How To Get Sponsored On YouTube For Your Channels

How To Get Sponsored On YouTube For Your Channels

by | Apr 26, 2017 | YouTube Streaming

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.

5 Video Streaming Business Models that Could Make you a Millionaire

5 Video Streaming Business Models that Could Make you a Millionaire

by | Feb 18, 2017 | Video Streaming Ideas

Entertainment today takes a variety of forms, with many of them residing on the internet. Whether it is insta-recipe snippets, music videos or laugh-a-minute shows, the online video landscape has quickly become a veritable Eden for entertainment seekers. And that means only one thing: there’s more money on the internet than ever before.

Today, we lift the lid on one of the most effective ways to leverage internet traffic; one that has caught the fancy of many savvy entrepreneurs. Say hello to video streaming, a technology that allows users to broadcast content, captured on a camera, through a device connected to the internet. The viewer receives this content, on another device, either in real-time or later. Streaming is a fun, engaging experience being adopted by an array of brands, to grow a personal relationship with each consumer. Live streaming, in particular, is catching on quickly. Look at Facebook Live, Instagram Live, Twitter’s Periscope for inspiration, if you’re wondering how it works.

There are endless possibilities in every sector, when it comes to setting up a video streaming business model. If you have a background in finance, video streaming could help you open a window between you and your customers with live chats, real-time financial advice and quicker turn-around times. If you have a passion for cooking, you could turn your kitchen into a makeshift studio, streaming stylised recipes through improvised techniques. And you do not even need a hefty bank balance to get started. Turn to a turnkey technology called Streamhash, a platform that lets you maintain your own streaming site, thereby lending you a singular online identity. Streamhash allows you to set up the technology within 2 days, and your launch costs will be 100 times less than if you were to develop and launch a technology from scratch.

If you have an exceptional idea and have been wanting to tread the entrepreneurial path, there has never been a better time than now to monetise your brand. Here are some ways to make money from home. Get ready to be inspired.

Advertisements:

You’re probably already well-acquainted with the advertisements that slide in and out while you’re watching a video on YouTube. And while these ads may seem unwelcome to a viewer, they sweep in the most money for broadcasters. The fee is usually determined by the length of the video, and advertisers will pay you per click. Here’s where volumes play a big role. If you have a sizeable following, you can easily rake in about $1,000 monthly, from ads alone. This also means that you can maintain free viewership and draw a larger following.

But there’s more to online ads than meets the eye. In recent times, ads on the internet have been largely segregated into two: native ads and traditional ads. You’re already familiar with the latter concept; the kind of ad that appears intermittently during a YouTube video, pushing a product or service. A native ad, on the other hand is modelled after tremendous research, and employs powerful storytelling coupled with a journalistic narrative. These ads are educative and entertaining, and often, the audience may not even know that the content is sponsored. That’s the beauty of native ads; they mimic quality content that sits on your platform, and your user is likely to follow it right through to the end.

In January, this year, Samsung launched a digital campaign in India called #SamsungService. The campaign sparked curiosity and inspired a personal connect amongst viewers, because of a touching, four-minute film that the company launched on YouTube and across 50 channels as a condensed ad. Amazingly, the film garnered 18 million views in its first six days. Not only did Samsung profit from a farther reach, but YouTube prospered from astronomical ad revenues.

Video streaming

When you do decide to take the ad route, consider featuring a healthy mix of native ads and traditional ads. If your native ad content leaves a mark on viewers, you’ve struck gold.

Donations:

Donations are wonderful, and will work once you have reached out to your followers and have made an impact. Consider integrating a donation feature on your site, almost like a virtual tip jar, that viewers can fill at will. If you are thinking of starting your own video-sharing website on the lines of YouTube, there are several ideas you can use for donations. For example, South Korea’s Afreeca.tv has an inbuilt feature where viewers can pay for star balloons as they follow a broadcaster, which that broadcaster can then swap for real money. On Afreeca, 1 star balloon equates to about 10 US cents. Now that’s not a lot, you may think. But it is, when volumes add up.

Afreeca feeds on South Korea’s quirky culture of broadcasting every aspect of life, whether it is dining in front of a screen for your viewers, or simply donning makeup and appeasing a fan following. Afreeca is built on a virtual gift economy, with a free flow of gifts between viewers and broadcasters. With 25 million users and 7,500 channels, it’s a winning product. One streamer, Yoo So Hee set a record by making US $37,000 in one night, back in October 2014. She did it by prettifying herself and then interacting with her followers on Afreeca. But hey, where’s the money for Afreeca? Well, Afreeca gets a share of every star balloon that is bought, and the more money a broadcaster makes, the more Afreeca makes. It’s a win-win situation.

YouNow, a webcast service headquartered in New York operates on a similar model. With a user base predominantly under 24 years old, the site is used as an interactive platform for dance and music, amongst other activities. Sometimes, users simply stream themselves sleeping, or other routine activities that make up their day. In March 2015, a Brooklyn cashier named Tayser Abuhamdeh, made headlines after he began streaming snippets of his daily life to his audience. His following grew rapidly, but so did his phone bill. And soon, his virtual lifestyle became unaffordable. When he wrote in to YouNow, they put him on their partner programme, which would allow viewers to leave virtual gifts and tips.

YouNow’s partner programme is unique. Through it, viewers can earn coins by just interacting on the platform. In turn, these coins can buy digital gifts like hearts, sticks, beers and fist bumps. When these gifts are given to broadcasters, YouNow gets a cut in its value. The platform has also opened a premium gifting service for the partner programme, which allows viewers to buy gifts using money f, in the hope of eliciting a personal mention, or a declaration of gratitude. The premium service hives off a portion of a broadcaster’s earnings as profit. It’s a bright business model that can be applied to any trend really; cooking, gardening, cycling. You name it.

Sponsors:

Sponsorships come with the territory if you’re a successful streamer. But how do you make money as a site owner? Sometimes, brands may approach a streamer directly, reaching a mutual financial agreement. If you’re a site owner, though, you can approach brands with the promise that you’ll have your top 10 users endorse their product during a fixed number of streaming sessions. This saves the brand money and time, and it leaves you as the middleman. This of course, means that you can liaise the deal with a fee in between. A revenue share agreement would make most sense in such a case, where the advertiser would pay a fixed sum per click, which you would then share with the broadcaster in a pre-decided ratio.

Exclusive Video Previews:

You don’t have to limit your site to the users that you have. Reach out to brick-and-mortar businesses and feature previews of their offerings on your site. Let’s say there’s an upcoming gym in your city. Have them shoot a video of an engaging exercise sequence and display it on your site. Or if there’s an exciting new restaurant in town, stitch together a behind-the-scenes teaser. While this doesn’t have to be your main business, it’s a great source of extra income.

Premium Chat Windows:

YouTube recently announced that it is going to launch Super Chat, a fantastic new chat window feature that monetises creators. Through Super Chat, viewers of a live stream will pay for chat messages that will be highlighted in bright colours and pinned to the top of a chat window, to catch the creator’s attention. It’s a monetisation tool for broadcasters, and excites viewers who receive virtual recognition. YouTube, of course makes a commission on each chat message bought. Think of how a premium chat service could fit in to your video streaming business model!

If you’re inspired, reach out to Streamhash to get your website started and make money from video streaming. Growing your bank balance has never been easier.