DATE: Mon 29 Mar 2021 By: HexDSL@Posteo.net
I am not a big YouTuber and as discussed in previous posts even I don't know how many readers I have on Gemini or the Web. With this in mind you can imagine my confusion about the eight to ten emails a week I get trying to buy advertising space. I don't look very closely at these emails I just delete them and get on with my day. Recently however there seems to have been an increase in the number that I'm getting so I took the time to read one or two. Mostly they were what I expected.
The usual email starts by telling me how great I am, then tells me how great they are, or their product or their service. Then it tells me what a great fit we are and how if I talk about them/a thing in a video they will give me money. They rarely say how much money, or what I'm actually expected to say but they are very enthusiastic about this "partnership".
In the batches of recent e-mails though they have been asking about advertising space on my website seeming to not even know me as a YouTube " I N F L U E N C E R ". How strange. It's obvious from the wording that they have no idea what he topic of my website it (and to be fair, neither do I). They all seem quite interested in me providing my "analytic" information for them. Interesting that... I wonder what I did to appear on the radar of the evil marketing machine.
Honestly, I feel bad about having YouTube ads tuned on and mentioning my Patreon at the end of every video. I often thinking about stopping but then at the same time I think, I'm paying for 2 VPS's, a web Domain and buy too many games every month in part at least for Video topics. I figure most people will be blocking those advertisements or at have YouTube Premium and I put the Patreon stuff at the end of the videos. Overall I think I'm being reasonable about my selfish vice of wanting a little money for my efforts. One day I hope to have enough money to be able to do all "this" with no ads or Patreon.
My point here is that that you need not worry, I won't be selling advertisement space on my videos or written offering no matter how many email they send me. Obviously if a company I already "like" wanted to give me a flat rate to talk about something I already use I would *consider* it, or at least not dismiss it as fast as usual. Consider for example that I might take a free XPS to talk about how good XPS's are because, from everything I know, they are.
When a "content creator" takes an advertisement its more than an endorsement of a product or service at that exact moment, that content lives on for years and every time someone loads that video up the endorsement is fresh to them even if the thing that's being advertised went downhill. So if I was to take an advertising offer to talk about Super-Awesome-VPN and they are currently Super-Awesome then I would feel good about that and think, about how I am highlighting a grate service. But what happens a year later when it turns out they were capturing everyone's traffic and blackmailing their users? Someone sees my video and then I have endorsed blackmail. Shit.
This is why I'm so disappointed when I see "creators" endorse services and companies. Endorse a Product sure. So when someone sees it they can clearly see that product X was good according to this YouTuber, they never said product Y or Z was good too. It's clearer to everyone.
The reality is though, and this is especially true with more well-known "creators" that they don't give two shits what's good or bad. They only care about if an advertiser makes them look bad in the moment. I doubt a big YouTube would run an ad for toilet paper that was known to set on fire when it touched poop. But they will advertise for energy drink and snacks because they are considered to be "fine" even with the health concerns. Its only when a the snack brand are found to be putting glass in the X-chocolate-sugar-oattie-gamer-extreme-caffeine-crisps-bars that the "creator" will make a big deal about cancelling their "partnership" but those old video with the ads in them, they still exist and that seems to be okay with everyone.
My advice to you is to be suspicious of anything a "creator" advertises. Especially when a smaller one is advertising, being sponsored by or otherwise pushing a product. I say this because I know for a fact that they money they are getting for his is tiny. They essentially push a product for coffee money. I can at least sympathise is they push a product for graphics card money.
I am of the mind-set that if you are going to write, blog, Vlog, or make reviews, whatever you do you should be in it for the joy of the thing its self. You should love making it. If you are doing "for" the money. Don't because there isn't enough to make it worthwhile.
As you probably know this has been another stream of consciousness and as always even I'm not sure what the point was.
I you have any thoughts of comments please email them to hexdsl@posteo.net