[lewismenelaws]

I’m a full-time content creator. I feel like patreon/newsletters/paid communities are more hassle than anything.

When I look at the pros and cons of every single revenue strategy, sponsorships has the highest gain and least cons (for me).

Sponsors pay at least 10x what ad revenue pays, I don’t have to ask my community for money and the audience are likely to skip the ad anyway if they didn’t want to watch it.

Patreon is great in theory, but as soon as sponsors start inquiring, you realize Patreon is a lot more work for less revenue.

[electroly]

I see the same few sponsorships constantly: Skillshare, Brilliant, Nebula, Hello Fresh, BetterHelp, Raid: Shadow Legends. I like to guess which one it's going to be when the creator starts telling a made-up story that leads into the sponsorship segment. The fact that it's the same ones, over and over again, across a wide spectrum of channels, makes me think that sponsorship is not yet a proven reliable source of income in the long term. A seemingly small number of companies are trying it out and it seems like they could easily pull out at any time. Patreon may be harder but it feels like a more dependable source of income than sponsorships.

[vintermann]

Also PCBWay (mostly for "maker" videos) and VPN providers.

Paradox Interactive's relationship with the comedy sketch group Door Monster is also pretty nice to see. It seems clear that's not strictly a business relationship, but also someone at Paradox being genuine fans.

I think there's actually a bit of a sliding scale between personal patronage and corporate patronage. Local businesses sponsoring local plays, concerts or sports events is another example of sponsorship which isn't likely income-generating.

[Ekaros]

Nebula is bit weird on that list as my understanding is that it is somehow creator owned and controlled, but rest yeah... I also wonder how long this model will operate, the advertising spend on these products must be significant and I wonder if it is sustainable in long run. Specially with these interest rates or in possible recession...

[ehnto]

I don't exactly know how it works but creators tend to call it "my streaming platform" and that feels a little bit like a marketing angle. For the longest time I thought Adam Neely had literally funded and built Nebula.

[sickofparadox]

It is a marketing angle, Wendover Productions is the actual creator of the service and has a video about how they bootstrapped the service and got it to the size it is currently.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Alqt6RCEWdM

[seusscat]

One in that list is not like the others. Nebula sponsorships are for creators that are already a part of their network trying to move viewers to their platform.

That's not a diss on Nebula. I think, among all the others, nebula is the most likely to be sustainable. It is creator owned and operated and the pricing model model seems like it is able to make decent money for the people on it.

No affiliation to Nebula, just a happy, paying customer.

[ahzhou]

Its a two sided marketplace and companies only care about the conversion they get from different channels. If demand dries up, it will be reflected in more attractive pricing - I don’t think it’s likely that the entire market pulls out.

FWIW - it seems like the campaigns are working. You seem to be familiar with the brands and someone below chimed in on how one particular brand is great. Multiply that by the viewership - that’s definitely a win.

Some quick (unverified) research tells me that YouTuber marketing pays somewhere in the range of 30-70 CPM. You can pretty easily calculate that against google AdWords with reasonable conversion assumptions to decide if it’s worth it.

[electroly]

My point is that in a healthy market, we'd expect a large number of sponsors and a large number of creators. What we seem to have in reality is a tiny number of sponsors and a large number of creators. Where are all the sponsors? Nearly my whole YouTube subscriptions list lives at the whim of basically three sponsors. If, indeed, they decide to cut their spend, the creators will all essentially have to accept it because there aren't a lot of other sponsors to choose from. It doesn't have to be a full withdrawal from sponsorships for it to be devastating for creators.

[lewismenelaws]

It really depends. My niche is in software and lots of brands allocate budget towards advertisements towards influencers. You might be right, long term it might dry up, but it’s been 2 years for me now and hasn’t slowed down

[bombcar]

It's quite informative to look/listen to old videos and podcasts, and see who the sponsors are.

So many of them are now-dead VC-backed startups, but here and there you find a sponsor that still exists (Squarespace, for example).

The food related ones are always the most amusing because you know it's all fake bullshit and the host doesn't actually use the product, because nobody does.

[BlueTemplar]

Heh, I recently saw a video which started by an over the top promotional sketch, and then in the middle of the video they openly made fun of it (again) by deliberately slowing down the pace of the video while using a 150 years older competitor...

[chgs]

I love the oversimplified segments when they have some emperor’s message being intercepted and then someone suggests “you should have used nordvpn!”

[sgerenser]

You forgot Factor frozen meals which I see all the time, but mainly on tools/building/woodworking channels.

[_fat_santa]

I think sponsorships work better for more niche products on niche podcasts / YT channels. One great example I can think of are the sponsorships on the Syntax Podcast[1]. IIRC LogRocket was a sponsor a few years ago, I gave it a try based off their ad and I've been a happy customer ever since. Other products they rep are things like Sentry and Sanity and I think those companies are definitely seeing an ROI because they keep coming back.

The problem with the sponsorships you mentioned is they are all broad scale B2C where "everyone" is a potential customer. So you end up with channels that have nothing to do with the product promoting the product and it just comes up as disingenuous. When the hosts of Syntax are telling me that I should try out Sentry, Sanity or any other product in the web dev space, I'm much more confident that it's a legit endorsement based on experience rather than just reading the script.

[1]: https://syntax.fm/

[i-sam]

Personally YouTube is ruined for me because of sponsorships. It just became advertisement packaged as content.

I understand from an economical perspective why people do it, but I can't shake the feeling that the content is just an excuse and the ad is the meat of the content.

[a_wild_dandan]

Install SponsorBlock! With YT Premium and that, my video experience is completely ad-free.

[thaumasiotes]

Install an ordinary ad blocker and your video experience will be completely ad-free without needing YT Premium.

[phone[phone]]

With YT Premium the people you watch actually get paid even if you skip the ads.

[mrguyorama]

The people I watch don't get paid from youtube ads, don't like youtube ads, don't like Youtube forcing ads on videos they do not want to put ads on, don't like random companies forcing ads onto a video THEY made based on some nonsense "contentID" system that is trivial to cheat, and can't rely on youtube not shutting down their channel over "copyright" reasons that aren't even valid.

Patreon means all they have to do is exactly what they want to do, put that on the internet, and make a livable wage. This isn't exactly an isolated case either. Every youtube creator between 100k - 1 million "subscribers" is better served by just doing what they want and being supported by patrons. It is the single most direct and viable form of talent funding.

Most of these creators actively dislike youtube, which is why they push their literal replacement; nebula.

[extraduder_ire]

They would get paid slightly less though, since the premium revenue split is based on watchtime IIRC.

[Pet_Ant]

Sorry, but an ordinary ad blocker will not block the ads embedded in the video.

Apparently "SponsorBlock" actually solves that. Haven't of it before, but the description is promising.

>>> SponsorBlock lets you skip over sponsors, intros, outros, subscription reminders, and other annoying parts of YouTube videos. SponsorBlock is a crowdsourced browser extension that lets anyone submit the start and end times of sponsored segments and other segments of YouTube videos. Once one person submits this information, everyone else with this extension will skip right over the sponsored segment.

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/sponsorblock-for-yo...

[thaumasiotes]

> Sorry, but an ordinary ad blocker will not block the ads embedded in the video.

Yes, that's why I called it a replacement for YT Premium and not a replacement for SponsorBlock.

[rainbowzootsuit]

You are one of today's 10,000.

https://sponsor.ajay.app/

And if you have android:

https://github.com/polymorphicshade/Tubular

[mvdtnz]

Extensions like sponsor block don't help when entire videos are centered around promoting a product. A very popular mountain bike channel I used to follow, GMBN, for example, pretty much only makes videos in order to promote sponsors. The sponsors drive the very content we're here for, it's not just 30 second spots.

[Diti]

SponsorBlock can also tag entire videos of the kind you cited! It won’t block them by default, but the choice of what to do when you find out will be yours.

[mathieuh]

I do notice that the GMBN and GCN videos that are just advertorials do have "AD" in the top corner when you look at the video thumbnail. I'm assuming this is an EU or UK thing, because there are a lot of other channels that do exactly the same thing but there's no such "AD" callout.

https://imgur.com/iorhrD7

These videos take away from the channel's integrity for me but at least they're clearly marked as ads

[rainbowzootsuit]

Fair point there. That channel would just have to drop for me if the "review" videos got excessive, and find a replacement or no replacement.

I'm looking to skip the embedded ad-read sponsorships, credits, the "thanks for subscribing," and "thanks for our patreons" stuff and sponsorblock does that in spades.

[barrysteve]

Yeah it changed mid-2020. Youtube was a nice place to go.

Cheap entertainment is getting boring.

[lizknope]

When you say sponsor do you mean a 1 minute advertisement in a 10 minute video where you say "Today's video is sponsored by ABC Corporation, they make this useful product to do XYZ" or do you mean a video where you got a free product and paid money to do a promotional video about the product?

I've seen both and I don't mine the advertisement style but when someone makes an entire video about a product that they got for free they seem like a shill. Usually their enthusiasm level is off and the whole things seems fake and I don't like watching them.

As for Patreon being a lot more work, I am wondering how? Every month Patreon charges me $12 for the various creators I support. Some of them create videos full time but many have full time jobs. The Patreon money lets them buy old computers, toys, or games to review. I'm nostalgic about my 1980's childhood.

Patreon seems really easy when they say for 10 seconds "If you would like please contribute to my Patreon account"

[lewismenelaws]

It’s different for everyone, but for me, it’s similar to the 1 minute section like you mentioned. I integrate it within my video. Not sure if this is what you’re referring to, but if someone doesn’t disclaim that something was sent to them or paid to say it. Highly illegal.

Reason I say Patreon is a lot more work is because usually you need to build an incentive with Patreon as well (community, BTS, extra content).

[dotnet00]

The incentive doesn't have to be meaningfully extra work though, many of the creators I follow just have the patreon incentive be stuff like getting access to videos a week early, getting access to a discord to hangout in or if they're streamers, having one of their streams each month limited to supporters.

But on top of that, I have never really thought much about the incentives anyway, I join the patreons/youtube memberships of the creators I really enjoy because I enjoy them. For the vast majority of them I don't even pay attention to if they're delivering on their incentives as long as their regular content continues to be enjoyable.

[lewismenelaws]

Appreciate the insight. Something like this is something I have been debating and hearing this is great.

[LegitShady]

getting a product for free translates to $0 in your bank account. It's not sponsored, its just been given or lent to you. You can't feed your family with free items.

[lizknope]

In my first paragraph I said:

"got a free product and paid money to do a promotional video about the product?"

It's not just a free product but also money to promote the product.

[kalleboo]

That interesting since several YouTube creators I follow on Patreon (ok, so it's a self-selecting group) say the opposite. They've done sponsors a few times, but the sponsors are so much work to collaborate with (they take too long to approve videos, they want pointless changes done, etc) that they gave up on it and rely on Patreon instead where they can just create the videos they want to on their own schedule without interference.

[lewismenelaws]

I’ve done sponsorships for a while now, we have contracts specifying that any changes they make is minor at most.

Business sense is really important when dealing with this.

[mrguyorama]

Okay, but I don't want to watch businesspeople, I want to watch what this person is making/doing/writing/etc! That's the whole point!

Patreon means I can just give them dollars for doing a good job, and they don't have to go get an associates degree in marketing to realize that sponsorships are lowballing them entire magnitudes.

I consider this infinitely better to a creator selling my attention, for pennies on the dollar compared to what a company would spend for equivalent advertising from a less exploitable cadre, to companies that are morally grey at BEST, often false advertising or literal scams like Established Titles in the norm.

[lewismenelaws]

You're right! Creators often get short changed from deals like this. All I am saying is that my background has made this career decision for me easy to transition into while making sponsors sustainable.

I know lots of creators who get completely screwed on this front. I am sure the same could happen on Patreon.

[bombcar]

Same with all the various things - you have to balance the effort vs the reward.

One trick is to not do too much on Patreon to start, do the bare minimum so that you don't get overwhelmed later. E.g, give early access instead of a custom special show each week/month, etc.

[_v7gu]

How much extra work is Patreon if you don't offer any extras to people who sponsor on there?

Most sponsored content is either completely orthogonal to the channel and its contents which is quite iffy if the creator is positioning themselves a someone with judgement their audience can trust (non-gaming channels advertising Raid: Shadow Legends, or non-tech channels advertising NordVPN), or actively make me lose respect for the creator (gaming channels advertising Raid: Shadow Legends, tech channels advertising NordVPN, or anyone with BetterHelp after all the shit they pulled).

Of course there are exceptions, like content creators posting on Nebula being sponsored by them or anything Josh Strife Hayes does.

[lewismenelaws]

I’m sure none but then I would feel guilt taking money from my audience. I know it might be silly, but sponsors makes everything free for everyone.

[MomoXenosaga]

Sponsors want something in return. Reminds me of Rembrandt who got into trouble because he didn't beautify his clients enough and went for art instead...

[xxs]

Depending on the type of content, there is always a chance the sponsorship deals affecting integrity.

[lewismenelaws]

Very true. I’m not a review type channel, so this isn’t something I have to worry about.

[JoshTriplett]

What does the typical sponsorship pay, and what factors does it scale with?

[lewismenelaws]

It depends. I have a large following across short form platforms like TikTok and Instagram too. Usually for an integration (basically 1-2 minute ad) it ranges between 8-14k. For a short form video usually around the same.

[monkey_monkey]

I took a look at your YouTube channel and it was exactly what I expected it to be.

[tomcam]

What did you expect it to be?

[mdorazio]

White dude making coding videos with the usual modern algorithm-inspired cringe thumbnails and titles. It definitely seems to be working, though - over 500k subs is impressive.

[lewismenelaws]

Hahaha! Love this comment. Long form and short form content has been significant for the growth.

[monkey_monkey]

500k subs and a very low level of actual views...

[lewismenelaws]

Long form has been expirementation to see what works the last year or so. Shorts is how we grew a lot, long form still needs work but getting there!

[incrudible]

Exactly what it was.