Ben: Hey, what's up? Holo, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Simply PodLogical, a Simply Nailogical podcast. Cristine: Happy Taco Tuesday. It is Tuesday, maybe. B: Well, whenever you're listening to this, happy day. C: Happy day. B: Today's episode is not sponsored, because we're talking about sponsorships. C: That might be a conflict of interest or would it?
B: Maybe. I don't know.
C: Or could it have been an opportunity? I don't know. B: We might have more sponsors on this podcast in the future. C: Oh, how about this episode is sponsored by Simply PodLogical: please subscribe to this channel or download on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
B: Sure, why not. So, yeah, we wanted to talk about sponsorships today mostly because we see it's a highly requested topic. People want to know more about it. And also I think we have some interesting context or perspective on this. Since you got big on YouTube in 2016, I think the sort of landscape of sponsorships on YouTube has changed a lot, mostly in terms of people's knowledge about them. So I think creators have gotten a lot better at disclosing sponsorships in the last four or five years and, maybe more importantly, I think audiences are much more aware or knowledgeable about the fact that YouTubers or online influencers in general are being paid quite a bit of money to promote or advertise products online. And part of having this conversation is because we think it is fair and a good thing that audiences are sort of aware of the sort of economics of being an "influencer." C: And I do think this is kind of a tricky subject to talk about, especially as influencers who do make money. I completely understand the perspective of why audiences often feel disheartened, feelings get hurt, and almost untrusting sometimes when they hear that their favorite Influencer or role model has made money off of something. That's something we'll talk about throughout this podcast, but I think one of the reasons why influencers tend to shy away from this topic, which I think is just being like really honest, is because they don't want to cause that upset and they don't want their audience to all the sudden fully realize the full picture of like the landscape of their business. Not that it's a bad thing. It's not a bad thing to start and grow a business and it's not a bad thing to, you know, that they're choosing not to completely share every single detail of brand deals. Like influencers also don't have to do that with their audience. They have to disclose B: Yes.
C: that there is a brand deal, but they don't have to talk about like all the ins and outs of how it worked. B: And in many cases there are non-disclosure agreements involved, so they literally CANNOT talk about a lot of the details of specific brand deals. C: Good point. B: There's no reason why a YouTuber couldn't be more transparent about their overall financial success, though. I feel like we've been pretty honest over the years that we've done well financially from YouTube. We've never tried to hide that fact and it's always frustrated us when we see big creators that maybe try to exaggerate their lack of financial success on YouTube. But there are plenty of YouTubers who don't make a ton of money, who are more dependent on sponsorships, on Patreon subscriptions, so we're not sort of begrudging people's desire to make money. I guess we just want to note upfront as well that like we're aware that right now there's a lot of people going through a really hard time economically, right?, and having a conversation about YouTubers getting six-figure brand deals might appear a little bit tone-deaf. I guess we're aware of that and we're aware that the frustration is like there are people working really hard right now or people out of work and who aren't making a lot of money and meanwhile X social media star is making a ton of money for doing something that's maybe not a lot of work, relatively speaking. I guess we're just ... we're aware of that criticism. We empathize with it to a degree. C: And, yeah, just to add on to that, I think it can be really frustrating for audiences, too, especially right now to watch big YouTubers like flexing on them, is the term. Like throwing money around, driving fancy cars or whatever it is, and a lot of YouTubers have done that as their shtick for years. But now it can be more painful to observe these kinds of behaviors in an era where it's just harder for people to just survive. Maybe your parents have lost their jobs. Maybe you, you know, you can't go to school anymore, if you were pursuing secondary education. Or like there's all these things that we absolutely acknowledge is a ... is harder for people, for everyone right now. So I just kind of wanted to put that in context. B: Yeah, and like we're two people who have kept, despite having a lot of financial success on what you and I post on the internet, we've kept day jobs outside of that: we work for the Canadian government as crime statistics analysts (most of you listening probably know this). So I think we have a very ... We have like a front-row seat to seeing how some work in our society is very much financially rewarded compared to other work that we find is also very meaningfully important that maybe isn't rewarded as well.
C: That's a good point and maybe I'll reflect on that, because I do see sometimes in the comments, you know, in a video where someone's spending a whole bunch of money just on nothing really of importance, and someone will say like "I can't believe that this YouTuber makes 10 times what a doctor makes. Like a doctor saves lives. How the hell has society come to a place where we're giving a YouTuber 10 times that amount for doing what? Like this garbage on the internet!" And I ... personally like I understand that frustration and it boggles me, too, and it hurts my brain and it can be upsetting. And in my own situation, I think of, for example, the work I do as a crime statistics analyst as--maybe not me as a one person is that important, of course I work on a team and there's like thousands of people in my department-- but together, or at least I contribute to, I think, work that is really important in Canadian crime prevention and policies and laws in Canada. So when I compare how much I made for painting my nails on the internet, which seems really like doesn't take much ... that much mental capacity, you know, it seems rather frivolous and silly. it doesn't appear like that much workload and it isn't really doing much to contribute to the better of society, other than like maybe giving people a few laughs. I compare that with the, you know, (six? eight? eight years?) eight years have I worked for the government so far, something like that, and the income discrepancy is a lot. And I've also ...
B: Even though we're pretty well compensated working for the government, too, right? C: Exactly. Good point, too.. Even though I am fortunate enough to even have a government job in Canada, which does pay well--we acknowledge that. But I do feel like the work I do there is important for like the community and society and I'm getting paid/compensated far less than the silly shit I do on the Internet. So I've struggled with that. I've thought about the unfairness and it brings up this memory of mine where, like growing up, I've never been into sports (I feel like I've said this before), but I always used to be like "Why the hell are we paying this basketball player $7,000,000 a year? I just don't understand and it makes no sense." So I've had that same sentiment, but like about athletes growing up. I now understand more the ins and outs of the industry and how things are valued at that price and how you actually get to that point, but it doesn't take away from the fact that this imbalance of like what you do in society and what we value is still crazy. B: Yeah, no. I totally agree with you and, yeah, I think the athlete thing is a really good example, because that's one a lot of people can relate to before influencers sort of became the obvious target here. Because it's like "How is a teacher making $40,000 a year while, you know, there's athletes getting paid $20,000,000 to hit a ball with a stick," right? C: I feel like I'm mad already. Who am I mad at? B: I think it's misdirected anger in a way that you shouldn't be mad that the athlete's making that much money, because he's contributing to a sport or industry that draws eyeballs and just in our capitalist society or system, there is that value that is being generated there that explains that money. You SHOULD be mad that that teacher is not being paid a lot and our society doesn't value that teacher. Not mad at people contributing or working in industries that actually do sort of generate those kind of revenues that justify pretty crazy salaries. That's a good point, because I think a lot of the anger is directed directly at influencers these days, rather than the brands and the platforms that are paying them that money. B: Or just be angry at the people who are underpaid and undervalued instead of being mad at people who are overpaid and overvalued. C: Wow, deep thoughts.
B: Is it? C: Deep thoughts on Simply PodLogical . B: Anyway, that was a pretty long, rambling preamble, so let's just hop into questions at this point. All right, first one from holoitshirini: "What is the difference between affiliate codes and sponsorships? I'm personally confused by the two, so it would be great if you could answer my question. Thank you." C: I think this is a great intro question, because I do see a lot of questions from you guys when we asked for questions for this one of people not really being sure what's what or are they the same thing or is it just a synonym? B: Yeah, they maybe understand that influencers or YouTubers are sponsored and paid to promote things, but don't really know the nuance of how that actually works or looks. Sponsorships are generally when YouTubers or a creator is paid a flat fee to produce sponsored content, an ad for a brand or company, or to include a segment within a video that is an advertisement for a product or service or whatever. Affiliate codes are generally when you have like a longer-term relationship with a brand and you'll basically have a code or unique link that is tracked, so that when you promote that product or service and someone clicks on your link or uses your code, the brand can attribute that purchase to the creator who promoted it, and then the creator will typically get a commission on that purchase. So we have done deals with both. I would say you, more than a lot of YouTubers of your size, have done more of these sort of affiliate agreements C: Mm-hmm. B: and there's a few reasons for that. (A) I guess on our last podcast we talked about you starting out as an nail blogger, right?, and how for a long time you sort of undervalued yourself. You were doing a lot of deals for free product or you were basically being taken advantage of by some companies. Thank you for the response to that video right by the way; I think that went over really well.
C: Yeah. B: We saw a lot of nice comments. At a certain point when you realize your value, it's not like you just stopped working with smaller nail companies: Some of them did recognize your value, wanted to keep working with you. But we also knew they didn't have the sort of money as small businesses to pay sponsorship rates that were commensurate to your influence. So what we would do with those companies is have these affiliate agreements, where "Hey, this is like a no-lose situation for you guys. If you just give her an affiliate code or a unique link and all you pay Cristine is just, you know, a certain percentage of your sales, then any of her compensation is purely proportional to what you brought to that business overall." We saw a lot of success with that and we can sleep well at night knowing that even if a little indie brand paid you thousands of dollars, we know they ... that you brought them ten times that much in business, right? It also helped ... these sort of affiliate agreements, we still do them to this day, because with a even bigger established brands that don't have a precedent for working with influencers-- even if they do digital advertising, even if they're running ads on Facebook, Instagram, Google--there still is some trepidation on some legacy brands working with influencers. So if we want to work with a brand a lot and they haven't done this before, we'll pitch the idea of affiliate codes, because, again, it's a no-lose situation for the brand. You only get paid proportional to the business you bring them and in a way it's almost like not even fair, because it doesn't really put any value on brand exposure or other things that brands typically pay a lot of money for. C: Brand awareness. B: Yeah, brand awareness. But we think those deals are fair and a really good way of sort of establishing your value in a sort of business relationship kind of way. C: And I'll just add that early on ... so when you hear me, like I can only talk about my own videos, but when I've said in the past "this video is sponsored by" and maybe it was an indie nail polish company it might have been part sponsorship and part affiliate code. So that's kind of like ... there's also mixed models-- it doesn't have to be only a sponsorship or only an affiliate code-- I've done mixed models, which I like. It does offer a little bit of upfront cost, but to be honest, with the Indies that I worked with like a few years ago, I charged them a much smaller upfront cost than the industry going rate for someone of my size should have been, and then I would suggest to them that "this is my upfront cost for the sponsorship, because I'm making you a dedicated video about your brand and that's to brand awareness, but then any purchases that people make from this I will make a very reasonable like a commission, a cut on all sales." So it ... I thought that was a really good way to allow the brand to feel more comfortable about entering into that deal, because they didn't have to promise like a seemingly giant amount upfront, but then they would see later how well it would do in sales, but then they're able to pay that because the business was there. So that's just kind of how I started it and we played around with what models work best for me, for the brand, for making Everyone happy, but ultimately for me what matters most is how is my audience going to respond to this? Are they going to feel like ... like obviously I need to disclose, so I've always said that this is either a sponsored video or I have affiliate links in my description box or use my affiliate code. I think over the years I've gotten better at it; in the beginning I don't think I always said the words "use my affiliate code," I might have just said "use my code" and then in the description box written it was an affiliate code, but, you know, as the FTC and other regulatory bodies have gotten more clear about what you should do, and as I've learned as an influencer, I do feel it's important to be transparent. B: Well, it's not just important. Legally you have to.
C: No, no, no. It's legal, but there was a time of kind of confusion where it was unclear how you had to say that or disclose and now it is ... It's completely clear now. C: Yeah. I mean, well, I don't even know if it's completely clear now as much as it's ... It was always clear you had to disclose things and I feel like you always did, but where and how that disclosure happens, there are sort of best practices now that weren't really there five years ago. So like in a sponsored video, we know the guidance now that you have to sort of acknowledge in the first thirty seconds that there's a sponsorship in that video, for example. That wasn't really widely known or understood five years ago, right?
C: Yeah. B: So the way things are disclosed like really no matter what, even if you receive free product and you're promoting a brand because they gave you free product, technically you have to disclose that you got a financial benefit and that could be influencing the way you're talking about that product, right? I feel like we're ... you are ... you are good at acknowledging those things and, yeah, over time we've gotten better and it's gotten clearer how to do that. C: Just one more thing I'll add from a content-creation perspective on the difference between affiliateships and sponsorships is in a sponsorship there's usually an agreement with a brand and a brand will give you talking points or they'll have a specific product of theirs that you kind of have to talk about because that is the deal and then you present it like that. The brand has to approve it and it's kind of like a one-package deal. Whereas affiliateships, in my experience, are completely at my discretion, or at least those are the only affiliate arrangements that I will enter into, where I choose when I want to talk about your products, where I want to include the links or codes and it's completely up to me and the brand can't dictate when or where I do that. it's just like kind of understood that I WILL, otherwise why would I want an affiliate link, but there's no pressure on me to generate sales, to share my code X times a month. It's just where I feel it fits naturally and what I feel is right for my audience. So there's no overdoing it unless the influencer is choosing to share that code so many times. So it can also go the other direction, but an affiliate agreement is usually up to the influencer's discretion.
B: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I guess in all these answers, right?, we're coming from our just own experience or from people we've known and talked to in the industry. But I think it's important to know that we're ... you've never had an agent or a manager.
C: Yeah, good point. B: You know, like our experience is sort of limited and maybe different than a lot of mainstream YouTubers, so like I'm ... At first it was you talking directly to brands. Then we realized it puts you in a weird position to be like negotiating your worth with brands, so like I sort of ... when I ... Igot more involved in that sort of thing at a certain point. But, yeah, we maybe have a bit of a unique perspective to this topic in general. Anyway, next question: "What is the largest amount you know of that a YouTuber, yourself or someone else, has been paid for an ad or sponsorship?" So this is the most common question we got, I think, and whenever YouTubers or social media influencers have this conversation this is usually the headline after the conversation, right? I think it's important to note that the same way off the bat we acknowledged we're in not the best economic times right now, that does have reverberations and implications for the influencer industry as well, right? So a lot of the stories we've heard and amounts we've heard about YouTubers getting paid a lot of money, a lot of the examples I can think of are from 2016-2017 and it seemed like that was still a time where a lot of brands weren't really knowledgeable about advertising on YouTube through influencers yet and some companies came along and just started throwing a lot of money at it, not really knowing what they were doing yet. I feel like things have sort of changed in the last year or two, especially now with more people out of work, less people shopping: unless you're like a direct-to-consumer brand, a lot of people who usually spend a lot of money advertising online aren't really doing that right now and that has implications for CPMs or even ad rates that YouTubers are seeing right now. So I guess keep that in mind with our answer. C: And also keep in mind that not all YouTubers make these giant amounts we're about to share, right? There's a top 1% of everything and that includes YouTubers. B: So I think we've all sort of heard like the rumors or stories that like Kylie Jenner gets $1,000,000 to post an Instagram post, but I have no way of verifying that. We have no ... We don't know Kylie Jenner. C: You don't? B: And it honestly could be something that her or her family puts out there to exaggerate her value, honestly. I don't imagine there are a ton of brands actually paying that much for her promotion to be honest with you. That's purely speculation on my point, but I just want to throw that out there. She also allegedly inflated her net worth, right?, and there's been articles about that. But in terms of what we can say for certain a YouTuber has made, there is a really interesting example from 2017, I think. Creator Bethany Mota--I don't know if she's still around. She was like a ... C: She's a very large lifestyle creator.
B: Lifestyle-girl-type creator?
C: At a certain point I think she had like 10 million subscribers. B: She had over 10 million subscribers. Yeah, I don't know if she still makes content or not, but she was affiliated with Studio 71 and the reason we know this is that there was a lawsuit where Studio 71 said they had gotten her a brand deal and that she didn't deliver on it, so they were suing her for fraud, I think.
C: So Studio 71 is her network who managed her.
B: I assume it was her network. It may have just been someone who brought her a brand deal. She wasn't necessarily in their creator roster.
C: It's possible, yeah. B: We don't really know. And, honestly, you can find articles about the lawsuit and I would keep in mind that you're only hearing the facts from the side of the people suing her so it might not even be an accurate description of the case, although it is pretty funny what they say about her not doing the work. But in that lawsuit, they say what her talent fee would have been for doing a sponsored video and some corresponding social posts and that talent fee was $325,000. C: For? B: For a sponsored YouTube video and I gather also corresponding posts on Instagram. Social ... the secondary socials, as we often say. And, yeah, that is a lot of money. C: So, yeah, that paired with just casual conversations we've had with larger YouTubers of similar size to between my size and Bethany's size at the time, in the six-figure realm is what we have also heard. Yes. B: Yeah, so it's not unusual to hear, if you're a YouTuber with an engaged audience who's getting more than ... whose average views on a video is well over a million it's not unusual to hear of them getting offers for six-figure deals, even if they're not taking them. If this number sounds crazy, and maybe it is, I would just ask you to consider-- maybe you have friends who run businesses that pay for ads on the social platforms, on Google even, Facebook, Instagram-- It is expensive to buy ads that just show up in someone's feed.
C: Like Facebook. B: Yeah, so if you're scrolling Instagram and you see a sponsored post.
C: Right. B: A company is paying quite a bit of money for you to see that and those ads are far less effective than a company paying a C: A personality
B: a creator, a person to promote a product within their content. C: And the reason why is because usually the personality YouTuber has a closer relationship with their audience. So if I'm Simply Nailogical and I'm paid to sell a product to you, you might put more weight on that than the same product being advertised to you in your Facebook feed. B: So I think it just would change your perspective on how much money you think it is, when you realize how much money brands are paying just to get a little pop-up ad on Facebook.
C: Right.
B: So people throw around like "industry standard CPM." So CPMs is cost per thousand views. Cost Per Mille, I guess. C: Per Millie?
Mille for a thousand. A mille. And you'll often hear numbers thrown around like $25 CPM. So it's $25 to get a thousand impressions or a thousand views on YouTube, for example. So if you extrapolate that out, that would mean like an industry standard rate could be $25,000 for a million people seeing a sponsorship in a YouTube video. That number would not be shocking to people with experience in online advertising and I would say like a channel your size and knowing that your videos get an average of more than a million views will see offers come in that are less than that--that are like 10,000, ballpark--but will also see ... you have gotten offers that are close and around that six-figure mark. I think it's important to acknowledge that you just aren't someone who does a lot of sponsorships right? You hardly do sponsorships. Maybe ... C: Maybe twice a year. Now, anyways. B: Like you have these affiliate arrangements with like companies you love and were just giving the free promotion to before they sponsor--- had any relationship with you, I guess. But, yeah, in terms of sponsorships, it's not like you do a lot of them, right? C: Mm-hmm.
B: Yeah. C: <coughs> Sorry.
B: You all right?
C: <coughs> Yeah.
B: Okay. Next question: "Do you think some YouTubers take too much for sponsorships? We have all heard crazy numbers, but do you think these extremely high numbers are the actual value of the promotions?" C: So this kind of goes back to what we were saying at the beginning, that it is shocking to hear some of the amounts that YouTubers are getting. Are they crazy or, sorry, are they overvaluing themselves? I think generally, no. In some cases you do hear about like a YouTuber just asking way too much when like that just doesn't make sense for the product Or the brand or what they have to offer in terms of views anymore. B: We hear the opposite, too, though. Like I know I have spoken to a really large creator who got a lot of views who is charging a brand not nearly enough for their promotion. And in that case, maybe you think that's a good thing that they're not getting paid as much, but I guess at the end of the day it just means the brand or the company they're promoting is disproportionately benefitting, right? C: Right. So if you support a YouTuber, presumably you want them to see a good benefit from the brand deal that they've received and not just the company benefiting off of your favorite YouTuber. B: And it should be equitable in a way. Like we would only enter into agreements with companies where we feel like it's a win-win situation. I mean, like the first priority is it's a product or thing you actually like and are comfortable and feel responsible about promoting it, but then secondly it is that question of like (A) Are you being fairly compensated and (B) Do we think the company will see a good return on investment or have a positive experience working on it? We don't want to accept money from a brand if at the end of the campaign they're going to be like, "We paid way too much for that," right? C: Yeah, good point. B: We don't look at it that way, anyway. And I guess another way of answering this question is even though like we feel extremely fortunate about the kind of money we can and sometimes do make online, when we've done the affiliate-type agreements, where you're just being paid completely proportional to the number of sales that happen through your link, it really establishes for us the value of your promotion and does justify the sort of higher-ticket prices brands are willing to pay for your sponsorship. And I would just also add that, you know, I don't know how much SeatGeek was paying David Dobrik for those videos, but they were probably paying him more than six figures and there's a reason why they kept going back and sponsoring him again and again. They clearly saw a return on investment and the companies who are doing this responsibly and intelligently have ways of measuring that and there's a reason you see them repeatedly working with the same YouTubers who are able to drive the sort ... of a successful campaign. C: Yeah. So you always have to remember that, generally speaking, if a brand has done this more than once that they are seeing a return: it is good for their business to pay that influencer however much they did pay them. So the ... if the brand feels it's worth it, then that's kind of the industry situation that we're in, in terms of the value of the promotion and whether it's fair.
B: Yeah. All right, next question: "How long did you have a platform before you started getting sponsorship offers? Is it based on how many followers you have or more based on your engagement?" This is a ... The last part of this question, I hear all the time: Does it matter whether you have more subscribers or more views and I will say that smart brands care less about the number of subscribers or Instagram followers you have and far more about the engagement level of your audience, because who cares if you have 10 million subscribers and only 300,000 of them watch on a weekly basis.
B: A typical video.
C: Right? That attrition is just so much that that 10 million subscriber figure means absolutely nothing if you're not getting the impressions, the faces, the people actually seeing the content. So same thing applies to Instagram or Facebook pages. B: Yeah, and in terms of the first part of the question, you know, when do you start getting sponsorship offers as an influencer? I would say there's probably a lot of channels out there with only like a few thousand followers who are probably already getting emails from smaller, less reputable companies that it's hard to even tell if they're like
C: Legitimate. B: legitimate or not. Right? The real threshold is when do you start hearing from bigger brands that are actually willing to pay the more significant like industry-standard rates. It's hard to say when that happened exactly. And again, our experience is different because you don't have an agent or manager trying to get you those deals.
C: Yeah. B: We, you know ... your inbox is full of people wanting to pay you to do things. We don't respond, even, to most of those offers. Of like the 5% that come through that seem legitimate and like a brand you potentially want to work with, we'll engage with them and then very few of those deals even work out just because you are not trying to turn your channel into like an advertising stream. C: No. I mean, I have done sponsorships and I do have affiliate links and codes, but I don't want all of my content to be an ad for something else.
B: No. C: That just doesn't feel right with me. But I will say, when I started getting sponsorships ... Like I think we explained this in the last podcast that I got big on Instagram first. That's kind of where I found my first success, pre-"Polish Mountain." And I'd say my first offers of sponsorships were for Instagram posts.
B: Yeah. C: And I was offered like ...
B: Cough, cough, Fit Tea. Cough. C: Well, yeah, I never accepted those. Anything to do with with diets
B: Yeah. C: and "fitness" in that sense of like unhealthy fitness. B: It's kind of sad thinking back that those were some of the first offers that came through. C: And I remember one of them offering me like $1,000 for an Instagram post,
B: When you were just small. which was wild to me at the time,
(B: At the time.)
C: because I'd accepted a $60 sponsored post for a cell phone case around the same time.
B: Yeah. C: Anyways. So thinking back to that like very, very early days of my sponsorships on Instagram, can ... like try and put yourself in that position. Like you're offered $60 to post a cell phone case that like is pretty harmless and it's an ad, but it's kind of fun to like have a business opportunity. And then I'm offered $1,000 to post about diet tea.
B: Yeah.
C: So as someone, you know, who was working and like could have really used $1,000, I still made the decision like "I'm not doing it." However, there were my peers who accepted the same deal and I feel like it's a tough position to be in until you're in that position and you kind of know what it's like. Because I know a lot of the women who accepted that deal at that time maybe didn't feel like the best about it, but I don't know their personal income situation and I feel like a lot of them accepted it because they really needed it. So ... B: And if you're living paycheck to paycheck and a brand comes along offering $1,000 to advertise something, even if you don't believe in it, yeah, it would be hard to turn that down in certain situations.. C: So even though I have my own like ethical standards about what I choose to post on my channel, I also recognize that I have the financial ability to turn down so many deals that I'm not comfortable with because I don't need that money. I mean now it wouldn't be $1,000. I'm sure tea diet equivalents would be willing to pay far more today, but I would still say no, but that's because I CAN say no. I try and understand some situations. B: It's not completely black and white, but I definitely lean much further to the side of
C: Morality.
B: you should not be taking sponsorships from companies you don't believe in, no matter who you are or what your position is, I don't think.
C: Yeah. B: Especially if you have a lot of influence on young girls. Like I don't care how much you need the money, you shouldn't be promoting to young girls harmful products, right? Next question: "Do you think big YouTubers make most of their money from sponsorships (whether they are disclosed or not) or from ad revenue?" C: Its Paulina. She's a nail blogger.
B: Okay. C: I see the nail bloggers in the comments. B: Paulina's Passions: shout-out on Instagram. For you, you have made more money on YouTube ad revenue because you take so few
C: Yes. B: sponsorship deals.
C: I think it really depends on the YouTuber. There's some YouTubers who make far more--and I've heard some people say this, too--that they make way more on sponsorships, in part because they take on sponsorships frequently and maybe they post less or they have content that gets demonetized, which means that there's no ads on their videos or there's limited amounts of ads and they're not making much money from making YouTube videos anymore. B: Yeah. Companies are ... should be paying more for sponsored content than they are likely paying for pre-roll ads on YouTube videos, right? So that should tell you that if a YouTuber has a sponsor every video, they should be making more from sponsorships than they make from the ads running on those videos. C: In theory, yes. B: It that fair to say? Yeah?
C: Yeah. But like we said, for Simply Nailogical personally, it's like maybe 90% YouTube ad revenue, because I just don't take much sponsorships. Yeah. B: I think maybe this is an opportunity, though, to like remind people that big YouTubers could be doubling their revenue by doing frequent sponsorships, and it's not a way of patting ourselves on the back, but maybe acknowledging people like Jenna Marbles who for years could have been doubling the amount of money they were making by doing sponsorships and not choosing to do this. I have like the utmost respect and admire her sort of moral conviction that she wasn't comfortable doing ads, so she just decided to never do them. C: Yeah. I completely agree. And I think it really depends on the channel and the landscape and your comfort level Like podcasts, for example: ads are so normalized on podcasts. It's almost like weird when there's a podcast WITHOUT an ad read.
B: A little bit, yeah.
C: Like this one.
B: Yeah. C: So I think it depends. And like you said earlier, audiences are getting much smarter and I don't think audiences today are upset when, you know, your favorite creator has a podcast and then they do an ad read, because it's so clear that like, "This is an ad break. We're now reading from sponsors. You understand that we were paid to say this," but hopefully you also trust the influencer enough to know that they're only going to accept sponsorships from companies that they vetted, that they work with and they generally enjoy and think that you will enjoy.
B: Yeah. Well put. All right, next question: "Why did you do these sponsorships when you said you don't make YouTube for the money?" I think what you just said kind of answers this question in a way, right? I don't want to speak for you, so maybe I'll just let you sort of answer. Like what is your perspective on ... Like you started your YouTube channel not ... Money wasn't your main motivation when you started. I think that was very clear from our conversation about you being a nail blogger. C: Yes. I started as a hobby. I was just painting my nails. I love projects. I feel like you guys know that about me by now. I just love making work that ... for myself that is fulfilling and making myself have goals. So although I started nail art, nail blogging and my YouTube channel with no in---. I didn't even know you could monetize YouTube videos when I started, I learned about it like a few months in and then I monetized them, but like I had no idea. B: And you had videos with like a lot of views before and you're just like, "Oh, I didn't know you could turn on monetization." B: Didn't know. Oh, why didn't ... And it had been around for like years, but I just didn't know. I started it as a hobby and it's a passion and then over time I realized that it was something that I could turn into a business. And isn't that kind of the dream? That if you have a passion that you can turn into a business, that's an opportunity that anyone should want to take. So I don't think people should feel guilty for finding the opportunity to turn their passion into a business. That paired with the fact that I love projects. I took my passion project and turned it into a passion business project and, you know, looked at how could I grow this business? How could I scale it? ANd how could I thrive from it in a positive way, while still, you know, trying to keep the passion in it, which is challenging at times. And we've talked about this: like why I took a break from YouTube last Christmas. B: Mm-hmm.
C: Had to do that to like remind myself why I do this, because sometimes it does feel like the business takes over, but at the same time I think it's possible to do both and isn't that something that we should ... I should feel proud of that. And sometimes I feel like I felt guilty in the past because I've seen questions like this: like people almost accusing you "Well, you're making money off of it, so you must be doing it FOR the money."
B: Mm-hmm.
C: And I don't think that's fair. I think it's possible to have a passion and love doing something and want to see it grow as a business. And I just kind of ... I fell into this, I admit, but I went with it and I want to see my passion business succeed. B: Yeah, and it's not to say that money isn't A motivation. Yeah, like, we're not above ... Like making money is nice, but I think we know in our head and in our hearts that when you started this, and even today, our main motivation isn't making money. And I think you put it ... you sort of admitting that you just like our love ... you love and are sort of obsessed with like projects and working on projects. To me, when like we're sort of behind the scenes evaluating the trajectory of your channel and businesses and stuff, we're not looking at like the num--- ... the amount of money you're making going up. That's not how we measure success. But I think a lot of people could probably understand that there's a lot of satisfaction in growing a successful business or having a project that is just really being successful and, you know, it's kind of the reason to get out of bed in the morning, in some ways, is like working on this passion project together that also happens to now make us a lot of money. B: Yeah. And I feel like we should do a better job, especially women businesses. I don't know why I see a lot of animosity, especially in the beauty community. I do see people hating on others who are starting brands or this and that and maybe it's part jealousy or maybe it's like "You don't deserve to have this as a business; you're so money hungry," and I just wish we would do less of that and a little bit more of just, you know, supporting people for doing what is clearly their passion and trying to make a business out of it. Maybe that's just sappy sock Cristine.
B: It was a little sappy. Annoying. Next question! All right, from EmilyL nails: "What's a good percentage for an affiliate code for smaller and bigger creators?" C: This is a good question with a direct answer. I like those,
B: Oh, yeah?
C: because I can actually answer it specifically. So for smaller and bigger creators, I don't think the percentage that you would get as commission should change very much, because the revenue that you would generate from your affiliate code or affiliate link is proportional to the sales. So presumably the larger creator would just generate more sales and therefore get paid more. However, that's not always true, because sometimes you have smaller creators with smaller audiences, like by following number, but they have much higher engagement and generate more sales. So then that person might end up actually making more than a bigger creator. B: It should be proportional, but sometimes you'll see a big creator, because they are promoting something at scale, a brand might give them a higher percentage than a smaller person, too, right? C: So there's also that: sometimes I've seen that, so it's like a volume-based incentive to give a larger creator just a little bit more percent, but in terms of like an actual range in the nail/beauty/makeup world, I've seen anywhere between 10 and 20% of the retail value of the item on the website is what an influencer who is an affiliate might make off of you purchasing that item?
B: It very much depends on the industry and the kind of product being sold, because it really depends on the profit margin of that product. Right?
C: Right. B: So like on Amazon, when ... You have like an Amazon store or Amazon links, right? C: I am an Amazon affiliate, yes.
B: Is that what it's called? Okay. C: Or Amazon Influencer, I don't know. B: And there's a huge range of what your commission is based on a product, because if you're selling like a really expensive piece of camera or computer equipment it's typically lower, like almost one or two percent sometimes, right?
C: Yeah. B: Whereas if it's like Amazon's in-house brand, where they're making a ton of money off of it, they're willing to give the creator who promoted it closer to--like how does Amazon top out?--like 15% or something like that. I can't remember exactly, but these numbers are actually public, like publicly available for Amazon affiliates and it's pretty confusing. There isn't one set rate. And they're a volume-based business, so they used to have some incentive where if you sold X amount of orders in a month you would get a higher percentage. And then different genres or departments may have higher percentages. So I've noticed like beauty sometimes has a higher percentage than cameras and equipment. But I've seen it range anywhere from 1 to like 10 percent and ... Amazon is ... gives you less money than other brands usually in my experience when I'm like a direct affiliate with a brand, specifically such as like a nail polish company. But Amazon has a very complex model for how they do it, as opposed to like a brand that just says this is the percent we're going to give you. B: I think 10% is a number you hear thrown around a lot and we've seen in our experience. I also know, though, from the perspective of brands this is getting more complicated because of apps like ... Is it Honey? I can't remember what it's called.
C: Yeah, the code apps. B: But there are a lot of code-sharing services now, so if you give a creator a code, that code can very quickly be shared on these third-party sites that (A) make it very hard to track whether people using that code are actually coming from that creator's promotion or not and then it just makes it really hard to justify paying out someone based off the use of a code that more people might be discovering on Honey than they discovered from that Instagram account, right? C: Yeah, so this is ... This Honey app, although Honey has sponsored YouTubers ... B: I don't want to blame Honey, exactly. They're not the only people doing this. C: Sorry, it's just one example, but these code apps who have been sponsoring YouTubers, are also in a way kind of ruining ...
B: Yeah, this business model. C: ruining the affiliate business model for influencers and the brands who offer them codes.
B: Yeah.
C: Yeah. B: Anyway, just a little nugget to think about there. Next question: "Do you make more when given a set amount of money or when you make commissions off of affiliate links and codes?" So that completely depends and I think some YouTubers would look at this like they generally don't want to do the affiliate model, because why would you when it's more of a gamble and you have to put more work into it, when instead you could just ask a brand for a sponsorship and say "This is the amount upfront."
B: And this is my worth. Yeah, most YouTubers just like that sort of clean like "Here's my fee. Pay me." C: Yeah, I'll do the one sponsored video
B: Transaction's done.
C: and then I'll never talk about it again. And that's ... that seems to be the preferred model. What I've observed in YouTube land, I actually prefer the other one because I like just, you know, sharing my link when I want to and I'd rather the brand not have any say in what video or where I put it or how I say it. That's just my own personal preference. B: I think that's been your preference both on sponsorships and affiliate arrangements is that the more a brand is hands-off in how you choose to promote things, the more you like it . So even when you've done sponsored content for a mobile game, for example, we have appreciated and maybe been willing to work with a specific company more than once because we know how hands-off they are about the approval process right? So if you go back and watch your like "Will it Watermarble?" videos,m your sponsorship there I think is ...so it is part of the humor of the video: it's not obnoxious to the audience, but it still does deliver the sort of talking points they wanted and it just ... if the audience chooses to click the link and download that game, that's cool. And if they don't they can just enjoy the rest of the video. I think we like sponsorships like that. C: Well, I think it is obnoxious, though, but because I made it so obnoxious, like a game show, like "Hey, guys! Here's an ad!" Like, "Heh-heh, I'm a game show host!"
B: It was self aware.
C: But I did that on purpose as like a self-aware humor So that people would laugh WITH me at like "Oh, that's a sponsorship, hahaha," because I thought that that was funny and it fit with my channel. B: Audience perceptions have changed, too. There was a time where like running ads on videos, you'd be called a sellout. And these days it seems like the audience is almost ... celebrates with you, like "Oh, my god, Cristine's now working with David's Tea!" They're just so happy for you.
C: Yeah. B: So I think it's ... that's kind of a nice change, even though we still accept that there's a lot of responsibility in terms of being responsible about how we promote things and disclose things. C: Yes, I think we ... the audience has changed, but it also really depends on the perceived credibility of the YouTuber. There's some YouTubers who audiences are never going to come around
(B: Not celebrating their deals.)
C: and celebrate their deals, because that YouTuber has done things over the years to make them seem like they are just in it for the money
(B: They just care about the money.)
C: or they're just constantly flexing, as is the term.
B: Flexing.
C: So I think it really depends and if you're a smaller content creator out there, I mean, I think your credibility and integrity should come first always, because your audience cares about you and if you care about them and growing your audience, you need to be thinking about these things before just accepting a brand deal just because there's money on the table. B: We've sort of danced around the specific question here about have you made more from commissions or C: Oh, sorry.
B: sponsorships. No, no; that's okay. But are ... I guess, do you want to go there? Do you want to answer this? C: Sure. Let's be transparent, Ben. B: Okay.
Well, go ahead. C: Oh. I thought ...
B: Are you waiting for me to answer? C: I thought Business Ben was going to answer. B: I mean, okay. I .... I'll usually negotiate. Okay, so sponsor deals are typically sort of very short and then they're over and it's sort of you have to follow talking points for 60 seconds in a video, the brand approves it, and then it's done and out of your hair, right? So proportional to the amount of work they are, there's maybe more value in those sponsored deals, but over time the affiliate arrangements you've had with more than one company ... You have made six figures from more than one company from affiliate deals,
C: Over time. B: because they typically exist over a longer period of time that you could promote at your discretion.
C: Right. B: On the sponsored side of things, you've had offers come in that are close to six figures but not quite six figures.
C: We also don't do much to negotiate. I don't know if that's like a bad thing. But like I don't
B: Don't say that.
C: I don't have a manager.
B: There's probably brands watching this. C: Yeah, well, not anymore. No. I don't have a manager. We use Ben to talk to brands And I do know of my peers getting more than I have for similar deals. So. B: Yeah, and that is a little tough to know and we've had the experience with a few companies where it seems like once they realize they're just talking to me, your boyfriend, all of a sudden the tone kind of changes and they start thinking they can get away with paying you like not much money at all. That's always really disappointing, because we'd rather just go into it very honestly and like I ... we said near the beginning, like we want a deal that just is sort of fair industry standard for you,
C: Um-hmm. B: a CPM that just makes sense, and we want the brand to have a good experience with it. So it is sort of disappointing when you're talking to a brand---or usually you're not talking to the brand directly; usually they have hired an agency to find influencers to work for them and they take a cut, so it makes sense that they're trying to negotiate the influencer down as much as possible because they probably know the company is already paying them a set fee,
C: A cut.
B: and the more ... the more they can get from an influencer for less money, the more cut they get.
(C: They get, yeah.)
B: Right? C: And this is ... it just goes back to your answer from before about why I like or we like to do affiliate deals, because when we do them, we learn information about how valuable our partnership has been to a brand, because they have to tell us how many sales there were and we know what percent we're getting, so we know how much revenue we've generated with them. So that gives us some really important data points in moving forward with when we do ... like a brand does approach us for a sponsored content deal, we have this data from affiliate work to kind of know what it should amount to. So I think that's another good reason for content creators to not completely dismiss affiliate work, like "I'm not getting paid up front, I'm not doing it." Like it can actually give you meaningful information B: Sure.
C: and it is more fair in terms of like the brand benefiting as much as you. B: Yeah, like from those sponsored deals you typically don't learn anything after the fact about how many people
C: Yeah. B: actually clicked on your link
C: Because they don't have to tell you anything.
B: and downloaded a game, for example.
C: It's just a ... It's a one-off deal. B: Yeah. All right, next question. "Here's something I've always wondered: How do companies ask to sponsor you? Do they send you a DM? Do they email you? And if they email you, how do you find their emails? You have so many unread ones!" C: I think it really depends where you are in your career as a content creator. When I first started out, I got a bunch of spammy-looking, scammy companies with like weird email addresses and I didn't trust a lot of them off the bat. So that was just me and my skepticism. Today, it's very different. Today we will have like large ... large networks reaching out on behalf of a brand or large PR agencies reaching out. They do email me. Because I get so many emails (I know we've talked about this before), I often don't respond, but I do scan my inbox for things that I recognize, and that's why you really only see me (at least in recent history) do sponsorships or have partnerships with brands who you've heard me talk about or at least like is one that I would reasonably be familiar with, because I'll see their brand name in my inbox and then I'll want to click it. But if it's a brand I've never heard of I probably didn't open it and I ... Because I've never heard of them, chances are maybe I'm not that interested. I don't know. Like it's possible I'm missing out on some things
B: Totally.
C: that I might learn of and want to work with, but ... B: And because we're so busy with other things, yeah, we don't spend a lot of time just like looking through the inbox for other opportunities. Like there have been emails I haven't even opened about people contacting us about sponsoring the podcast, too, right?
C: Yeah, that too.
B: I should probably get to that. C: You should probably open those. B: But, yeah, for most people like it is usually an agency contacting your contact email on the about page on your YouTube channel C: For the larger YouTubers.. B: For larger YouTubers, yeah. And if you are becoming an established YouTuber, even though we haven't gone the direction of having an agency or a manager or anything like that, if your intention is to make money from sponsored content. there probably is
C: Value.
B: a good value or return on investment in having someone doing that for you and not trying to DIY it like we do. C: I'm just stubborn. B: Well, one reason we haven't got an agent, right, is we just know you don't want to do a lot of brand deals, so if we had someone getting them for you,
C: I'd always say no. B: they would constantly be bringing you opportunities and you'd be saying no to all of them. C: I would be the worst client. B: It would be ... You would be a bad client. C: They'd be like "Hey, I'm not representing you anymore. You don't want to be in this movie? You're out!" Yeah B: All right, next question: "Just for shits and giggles and don't name any specific names, what's the strangest or sketchiest sponsorship that has ever approached you?" C: Oh, I have a good one.
B: Oh, yeah? C: I think we talked about this in my opening my like inbox video that I made a long time ago, but it was an escort service.
B: That's right. C: I think it was like sugar babies or that's just the term used in that industry.
B: Yeah, something like that.
C: And I'll just say, we have nothing against this service itself, but the way that they address like "Hi, Simply Nailogical, We think your content would be a great fit. Or our brand would be a great fit for a sponsorship in your video." That struck me as like "Why?" The lady who paints her nails should endorse an escort. Like it just doesn't make sense. Was it escort service or was it kind of veiled as a dating service that pairs like rich old people with young attractive people who are looking for someone to buy them things? I think that's what it was, right? C: I can't recall exactly how they painted it. It was one or the other. B: We should say, we don't really know much about this company, so we don't to say one way or the other, but I'm glad you sort of added like we're not against sex work or the sex industry. We're not judging that. C: No, but brand fit is very important.
B: But it's just so bizarre they would have thought your channel was a good medium for promoting anything like that.
C:Yeah. B: That is a pretty weird one. We've gotten plenty of weird things. Maybe you'll do another follow-up YouTube video that talks about some of the stranger outreach you've gotten. Next question:"The sponsorship that you most regret doing?" You want to ... You want to go there?
C: I mean ...
Yeah.
B: Okay. C: Always. I think it's important to recognize when you've made mistakes or maybe like just reflect on something that you would have done ... you would have done a better job at now knowing what you know.
B: Okay. C: So the ... that has definitely happened to me. In my early days when I ... I think it was the very first sponsorship that I ever did on YouTube. It was in 2015. B: Okay, so like pre-Polish Mountain and you're not even that big. Okay.
C: Pre-Polish Mountain. No, but I'd started growing a bit, because I was sort of big on Instagram,
B: As a nail art channel. C: and then I would, you know, tell people to come to my YouTube channel. So I did a sponsorship for a nail polish subscription box and the product was founded by a fellow nail blogger, like we were kind of friendly, so when she asked me about it I wanted to do it because I wanted to support her business and she wanted to, you know, me to share it with my audience. So I told her my fee, which was $400 at the time. B: Okay.
C: I don't know how many views I was getting on average, probably a couple hundred thousand if I had to guess. B: So that wasn't a lot of money.
C: So it was very undervalued, but I didn't really care. I was like, "Oh, this is like a business opportunity, but she's also kind of my friend and in the nail community," so, yeah. I thought like I need to charge, but it's $400 on the invoice.
B: Okay. C: Anyways, I don't regret like doing the deal with her or trying to support her business; I regret how I went about it. And that was because she gave me talking points, which included things like describing the value of what's in the box and what the retail value would hypothetically be
B: I remember this. C: And looking back after I posted it and seeing the comments, like people would say things like "That doesn't seem like it's that good of a deal, Cristine." B: It's a very like infomercial kind of way of promoting something: like "The retail value of this box is $100 and you can have it for 50." C: It's very QVC and maybe that's because this was something I had never done before. I was learning. I thought you had to read point-blank the lines and that's what you should do like on account of professionalism. I've learned more ... Like today, there is no exact script, I would say. Brands give you talking points, but good brands will let you say them in your voice; so you do kind of incorporate your own voice and like how you would describe these things while still hitting the key points. B: And you wouldn't agree to a sponsorship deal that included talking points that wanted you to say a specific point that you just don't agree with or think is accurate.
C: Right. And I really don't ... I don't want this to look bad on the nail polish subscription box owner. This product is no longer available. I think it's like been gone for three years. I think she was learning. She was new. I was learning. I was new. It's a valuable lesson for me after seeing my audience feedback from that. The video is still up, because
B: Don't want to hide it.
C: like the product doesn't exist anymore and I just don't want to hide it. It's a piece of history, I think. I learned a lot and I regret how I went about it; not that I did it and not that I undervalued myself. B: You got excited at like the first sponsorship opportunity. It was a friend of yours. You're kind of doing her a favor. So you sort of oversold the product in a way. C: I did and then I ultimately felt bad for it because of my audience's reaction and that was the first time that I was like ... it really sat with me how important it is that you have to keep your audience in mind and if they can see through it, that's not good. So I'm happy that I had that experience early on. B: Not "See through it," they pointed out to you that it wasn't really accurate what you were saying. C: But it took them doing that for me to really see that. So I'm happy that I learned that in 2015 and I feel like I've become a better influencer since. B: A better influence, too.
C: Sure. B: It's a good thing to get those sort of mistakes out of the way early on when the stakes are much lower, I guess, too, right?
C: Yeah. Everyone's going to go look for that video and shade me. B: Please don't. You should really just take it down if it just feels like a commer--- I guess the service doesn't exist anymore. C: If the product existed and I felt like I was leading sales there, then I would take it down, but it doesn't exist, so .... B: Okay. All right, next question, from Sophie: "Are influencers aware of the guidelines they have to follow with sponsored content and choose to ignore them or do you think they are just clueless?" Five years ago, I think a lot of influencers were clueless. I don't think you can use that excuse today. I think there have been enough big cases and news stories and enough guidance from YouTube even within the back end of their ecosystem, that you can't get away with, you know saying, oh, you weren't aware of things. There's still some grey area about breast ... best practices to disclose things, I would say, and you still see YouTubers screwing up. Like there was that ... Some woman launched a nail ... a skincare brand recently.
C: Um-hmm.
B: Did you see this?
C: Yeah. B: Phil DeFranco covered it on his channel. It was really interesting. She says she wanted to promote it in a way where she would get objective feedback from her followers and friends, like her real friends, so she didn't disclose to them that she was the owner of this brand. But you can't just promote something without disclosing that you have a financial connection to it and everyone called her out because she ... Like a few months later she was like "Surprise! That was actually my brand. I just wanted to get your honest feedback." I kind of believe that she was just maybe really ignorant and didn't realize what she was doing and she maybe actually wanted honest feedback, but that is not an excuse for clearly going against FTC regulations. C:Yeah. I think it's also unclear sometimes to what extent influencers are disclosing or how they disclose and I think audiences can be confused and I was confused when I was kind of learning about this. So to disclose a relationship of financial interest with a brand, what does that really mean? So sometimes you'll see #Ad, which is short form for Advertisement, although the FTC and some regulatory bodies have argued that's not always enough.
B: That's not good enough disclosure. C: Right. So # (I don't know I just say hashtag because people use that in Instagram posts, you don't actually have to say #sponsored), but to say you are "sponsored by" is generally acceptable enough to suggest that this brand is paying me for this segment or for this video. When influencers use words that are less clear like "partnership" or "I've partnered with" and that's all they say, I find that, even as a consumer, really confusing and I think audiences feel that way, too. What does that mean? Like a partnership could just mean they sent you those products. What does this mean? B: It's a good example. So people still use vague terms like that. And yeah, I think increasingly ... I think there's going to be increased awareness that that is not good enough. It's not good enough now, but some people, I guess, are a little bit ignorant to that still maybe. C: And I feel like--although I can't say for certain-- I feel like I've seen some influencers use vague language because they think it's ... it appeases their audience more to not be completely transparent on like "I am being paid for this." Because influencers maybe sometimes don't want to put it that way, because they don't want to make it seem like they're constantly trying to sell you something, so they just like write their cute caption. And then they write like #Partner.
B: Yeah.
C: What does that mean? B: What does that mean?-
C: I don't know. B: I would say some of the recent deals we've done and some of the brands that have better procedures and policies in place for doing this, they will give guidance to the creator to very specific ... specifically word the disclosure, to the point where it's almost like sort of strange, robotic, like "The next 30 seconds of my video are an ad for X service."
C: "This portion of my video is sponsored by ...." "That ends this portion of my video." Yeah.
My last sponsored video. B: Some of them are going like kind of over the top with it, but I ... that is better than the opposite of being too vague. C: Right. They're ... Brands want to protect themselves and by proxy the infuencer; like they're also protecting the influencer by having these guidelines.
B: And the influencer should want to protect themselves, because it's your ass on the line if you don't disclose properly at the end of the day.
C: And you should also just want to disclose.
B: If you're a good person.
C: Yeah. "Has a company ever wanted you to not disclose an ad?" Oh!
C: The opposite question. "I know you have to for legal reasons, but I'm just curious." So kind of speaking to the little conversation we just had, I don't think it's fair to say a company ever wanted us to not disclose something, but we did have an experience with a brand where they ... I think it's fair to say they wanted you to use not entirely transparent or clear language in describing the affiliation, let's say. And, yeah, ultimately we're not willing to work with a brand if we even get like an inkling of that. You need to be able to clearly disclose it to your audience, because that's what's fair to you and your audience and we're not willing to sort of have like some sort of vague line about whether or not you are sort of being compensated in any way for promoting something. C: So I would say overall this hasn't happened to me frequently.
B: No.
C: It's been like a small handful of times. But when it has happened, I straight-up told the brand like I'm not comfortable with this if you're not going to allow me to say that I was paid or sponsored or use clear language. B: So, yeah, this isn't common at all. I can only think of one time it ever happened and, yeah, we just weren't willing to entertain it.
C: So we just didn't do it. I'm hoping that brands like that over time also like witnessing the landscape and maybe the "celebration" of disclosure, like in a positive way, seeing that it can be positive, I hope that these brands see that and hopefully change their minds and like disclosing something as an ad isn't always a bad thing. I think you'd only see it from legacy brands that don't have a lot of experience in the influencer marketing space. So if you come from a more old-school brand that has more traditional ideas about advertising. I almost feel like the standards are a little worse than the companies now who are very aware of disclosure requirements for new media platforms. C: Right.
B: Yeah.
C: Different worlds. B: All right, next question: "Can sponsorships write you a script that you to stick to word-for-word?" C: Mm-hmm.
B: So in our experience, typically a brand will provide talking points, but the ones who are doing this well or properly, they'll usually specify that they don't really want you to say it word for word: They want you to say it in your own voice.
C: Yeah. B:So maybe there's some guidance on like "you kind of have to hit on the fact that there's this new feature in this game" or a new product that came out, and the call to action might be kind of specific, like "please put it this way,"
C: Click the link below. B: "Click this link below in the video description box" or something like that, but typically brands who are doing this the right way know to let the creator speak in their own personal voice about their own personal feelings about the product. C: And it's usually they only have talking points surrounding that segment in the video. So if the rest of your video is unrelated, the brand is certainly ... has nothing to do with writing the script for that.
B: And I think this is the way sponsorships on YouTube are going in general, is that you're increasingly just going to see very clear bracketed segments: Here's 45 seconds that's an ad, and then the rest of the video will have nothing to do and not even refer to the fact that that 45 seconds happened. I think that's what you're going to see more of in the future.
C: Even though that's technically less of an organic integration, it is far more clear in terms of like "This is an advertisement." Begin; end. And in the same way that like you're watching TV and then the commercials begin and then end. I like that. As a consumer, I would much rather like see, "Okay, there's an ad for the next 40 seconds. My brain now has noted that. Okay, now we're going back to content." That's how I prefer it. B: Yeah, I think for the most part that makes sense, although I will say like you've had a lot of success and we feel like you have very responsibly had content where, you know,
C: It was integrated.
B: you have, you know, you just love tea and you're doing a promotion with David's Tea at the time: Make a video that sort of centered around tea. It's an opportunity to promote and it actually makes sense with the content of the video.
C: Yeah. B: You can still do that in a responsible way where you're still clearly disclosing things. C: Yes. Yeah, yeah. There can be both. Good point. B: Next question:"Do sponsors review your video before it gets posted to ensure that everything in it is brand friendly?" C: Yes.
B: Yeah.
C: Generally. B: If a company is paying a lot of money ... Yeah, like you sort of mentioned, though, these like sort of affiliate relationships, usually it just means you have a code or link you can use at your discretion for the most part.
C: And they don't have to review. B: No, but they should only then be entering into those agreements with people they trust to have similar values to them, let's say. But, yeah, if a company is paying, you know, $50,000 for a one-minute integration in YouTube video, yeah, they want to see it. C: And they don't only want to see that maybe one-minute bracketed segment, they want to see the whole video,
B: The entire video.
C: because sometimes companies will have clauses in it like "No swearing throughout the video," for example.
B: Yeah.
C: So sometimes they do want it to be more brand friendly than maybe your content is general, so maybe I just didn't swear in a particular video that was a sponsorship, and that might have been a request from the company. B: Yeah, I think in our experience you don't get a lot of feedback back and hopefully they've sort of vetted that the creator is making the kind of content that they're comfortable being associated with in the first place, so usually there aren't a lot of comments. Maybe we'll get a comment back about like there's a little ... there's a lot of swearing at the beginning or maybe there's like one joke in there that they're worried could be construed in a certain way, and as long as we feel like it's not changing like your character or the character of your content then I guess there's some willingness to change it, but we wouldn't work with a brand that wanted you to completely sanitize or change the kind of videos you make. C: Right. I would be like "Talk to another channel. This channel ain't for you." And that has happened. B: Well, like remember the website one. I think I've brought it up before, but a webs-- ... A company that lets people build custom websites reached out through an agency-- we weren't talking to the company directly,-- but they asked if you want to do a dedicated video promoting that website-building service, and you had pitched the idea of building a nail-porn website as a sponsored video. C: Hilarious. B: Great idea,
C: So funny.
B: totally consistent with your channel your humor and and they came back being like "Uhh, does she have another idea?" and we were like we could ... you could think of something else to do, but we were just like, "No, that was the good idea and if we can't do that good idea, we're not going to do something else." C: And I really, truly liked that idea as a video concept. I think my audience would have loved it and I felt like I would have been sacrificing good content just to come up with some other idea that was more PG just for a sponsorship. So there's an example of us just being like, "Nah, we don't want to do the sponsorship." And I recognize how ... How privileged it is of us to be able to decline such a ... what would have been a great sponsorship. But, yeah, I just wanted to mention that as well. B: Yeah. All right. And maybe we'll make this the last question; we've gone on a long time already. There were more questions and maybe we could do a whole other podcast on this.
C: I feel like there's so many layers to this one. It's tricky.
B: Okay. Well, anyway, let's end on this one. So from Eric Martens: "Not shade! How do you reconcile the fact that YouTube is a platform that is completely ad based and that ads are centered on essentially manipulating consumers to purchase products? I'm all for it, but sometimes I contemplate this." C: I contemplate this, too.
B: Do you contemplate? C: As a participant in advertising, I've advertised for other companies, I've advertised for Holo Taco,
B: Your own products.
C: which is my nail polish line, I've advertised for people just to subscribe to my channel, like I've advertised just myself. B: I think anyone in your position or with a platform on social media should ask themselves this question from time to time. I think I have to push back on the question a little bit in the sense that it ... the premise is that advertising is necessarily or necessarily manipulation. And I guess ... C: Unless it's of children; then maybe that's manipulation. Then there is [unintelligible]. B: So advertising absolutely CAN be manipulative and it often IS and it's often more effective when it is, so it's important to keep that in mind. But I hope over the last hour or however long we've been talking, I hope we've given you the impression that our approach to advertising Is sort of deliberately trying to not just manipulate the goodwill you have with your audience: You only take sponsorships from companies you're totally comfortable and feel is ethically appropriate to promote,
C: That I would use, that I do use, and that I'm comfortable selling to my audience. I don't want to promote anything that I'm going to feel like, "Oh, I wish they didn't buy it," because then something's not right. B: And not just because you legally have to, but you are disclosing it in a very transparent way, so you're not at all trying to manipulate people's feelings into feeling like they have to support you,
C: Yeah. B: It's just about "Hey, I've partnered with this company; they're ... I'm getting compensated for it. I actually genuinely love this product. If you feel like checking it out,
C: You can.
B: here's the things I like about it, you can if you want to." I feel like we can sort of sleep at night knowing that you are very responsible with the extent to which you do this and how you do it. C: And the types of products that I do it with. Yeah, if anything, it's just maybe like the broader point like we contribute to a platform that is inundating people with ads on the Internet. I don't know if I feel so guilty about, you know, contributing to advertisements in like a specific micro way, but the fact that we are part of a culture and contribute to a culture of people being bombarded with ads every time they turn on their phone or turn on the TV: yeah, I have some mixed feelings about that and we shouldn't ignore the fact that we have hugely financially benefited from
C: Consumerism.
B: the advertising industry. Yeah. C: I will say, though, that on the anipulation point, sometimes--at least how I would interpret this is--when influencers or YouTubers suggest that they really needed the sponsorship or they really need people to use their code to support them or to click join to become a member to become part of my family and pay the $4.99 a month on YouTube and this doesn't apply to everyone who does that, but the ones that we know are multimillionaires
B: Who still say that.
C: who use this kind of language, to me that is ... that's manipulation and I don't like that kind of behavior, because you do not need ... you don't need to justify the sponsorship to your audience. And I saw this once, someone who's very successful said that, you know, "I just had to take this sponsorship, because I had to put food on the table for my family." That's not ... That's the furthest thing from the truth, so it's disappointing to me when I see who I know to be well-off YouTubers, large ones, using that kind of language, I think that's manipulative of their younger audiences,
B: Typically young audiences.
C: trying to get them to like make purchases, join or whatever it is to financially support them. And by the way, anyone watching this, you don't have any duty to support any influencer online. You may love them and wish to support them and that's great, but you don't have to, and I feel like some YouTubers manipulate the situation to make you feel like "If you don't do this for me, you're not in my family," and that grosses me out. B: "Buy our new merch to join the family."
C: Yeah, that's gross. B: Like we think about this with Holo Taco, too, right? We genuinely hope that the people buying it are just buying it because they want C: They want good nail polish. B: good quality nail polish and not because they're just buying it out of ...
C: Devotion. because they love you or are devoted to you in some way. We really hope we're not playing off that and don't want to contribute or use that messaging in any way. C: Yeah, I've never said that. I've never said "Buy my nail polish to help me put food on the table." Like that's bullshit. B: Or show how much you love me.
C: No.
B: If you ... buy my nail polish if you love me. Yeah, I would say, if there's a YouTuber out there who ... Like you mentioned, there are people who are more dependent on memberships and sponsorships to keep their online business going. Maybe they're completely demonetized. Maybe they're not making enough money from Adsense. But if they're trying to convince you that you should be supporting them monetarily to show your ... to show that you value their content, I think the onus is kind of on them to show you ... If they're trying to play off the idea that they're not making enough money from other sources, I think the onus is on them to establish that or even prove that in some cases. If a creator is complaining about how much they're demonetized all the time and trying to use that to encourage you to sign up to them on Patreon, they should show you that their Adsense is that low. C: The should show you their bank account,
B: Well, I ...
C: because I don't ... B: Aren't there laws about that?
C: Okay, maybe not. I'm being ... Yeah, but like honestly, some of it--because I know people personally who have been demonetized and it has severely affected their monthly income-- I understand, but at the same time a lot of these people in the past who have complained about demonetization and then said "Okay, guys, now support me everywhere else just so I can collect money to try and reach what I was getting before," a lot of these people have hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars already. B: They're still driving around LA in their Teslas. C: So I don't, as a consumer ... like I don't feel bad for these people and you shouldn't either. B: And you shouldn't buy things just because you feel bad for someone.
C: Yeah.
B: Right? C: Yeah, so that goes to the manipulation. Watch out for it; don't listen to it. B: And, sorry, that almost brings us full circle to like I think the purpose of having this conversation is we realize most YouTubers don't want to talk about this because it's easy to look bad talking about money and your worth, right?, because you throw up big numbers and the headline is just going to be "Cristine admitted she got six figures from a company," right? C: And then people will be like, "Well, that's bullshit. She just paints her nails on the internet. What is this world?" B: Yeah, when you know, if you've made that amount of money from a company it's because you got that company a ton of business. And that, I guess, is a little harder to message or ...
C: It's not clickbait. B: It's just not clickbait-y enough, right? So, you know, YouTubers have even sort of pretended in the past that they're not allowed to talk about how much money they're making online,
C: So is that true? B: Well, like if there's an NDA in a brand deal then, yeah, we can't talk about it, and I think we were pretty careful not to talk to about like very specific brand deals you've done in this conversation, but there's no reason we couldn't show people how successful your online business is overall or even show people how much you make from Adsense, right? A lot of YouTubers in the past have said it's against the Terms of Service to show our Adsense earnings. It's not. I've ... To my knowledge that has never been in YouTube's Terms of Service that you can't show that information, it's just not in the interest of YouTubers to show people how much money they are making for the most part. C: Because they want to remain relatable, I think is a big reason why YouTubers don't want to fully admit, even though at the same time there's kind of a contradiction, because many YouTubers, their content is based on their flex. So like the fact that they are so rich is a storyline in a lot of their content, but at the same time they don't want to show you their paychecks, because if you saw their paychecks, you'd probably hate them more. B: Well, yeah, I think that's a good point. Some YouTubers really, as soon as they become successful, their content becomes about them being successful. That's always kind of a weird shift that I think just mostly appeals to younger people who are watching people in a kind of like aspirational way.
C: It's a fantasy. B: Like, "Yeah, I want to drive the Ferrari and throw money at girls, so I'm going to watch
C: Oh, my god.
B: those assholes," you know. But just to bring a full circle, like we think it's important people know that there's a lot of money to be made online, because I think it would be to the benefit of this entire industry if audiences are more knowledgeable. Like right now, influencers are held to this standard that I don't think traditional celebrities are and one of the reasons for that is the FTC says if you see LeBron James drinking a Sprite, everyone just sort of knows he must have an endorsement deal with Sprite. But if you see some random YouTuber drinking a beverage, people won't necessarily think they're
C: Tea!
B: associated with that beverage company, right? C: Yeah. Maybe they just love it, right? B: I think if audiences are more knowledgeable about the fact that influencers are businesses that are being paid by companies, I think just the .;.. it makes the audience more educated and forces everyone to be more responsible about things, but also just if everyone understands things better, there's just less confusion about what you're watching and what sort of financial implications there are behind the scenes. C: Yeah, it's like the Jennifer Aniston example is always pretty good. No one's really mad at Jennifer Aniston for being like "I love my Aveeno." B: Oh, yeah. She ... There's no way she uses that moisturizer, right? C: But like, I don't ... Does she nreally love her Aveeno? But like then someone might get mad at a YouTuber for being like "I love this boxset" and it's like "How dare you? You're just money hungry." Whereas I don't think the same reaction is happening to Jennifer Aniston.
B: Yeah, that's interesting. Maybe we do hold influencers to a different perspective or maybe it's just sort of like fun to shit on influencers for some reason. C: It is fun, isn't it? That's our cat=cam. B: Cat-cam just shut off. I think that means it's time for us to shut up.
C: Yeah. All right, everybody. Apologies to RCL Beauty: we were going to have her on today to talk about brand deals, but she didn't have the time, she couldn't make it out. C: Maybe she's busy doing a brand deal.
B: So maybe we'll get her on another time. B: But thank you for watching. C: I hope this was a good episode.
B: Thanks for tuning in.
C: I think this was really interesting I just want to say there's so many other things that we totally didn't cover and other things I'm probably not thinking of and examples and exceptions and there's always going to be that, and I think, you know, if you guys have more questions on this topic like leave them in the comments, maybe I'll join in. B: We could do it again.
C: But I hope this was interesting and you learned something, because ultimately we just want to talk about what you guys want to hear and I really do want to use this podcast channel to just be more honest, say here's what we know and here's what we think. So we appreciate you guys for listening. B: All right, everybody. We'll see you next Taco Tuesday.
C: Mm-hmm. B: Thanks so much for watching ...
C: watching, and we'll see y'all later.
Bye!
