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This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, This episode has been brought to you by Squarespace, This video was supported in part by Squarespace
This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, This weeks video is brought to you by Squarespace This video is brought to you by Squarespace
This video was made possible by Squarespace, Ill like to thank Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode, This episode was brought to you by Squarespace
This episode is brought to you by Squarespace brought to you by Squarespace Squarespace
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♪ Bells Ringing ♪
So if you're like me you've probably noticed that there are like a lot of youtubers sponsored by Squarespace
There are a lot of sponsored youtubers period these days and I always wondered about how all that works
This year I finally found out firsthand see when you make a random video that just happens to get one or two
million views your inbox starts getting filled with unsolicited offers
This guy wanted me to make a video reviewing his self-published book promising me exposure
This guy says me about 1 email a day begging me to join his multi-channel network
This girl wants me to do a let's play of her company's mobile game
I even get requests from monthly snack box companies asking me to do taste test vlogs.
There are a lot more I could talk about I get about 3 or 4 of these offers a week most of them go right to my emails trash bin
But some of those offers have money attached
Sometimes lots of money and as a creator who came up from nothing you start to weigh your options
On whether or not you should make a deal. That's the creators dilemma
You need to support your family and yourself and there are companies willing to help you financially
But the moment you as a creator take them up on such an offer you'll
Invariably be labeled a sellout
And you have to keep in mind that for every such video you make you risk losing a portion of your audience
So for example the 3,000 bucks that I'm offered by the development team of outer space amusement park Tycoon 4 might not be worth the 50,000 subscribers
That I would lose the moment they see a video game
Let's play in their subscription feed with my name on it up to this point, I've said no to
Sponsored videos simply because I either didn't believe in the product or because I didn't feel it would be a good fit for the channel
But after a year of quality content, and eventually the big boys came knocking
Today I'm gonna tell you what goes on behind the scenes when making a sponsored video you see him all over YouTube
But you probably know very little about how they come to fruition well wonder no more because the video that you're watching
Is a sponsored video so I decided it would be appropriate to use it to talk about how sponsored videos are made
Dude... So meta now to lay the groundwork the first thing you should know is I have a website AustinMcConnell.com
And I've always hated it nobody ever went to it. It was bland and unimpressive and I tried about every web design platform Imaginable,
and it always always always looked bad aesthetic is important to me on film on YouTube
And yes on what should be my digital showroom, but over time my embarrassing website
Just got more and more embarrassing, and so I essentially used it as a landing page to redirect people elsewhere
I eventually just settled on having it auto forward to my youtube channel
Because I mean even that was better than some cheesy tumblr template that made the whole thing look like somebody's abandoned
Livejournal it remained that way for a long time, but then one day actually Friday September 22nd 2017 at 11:30 9am
I got an email from a representative at Squarespace. We'll call him KD
Hey, this is Austin from the future so at this point in the video
I was going to show you the actual email that was sent to me with the personal information redacted
But Squarespace contacted me and asked me to remove the emails contents from the video completely. They felt. It was just a bit, too
Confidential there was this really hilarious
Joke where the Squarespace employee would take the form of NBA?
Champion Kevin Durant except with a British accent it made sense in the original cut anyway
I just decided to replace all of the confidential paperwork in this video with an artist's approximation of them carry on
Hey, Austin I'm KD with Squarespace we like what you're doing with your channel
And we'd love to sponsor you if you're interested let us know and we're happy to provide more details
Thanks upon receiving that email my first thought was
♪ Airhorns ♪
No not really my first thought was actually this is fake
Like I said I get a bunch of unsolicited offers many of them promising huge partnerships with big-name companies
But after you do a little investigation you find out they want to sign you to a ridiculously restrictive contract
That'll take more cash out of your wallet than what it puts in needless to say I was skeptical of KD well
I decided to shoot him a quick response and after a couple of back-and-forth send some internet sleuthing I was able to confirm his identity
And pretty soon we were talking rates now to be honest
I really didn't know what the going rate was for video sponsorships
And I looked around the internet for help and the internet got back to me as it usually does with contradictory information
I learned that there was this figure called
CPM cost per thousand a marketing term that basically means how much an advertiser pays for every one
One Thousand views it's a metric used in pretty much all advertising areas radio TV newspapers
And of course nowadays YouTube so for example if youtuber
Sassafrass mac stats underscore 89 post the video online that gets 20,000 views and an advertiser pays for a rate of $10
CPM or 10 bucks per thousand views she makes about
$200 but of course that begs the question
What's the standard?
CPM and there's a lot of thoughts about this it depends on a lot of things how popular the youtuber is how effective they are
at generating referrals
And how much money the company in question is willing to spend I've seen recommended CPM is vary from $15 to $50
And there's really no wrong answer. You just have to work it out with a company in question
I came up with a rate that felt right for me
And I sent it on over to KD with the requested information
And we eventually settled on an agreement the conversation went something like this. I said yo Dawg
I'm gonna need about this much money if I do a sponsored video for you
and then KD said I'm willing to do half at tell me and then I said, Alright
Then he sent me a contract I read over it with my legal advisors signed it then squarespace signed it, too
And I was given a deadline and some guidelines now much i do has been made about the fact that
Advertisers may use their money to control creative content
But I mean it's only fair that if they're gonna pay you money to make a video you follow the rules that they lay out for it
and to be honest I had pretty much had No issue with what Squarespace requested. It was all fair and square
Space
Sorry, it's the basic request that you usually get from ad clients. I mentioned their products
I Don't disparage their company, and I keep the content clean so to recap the process for this video
Sponsorship went as follows. I was contacted by a company who asked if i'd be interested in a
partnership for a few videos
They asked me for my rate. I provided it to them we negotiated terms and settled on something that was fair to both parties
They then provided me with what's called an ad read which is a list of certain things that I was required to say and some
General ideas and suggestions for other stuff. I might mention basically a list of product features
I actually noticed that they were really good with letting me change the ad read in a way that would fit my style better
They gave me a deadline to have the videos in by and I got to work all of that's pretty straightforward
But one thing I wasn't gonna do was take money from a company
I didn't actually believe in hands rather than just cash a check and direct you dear viewer to a company blindly I
Decided to you know actually put the product to the test which leads me back to my awful website
Squarespace claims to be the all-in-one solution for anyone looking to create an online presence
So here's my experience with them first thing. I had to do was transfer my website from the host
I was originally using this host is known for having really bad customer service
And I figured I'd have a really bad time trying to get things moved over to a new platform
But I was pleasantly surprised that transferring domains with Squarespace is simple
I literally just had to create an account give them the site information and within a few minutes
I had things switched over easy peasy
oh and by the way that old host they tried to pull some really annoying stuff to reverse the transfer shortly thereafter
But I called up squarespace's 24/7 customer support
And they were able to fix it lickety-split once all that was done actually while doing all that the company gave me a really awesome
Dashboard to start designing I've used a lot of different web designers
And I'm not just being a company man telling you that squarespace's was by far the easiest
That I have ever worked with I mean my wife who has no web design
Experience at all could use this thing if she wanted in all of about two minutes
I was able to make an awesome landing page
Looked a hundred times more impressive than anything that my sighted ever looked like before
One of the things about working with website templates is that you're always concerned your site is gonna look like a carbon copy of somebody
Else's that chose to use the same template
But Squarespace allowed me to tinker with and change practically everything about the layout of my site
they've even got handy tips on how to design certain kinds of sites if you're a small business and a band a
photographer if you're making a travel blog if you're doing a wedding website if you just feel like carving out a digital space dedicated to
Your dog they'll tell you the best way to design the site
Anything you want to do differently they'll provide you the tools to do so I used to blog a lot
But I stopped because I never found an easy way to have a site
That was both a showroom and a journal
But now I've got a way to design a site that
Complements both kinds of content at once and this is the most exciting thing for me
Squarespace and makes it stupidly simple to set up a storefront to sell pretty much whatever you want
They have a commerce section that directly integrates into the dashboard to manage orders track inventory
I can even set discounts if I want I have never found an easy way to do this
And I've always wanted something designed this way for the first time
I actually have the ability to sell my films shows and other projects
Directly through my personal website no middleman this has huge potential for me as a creator
And I've got to tell you with what I'm working on for this next year. This could be a total game changer
I can't express how excited. I am that a simpleton like me can now do this stuff. Now there's one other thing
I want to talk about like I said they gave me that big ad breed that had talking points of stuff
They'd like me to mention, but this wasn't on it whatever too bad so sad
Here's the thing I can edit anything on my website. I can do anything that I've talked about thus far on my phone
That's insane. It's insanely useful actually and I know that because all last week while putting my site together
I was away from my office my sister-in-law was getting married congratulations by the way Sarah
And I was a few hundred miles apart from the computer that I do all of my design work from but that didn't matter
Squarespace lets you edit and manage your website from the palm of your hand
They've got a whole list of mobile apps
And you can even use your phone's built-in browser to revise your site make posts share images and videos check analytics manage your store
Whatever, this is important for me because next year
I'm probably going to be doing quite a bit of traveling and the thought of being away from my officer so long is really
Scary especially since having a youtube channel means I need to have a fairly active online presence the thought of releasing material
And managing the promotion of said material all while on the road seemed impossible a couple months ago
Now I can I can actually do that
I'm not too proud to admit
Squarespace impressed me so much so that for the first time I felt comfortable recommending their product to you all
Sponsored videos are sometimes seen as shady backroom deals
And they aren't without controversy we could get into all the potential pitfalls in a later video
But I felt like if I was gonna do one
I owed it to my
Subscribers to be as transparent as possible about the process so that one day if such an opportunity arises for you
You'll know what to expect because I know I sure didn't now it's quite possible that my experience in this process was atypical
Maybe lots of sponsored videos are founded on a premise
That's at best questionable and at worst dishonest who knows maybe most are so going forward
I'll make you a few promises first. I'm not gonna become a walking billboard. My channel is owned by me
It's my name
And I'm not selling it to some company certain sponsorship opportunities
Might pop up here and there to help keep my channel running and to put food on the table for my family
But my mango on this channel has and always will be to be me
Secondly I will only use sponsors whose products I actually believe in I won't try and sell you on something
I haven't actually used and if something I do advertise fails to meet my personal satisfaction you can rest assured
I'll be the first one to tell you and finally if you use a product that I suggest and you're not happy with it
I want to know and you can have my assurance that I'll do what I can
To let your complaints be known and on that note if you're feeling so inclined maybe you'd like to try squarespace
Out for yourself head to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to launch go to squarespace.com/austinmcconnell
To save 10% off of your first purchase of a website or domain and there you go
Let me know what you guys think talk to you soon
♪ Hipster Music ♪
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