So in this video. I'm going to be talking with my good buddy don over in New York
And we're going to be feeding off each other and just talking about how we use different strategies to
Acquire things for our YouTube channel to make it better and make a bigger
Basically sharing our experience on how we get free products and stuff like that and giving that experience or that expertise to you guys.
So
Let's get started.
Awesome. So one of the things that we do is we often reach out to
Different manufacturers of items that we know that will be specifically used within our YouTube channel.
A good example for me would be Synology NAS
They actually reached out to me knowing what my content was and
Asked if I would like to do some tutorials for them, and I was yeah very happy to, so
We actually struck up a conversation and from there. I've done so far two
Tutorials for Synology and the third one is on the way, and I'm looking forward to actually
Continuing the relationship with them and producing more content for them
So quick question, how did they reach out to you was it like through a third party? Or did they say like how they reached out to you, or they just directly said "Hey here's the email"?
I'm shooting to you and say "Hey, john we kind of want to work with you", or how did it go?
Okay, so initially Synology reached down to me by my email which I include in my about section of my YouTube channel, so
They reached out by that email and said "Look we've watched your content. We like your style. We'd like you to use your style, but doing tutorial videos In your style for our products"
So the basics of how they found you was basically through the about page on your YouTube channel right?
Correct. So they found me by my about page, and I included descriptions in there of what I actually do with my channel
And that's how come they knew you know that I was a tech channel
Yes, see, that.. That's actually a really good way to
Have someone contact you definitely put an email in your about page or an email on your description or somewhere where somebody's able to contact you so that
Yeah, I Would personally say that's one of the best ways because I got reached out many times through that method also
Same thing you know leaving my email on the about page or
Even in the descriptions below when you make a video or something like that
Definitely
So
Another way that we could actually achieve free products or stuff like that is to reach out to the company itself
So being if you're trying to
Have a product or if you're trying to
Do a review on a product or something like that or a project on the product saying
Here's one that I'm working with right now which is Western Digital
Now what I ended up doing is going to their main website
And directly going to their marketing section of their website, and hitting the "Contact us" button
Now on the "Contact Us" you could actually have sections where there's a drop-down that says you know troubleshooting or
Whatever that case may be but there's an actual section that says either marketing or advertisement
And that's where you kind of want to just shoot out a quick
Get to the point
Email you could say now as soon as you open that dialog box or depending on what website that it is
Most of times you could put like
Your brief description of who you are what you do?
And you know basically telling them what you want, now.
Main thing is when you do something like that you got to make sure you've got to get to a point quick because they don't want to read a
A textbook
To figure out what you want they want you to get to a point so basically you want to tell them who you are
What you do?
What value you could bring to their product and what product you need so something like that could be...
You can finish that off probably in the
Ten sentences or something like that.
Hey I'm Don from NovaSpiritTech and I run a YouTube channel that mainly specifies in blah blah blah
Then you could tell them "Look my main source of viewers are hobbyist in this aspect and I would like to review one of your products.
You know and then you just get to a point really quick and leave them a contact email and in most cases.
They will Reach back out to you, whether it's good news or bad news, they will use your reach back out to you and say like "Hey, we're not looking for sponsors or we are looking for sponsors" There's there's no
Bad news or you could say but at least you tried to reach out to them.
So that's another way that you could do
Another way to try to
Get a product from a customer um.. from a company
Is that what you say yeah, and that's another way you could get a product from a company or
but It's a slower method. It does take a while for them to reach back, but that is a way.
And that's a great way of doing it as well because you've got an idea of, okay
I can use these products in my channel
And I can expand upon what they already have and then therefore it's a value to them so
You're reaching an audience
That wants to see those products
Now just make sure you don't get something like super outrages like "I'm a hobbyist channel that does a lot of Raspberry Pis, but I want your AMD
Thread Ripper to do a review like that doesn't make any sense what I'll do like you try to follow within your niche
Sounds good
Okay, so another way that you could try is through Linkedin so Linkedin is a social media platform for professionals
So you're going to be able to find a lot of people out there who are directly involved in the marketing
Or the PR side of things for those specific companies, so
It's a great way of actually targeting the correct person to contact when it comes to
Reaching out to those companies
Now, quick question about that
Do you have to be friends with them first?
You know how you can add them as a linkedin buddy, or do just directly message them
So you could
Directly message them without actually being a
Contact straightaway, so what you would do is you'd actually
Send them a request but at the same time you would attach a short little message to them saying "Hey I'm a Youtuber. I'm
Really interested in your products. I think that
we would be a really great fit together
And hence why I am reaching out to you right now" And send it away, and that is how I would contact them through Linkedin
That's actually pretty good
Specially if you reach out to someone I guess in their PR department or marketing department that kind of then probably would work very well too
Exactly, so by reaching out to the direct person that you're looking for
It's pretty much putting you right at their footsteps, so if they look at you and they look at what content you've produced in the past and they're like "Actually you know what?"
"You're the sort of person that we could use" Then you're really at the right person to deal with that
Mmm, right so what really stemmed this video between me and John
We were basically talking about another way to reach out to a company
To
Receive their products
And
This other method is actually told I actually had learned this from another person
Where the best way is to reach them out Via Twitter.
I did not know that before and I guess it's probably a known thing, I don't know but if you hashtag a company of your hashtag
Their name you know using the add sign and stuff like that
They will receive that message so most of the time if you're able to, say
You know "#westerndigital I'm looking to do this project blah blah blah blah blah" or actually make that a little bit shorter so you could do like "#westerndigital Hey, I need some Hard drives to upgrade my server at home"
They might reach back at you, and say like "Hey, I could help you out with that" or something like that, so
Another method to reach out
Companies to get products is Via Twitter and
You know I've told by multiple sources that that is actually the best way to do it.
And
John was able to actually find some examples on some people actually getting products this way too
Yeah that's another method
So that is one of the biggest things is that if you don't ask.
You can't receive so it does feel a little bit dirty because you you're going out there and you're not begging, but you're asking for things
So that's the first hurdle, is getting over the fact that you do need to ask
Because a lot of the times these companies don't even know you exist, so
Put yourself out there let them know who you are and what you can do for them
That that is exactly
You nailed it. That is exactly what it is. You can have ten subscribers, or you could have
5,000 subscribers, or you have
50,000 subscribers, but if you don't let them know that "Hey, you know I do this stuff"
They're not going to reach out to a lot of these companies don't even know who you are you could be..
You could have 500,000 subscribers, if you don't reach out to potential clients or you don't reach out to these people they just don't know
You might just think like "Hey I'm at 500 thousand Subscribers people should be reaching out to me" Yes.
There Is that type of people that does that you know, they will
Personally reach out to these youtubers that have 500k but not every company does it.
And it's up to you to do that hustle to kind of go out and tell them "Hey I'm here. I do this send me stuff"
Basically and the more you do it the easier it gets, so
Practice start out small get out there try it on Twitter try it on instagram try it by their support pages
Whatever you can, but the more you try, the more chance you have at succeeding
Mm-Hmm and Here's a bonus tip I would definitely recommend
Trying to set up a long-term relationship with any company you work with whether being the first time you might just want to want the product and no
Probably do not want to be sponsored for it, you know don't take any cash value, that might help you extend the life of the relationship between you and that other company and
Anytime you have a long-term relationship with them, in the future whenever you need a product you could just be like "Hey look I need a hard drive" "Hey, look, I need a network card" Or something like that, the more resilient, not resilient, what's that word.
The more inclined to help you because they know that you do this and you're starting a long term relationship with them and and they seen what you've done, so
That might be something you want to keep in your mind. You know maybe it's not all about the money
It's maybe just to help yourself out and to help them out.
That's exactly right.
Basically that's it for for me I don't have any more tips as far as how to get free products those are the basic things I use, you know
Put the contacts out there
You know, Twitter
And shooting companies emails either it's Corsairs if you're in the gaming if you're
into hardware you do Western Digital and stuff like that, Raspberry Pi if you need a Raspberry Pi just reach out to them and
You've got nothing to lose so what are your thoughts?
That's exactly right,
Ask, and you shall receive
Maybe
Maybe receive, so that's it for me. Thanks for watching me, I really enjoyed making this video with John you're going to probably, I hope
You're going to probably see me more on his channel because we're trying to start these little to new series
I'm going to have him take it away now.
Yeah, so basically if you enjoyed Don.
Go and check out his channel I've got a link up here right now, so
Make sure you click on that. It's also down in the description below
This is a new series. It's not something that you know
It's brand new so make sure you tell us what you think about it by liking this video if you liked It, dislike it? Well give us a thumb down
Make sure you subscribe to both of our channels because we're releasing new content all the time.
We're getting bigger and bigger I'm just about to hit 10,000
Don's already hit 40,000, so
We're getting quite a little bit of a following there so make sure you subscribe for more tech and maker content.
If you guys have any questions or inquiries about questions like these especially like you know how to get free products or what do we film with? Or
You know weird stuff that you want to build start building a Youtube channel or anything else or you want to just get known.
Not known you want to
Man, I can't even think of the word trying to say it
So if you guys have any more questions regards to you know get free stuff or you know what camera gear we use is or what settings or how to record how do you get the video up or YouTube? Related stuff or anything
Regards to something that we could probably answer you because we're in this kind of field
Leave it in the comments below and we'll try our best to go through all the stuff and answer your questions as much as we can because
Imagine, Learn, Create
So ha look at that nailed it on the 3rd try
And that is the thing is that it's
To be honest, that's the whole reason why both of us do Youtube is that
We want to share our knowledge?
We want to share how we created something. How we figured something out
How we grew to 10,000 and 40,000 subscribers that's
That's that's our nature. We don't really hide anything if you want to know anything just ask
So with that said as always Imagine, Learn, Create