- Brands and companies are out there scamming YouTubers.
We're gonna talk about it so you can avoid getting scammed
and we're startin' right now.
This one is a bit of a rant, but it's important
that you know what it is that I'm getting ready
to talk about here so that you can avoid gettin' scammed.
But I'm also going to give you a solution to other things
that you can do once you learn how to avoid the scams.
Okay, if you're making progress of any kind on YouTube,
eventually you're going to start getting emails
from companies that are wanting you to promote everything
from vacuum cleaners to toothbrushes to eyeglasses
to lights to everything under the sun.
And when these companies reach out,
they're going to want you to do any keyword research
that you need to do, they're going to need you to
unbox their product or learn about their product.
They're gonna need you to make the video.
They're gonna need you to spend your time
putting your video together, editing your video,
making your thumbnail, getting it online
and optimizing that video for
a 25 to 100 dollar thing.
Now don't get me wrong, I know it's cool getting
seemingly free stuff, but here's some things
that I really want you to think about.
The videos that you're making for these companies,
they're gonna be on your YouTube channel indefinitely.
It doesn't matter what size you are now,
as your channel keeps growing and as you progress
through time and you're getting more views,
more subscribers and all of that,
those videos are still going to be on your YouTube channel.
And if your video does okay during that time,
that's one thing, but if your video ends up going fantastic,
they just got a ton of advertising and a bunch of awareness
spread about what it is that they have
for like 25 to a hundred bucks worth of product.
And the funny thing is, you've given them
all of that advertisement and there's a really good chance
that you've actually forgotten about the thing
within, you know, a couple of weeks from actually getting it
and making the video in the first place.
Now of course, if you are in the YouTube partner program,
then you'd be getting ad revenue while that video
is still getting views, so that part would be a win,
but you could've been actually getting a lot more
from that video if you would've
just done affiliate marketing for example.
Which brings me to the next scam.
In addition to the seemingly free stuff
that these companies are going to give you,
you're gonna get a lot of emails from people
that are going to want you to actually make a purchase.
They're gonna want you to buy their product first,
go out of your way, so that you can promote
their product with the promise that they're
going to refund it to you once you actually buy the product.
Of course, you should always do whatever it is
that you think is best for you, but personally,
I recommend that you don't do that.
And the reason for that is because
if you go and you purchase that product
and they decide, hey, we're actually, we changed our mind.
We're not going to refund you, guess what?
You just lost out unless you return it through Amazon.
Or let's say that you put out the video
and the video didn't perform like you had wanted,
and you had purchased whatever it is
that they want you to purchase off of Amazon,
and they sent you PayPal money, well, then technically,
they could reverse that PayPal money if they wanted to
if your video didn't perform well.
What I'm getting at here in this particular situation
before we move onto other scams,
in this particular situation, what they're doing
is they're putting all of the risk with you
to promote their products, doesn't make any sense.
Of course, your call to make, but I wouldn't
recommend that you do it.
Another really big and equally not cool scam
is companies will reach out to content creators
and they will frame the whole thing
around being a sponsor, they'll say,
"Hey, we would love to sponsor your YouTube channel.
"We love what it is that you're making.
"We looked at all these channels and we're focusing on you
"because we think you would be a great fit
"for what it is that we're doing."
And you look at that and you think,
ah great, this channel wants to sponsor me.
But in reality, all they wanna do is sign you up
as an affiliate to whatever it is
that they are trying to promote.
And there is a huge difference between being
an affiliate and being sponsored.
As an affiliate, you're getting paid by how well
your content actually performs for the traffic
that you're sending to a particular offer.
As a sponsor, it's a totally different thing.
With a sponsor, you're getting paid for the awareness
that you bring to them and you're also,
as a content creator, as someone that is gaining influence
in a space or has influence in a space,
you're also being paid for that association
with that product to your name.
It's kinda like the idea of you know,
hey Nick uses a Sony camera and his stuff looks pretty cool,
so therefore, I'm going to use a Sony camera
so if I were to be sponsored by Sony, which I'm not,
but if I were to be sponsored by Sony,
then that would be where that awareness would come in
because of my comments, people are always asking me
what camera I use and things like that.
So part of that as a sponsorship would be
that I'm being associated with their products.
Which I am, you know, anyway because I just said it.
We'll get into the free mentions that you do later.
But, basically with a sponsorship, its where you are getting
connected to that particular product or service
and it's also your job to help spread awareness
about that product or services well and it's not based
on the specific traffic that you drive to it.
Now, with that said, of course, extending
your sponsorship deals could depend on that.
If you're not performing for them in the way
that they would like, then of course,
they might end up canceling that deal in the future.
So, then it would be performance based.
But it's not a per click, per conversion situation.
But, if you can get sponsorship with a bonus of affiliate
to where it's performance based plus they're paying you
for the awareness, then that's a double win so to speak.
Personally, when one of these brands reach out to me,
and they're like, "Hey, we've got this $25 thing.
"We'd love for you to make a video about it
"on your YouTube channel."
Or they're like, "Hey, we've got this $100 thing
"we think could be a great fit for your audience."
Yeah, it would be an amazing fit for you.
However,I'm not gonna do it
just for like a hundred dollar item
because all of the different stuff that I have to do
in order to accommodate that particular arrangement.
So my response to those is typically a fee
that is much larger than they were anticipating.
Or the idea, a proposal of some kind, to offer them
some type of longterm arrangement,
which they almost always say no
because they're trying to low ball me.
Just like they would be trying to low ball you
in a similar situation.
I got contacted by another company recently.
They were wanting me to do another 100 dollar thing.
And my response to them was, hey, I love your products.
You make awesome stuff, however, this thing
that you're wanting me to promote
isn't going to be any benefit to me whatsoever.
So you can pay me to do it, pay me a decent fee or whatever,
or you can send me, and I gave them a list of all the stuff
that they had that I wanted
and it totaled up to around $6000.
And I said, you can send me this stuff
and then I'll make videos about that stuff
and I'll make videos about the thing
that you're wanting me to make a video about.
Now, I don't know if you are a psychic professionally or not
but if you are not, you can probably still guess
that didn't work out because again,
they were wanting me to promote something
for what they thought in their minds, I would fall for
instead of saying, okay, well hey, let's give some equal
value here, let's give an equal exchange
to where we both win, instead of saying, well, hey,
we just wanna take advantage of this person
in order to get our stuff in front the people
that watch their videos.
Hang with me here, the solutions
coming up here in just a sec.
But look, the content that you are making is valuable.
You are valuable, your time is valuable,
the people that watch your videos are valuable.
And everybody in that system, everybody that's trying
to get you to make these videos, they know it.
So because of that, it's important that you also know that
so that when these people approach you,
you can make sure that you're making the right decisions.
But really, what they're doing is they're trying
to take advantage of you because they think
that you don't know what you are worth
and what your audience is worth in terms of getting
their stuff in front of the people that watch your videos.
So they're trying to take advantage of you.
And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying
to not work with brands at all.
What I'm saying is to know your worth
when you are in negotiations with these people
that are reaching out to you, because they are
going to try to low ball you.
They are going to try to get you to do stuff
for practically free and they know on the back end,
they know the impact that a video
being on your YouTube channel can have.
And it's also important for me to say
that if you just wanna make a video about something
because you just wanna make a video about it,
then do it, that's a totally different situation.
For example, you know the list videos that I make,
where I tell you the different video editing softwares.
The different apps that you need for stuff
and all of that, I do that stuff without any compensation,
well in some of them, some of them I'll get
affiliate commissions or whatever, but I do that
without compensation because it's stuff
that you need to know in order to be a YouTuber.
Therefore, if I find products that I'm like,
hey, this is something good, I need to let people know
about it, I'll let you know about it
even if I'm not gettin' paid for it.
So I'm not saying don't make videos about products at all,
I'm just saying, don't let these people
that are trying to take advantage of either
your lack of knowledge of the value that you have,
or the lack of knowledge that you might have
about this particular situation and how it works
between creators and brands.
Now for the solution, if you somebody hit you up
and they wanna offer you a 25 or a 100 dollar product
and you think, you know what, what am I gonna have to do
actually, what's gonna be required of me?
Am I gonna send them videos?
What is it exactly that I'm gonna have to do
in order to make that?
If you think, hey this is gonna be a lot of work.
Then a solution for you would be to explore
affiliate marketing because, if you do affiliate stuff,
then again, it's gonna be based on your performance.
But what that's going to teach you,
is that's going to teach you that you can make
certain videos that people will end up purchasing
things from that you can actually generate longterm income
from instead of just getting an object of some kind.
And then it's just a 25 or 100 dollar object
that doesn't bring any future value to you.
And it doesn't matter whatever kind of channel you have,
there's something that you can promote.
Even if at the very least, if it's signing up
for the Amazon program to where you can send traffic there
and then you get cookied in and then you make a sale
on any purchases that they make on anything
within 24 hours, even things like that.
It doesn't matter what type of content you make,
there is a solution for you on the affiliate side.
So be safe out there Nimminati.
And if you do wanna make real money
with your YouTube channel, this video right here
is going to share with you
seven different ways that you can do it.
This one down here is the one
that YouTube thinks that you should watch.
And if you wanna learn more about growing your channel,
making videos and all types of YouTube related stuff,
start now by hitting the round subscribe icons
so you don't miss anything.
Thank you so much for watching.
I'll see you next time.