mail on Your YouTube Channel

Even if you are starting out small, maintain a professional profile by adding a business email on your channel. Using a business e-mail address on your channel says you are open for business inquiries. Additionally, this is where you will find video comments, friend request notifications, and videos; not to forget the assault messages on your videos once you have gained a large following.

Refrain from Violating YouTube rules & Regulations

YouTube follows several policies and guidelines to maintain a safe and vibrant community. If you are a new YouTube creator, make sure that you start out by carefully reading through their policies and terms of service. If you violate the policies, there are chances of your channel getting removed or your account may be terminated as well. It is recommended reviewing the guidelines often as YouTube may revise it from time to time.

Unauthorized music, nude photos, and videos, excessive criticism of users drive away sponsors. Check the Resource section of YouTube for a link to their rules & regulations and make sure you stick to it.

Different types of YouTube sponsorships

YouTube business model is an advertisement based model that allows you to earn a share of ad revenues. Sponsorships are another alternate way for video content creators to earn money. There are different types of YouTube sponsorships and are as follows.

Affiliate Sponsorships

Affiliate sponsorships are the easiest way to get sponsorships from brands, especially if your channel is small. You have to place the link given by brands in the description section of your videos and every time a sale is made through the link, you earn a commission.

Alternatively, the brand will also give a discount code that your subscribers can use when making a purchase. Depending on the number of sales generated by your channel, you get a specific amount of money. While affiliate sponsorships are the least profitable type of sponsorships, they are a great way to start with when you are just beginning with YouTube and has less viewership and subscribers.

Product Sponsorships

Another way to get YouTube sponsorships is to receive free products in exchange for promotion. Brands will send you products to do unboxing videos, reviews or tutorials about how to use the products. Though you won’t receive money, you will get free products which can be quite useful. Before reaching out to sponsors, you need to make sure that the products you are looking for sponsorship fit your channel and what you are trying to do with it. Your audience can get put off due to mismatch, and your sponsor will not get the kind of value they expect. Product sponsorship for small YouTubers could be a little difficult because the sponsor has to trust them to promote their product with the limited following they have. If you aim to get product sponsorships, get started with reviews and tutorial videos that are not sponsored. Once you build an audience centered on a particular type of products, the chances of brands involved in the same niche contacting you for sponsorship increases.

Paid sponsorships

Paid sponsorships are the most wanted type of sponsorships any YouTuber looks for as it gives you direct money. Sponsors pay an amount to advertise their business in your videos or to endorse their products by doing videos for their brand on their channel. Getting paid YouTube sponsorships can be tough if you have a small user base. To get paid sponsorships, you have to grow your channel and build a vast base of subscribers. You at least need to have 10k-100k subscribers for companies to approach you for sponsorships. While paid sponsorships come with all bells and whistles, one thing to keep in mind is that – they don’t come free. When a brand is paying you, they will have certain demands and will give instructions on how the videos should be.

When you are a small channel, start out by trying to get an affiliate and product sponsorships. From there, try creating a portfolio of collaboration which you can leverage later when you will start with paid sponsorships. Once your channel is big enough, you will start seeing sponsors approaching you for promotions.

How much you can earn from YouTube sponsorships?

Now that you know the different types of sponsorships, you might be wondering how much do brands pay for sponsorships and how much money you can make. To be honest, there is no exact answer to this question. The money you can earn from a sponsorship varies between $50 and a couple of thousand dollars. However, the money you make can vary and it depends on a variety of factors.

  • The number of subscribers and views

As said earlier, the bigger your channel is, the better the pay. This is because the bigger your channel and subscriber list are views will also increase and hence the chance of your channel generating sales goes higher as well. The number of views of the relevant videos also counts.

  • The value you can bring to the brand

While the number of subscribers and views matter, what really matters is the kind of value you can bring to the brand that sponsors you. Your subscribers must engage with the products you promote. You must be able to prove the number of sales generated in your previous collaborations to prove yourself. A successful sponsorship in the past serves as a living proof that you have the potential to take their sales to new heights.

  • Where you place the ads

As YouTube business model allows placing ads, it is easy to endorse a brand but the placement matters. Normally, YouTubers advertise sponsorships either at the beginning or at the end of their videos. The rates for each placement differs as well.

  • The type of promotion

You can promote the brand by mentioning it in your normal videos or do a tutorial on their products, do review videos, or actually do a video on their profile exclusively for them. Each type comes with a different time frame to create the videos and the effort also differs for each. Depending on the type of promotion you do and how you do it make up the price tag and each of them comes with a different price.

  • Resources needed for the promotion

If you are doing a tutorial video or a product review, you might need some resources and certain props. Maybe at times, you have to shoot videos in a particular environment. Depending on the complexity associated with videos according to the sponsor’s requirement, the pay will also increase.

How to get sponsors for your YouTube channel

Establish a relevant audience base

Only when you know your audience, you’ll know which types of brands are approachable for sponsorship. Knowing the age group of your audience, the fashion trends they follow, where they shop, which brands they love, and, what products they are interested in purchasing helps. Partnering with the brands that your audience can connect gives your sponsor great exposure, good reviews, and of course, purchases. For this, you are rewarded either with cash or products. A successful partnership means repeat partnership, which again brings in more money to the table.

Know What You Can Offer to your Sponsors

In-video shout-outs or mentions and product reviews are two ways to market your sponsor on your channel. When you approach any brand, they will want to know what you can offer them and how you will be marketing their brand. YouTubers usually set up several tiers of sponsorships, like, reviewing products in exchange to get those products for free from the brand. It is wise to not guarantee any positive review if the product doesn’t work the way it’s advertised. Another tie-up could be to exclusively give the exposure of their products on your videos and social media pages. Similarly, you can create different sponsorship plans at different price points that provide value, where every plan will have a different method of promotion.

Learn about sponsors

Once a brand approaches you or you choose a brand to approach, take your time to research on those brands. Your target can be both startups and top names as long as their products are relevant to promote to your customers. Also, ask the question like whether they are interested in widening their reach to other demographics as it will be useful while making a proposal for sponsorships.

Craft Quality Sponsorship Proposals

Most Youtubers get the sponsorship proposals wrong as they fail to establish a connection, don’t establish fit and relevant or get more self-centered. Make sure your proposal is properly structured and have the right information that helps the sponsors to make the right decision.

Majority of creators create a proposal template and use it for every proposal by just changing the name of the sponsors. This approach doesn’t work well. Make sure you draft a personalized proposal letter and this will get the attention of the sponsors you are planning to reach out. Your proposal letter should have your introduction, description of your content and how sponsoring your channel will benefit them. The more specific you are, the easier it is for them to know how much you can relate to their brand and what they can get from their partnership with you.

Different ways of reaching out to sponsors

Now that you know How To Get Sponsored On YouTube, it’s time to send YouTube sponsorship application to the sponsors on your list. There are several ways to reach out to sponsors.

Reach out directly

You can reach out to them through their website contact page or through social media. You can also use your personal connections with popular YouTubers to reach out to the brands.

Reach out through sponsorship platforms

There are several sponsorship marketplaces for YouTube creators like Famebit by Youtube and GrapeVine. They are marketplaces of affiliate and product sponsorships so it’s easy to make those first few connections. There is no harm for major content creators to make use of these sites as they are known to fetch good results.

However, such platforms come with some prerequisites that vary from platform to platform. Some websites require you to have a minimum of 5,000 or 10,000 subscribers to join the platform.

Build your channel and they will come

Quality content breeds traffic and traffic breeds attention from sponsors. Once you grow your channel really big and become a popular YouTube influencer, you will start receiving emails from brands expressing their interest in collaborating with you. If you wonder How To Get Sponsored On YouTube, a good channel with great content and a community is what attracts sponsors.

Important sponsorship tips for video content creators

 

Brand collaborations on YouTube aren’t easy. You might already know that even if you get sponsorships easily, presenting it to your community is not going to be that easy. At least initially. The most coveted thing on YouTube is a genuine fan who loves your work and religiously follows and share your videos. So here are some tips to get the sponsorships right.

  • Tell them how the sponsorship will benefit their brand. Highlight the relevance to make them understand you are a good fit for the collaboration.
  • Don’t sell yourself short just because you want a sponsorship immediately. Remember, you have a following and you create quality content. So you can partner with a brand to give them exposure to their audience.
  • Don’t give up if your first few proposals don’t get you a sponsorship. Keep creating awesome content for your channel that will increase your following. And the bigger the following, the easier it is to find sponsorships.
  • If you have had any successful partnership stories in the past, share it with the new brands.
  • Ensure that you remain authentic to the style that made you popular. Never try to deviate far from your core content as it won’t bring in the engagement you got in the past.

Conclusion

Hope this article gave you a clear idea on how to get sponsored on YouTube. Now you can work towards getting sponsorships and monetize your channel. When you get sponsorship, being open and honest about it will garner appreciation from your viewers and build your channel for transparency. In addition, try to be as honest as possible with your reviews and opinions about the products you endorse. Before jumping into getting sponsorships, focus on building a good amount of quality content on your channel. The key to getting sponsorships and collaborations is by keeping your audience happy.

Have you tried getting YouTube sponsorships or are you already working with top brands? If you have tips worth mentioning, feel free to share with us in the comment section. We love to hear your thoughts.