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GET SPONSORSHIP FOR YOUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL

Why Seek Sponsorship?

Getting sponsorship means a lot for any social media creator, but especially a YouTuber. This is because the highest earners on YouTube aren’t just using their ad revenue to make their money, but they’re also getting sponsorships so that brands can take advantage of something called “influencer marketing”.

Influencer marketing is an important topic to discuss, because whether or not you could be considered an “influencer” determines whether or not you can take advantage of sponsorships. Sponsorships work because a brand wants to be represented by a particular creator. In other mediums, brands may also sponsor sports teams, TV shows or movies- anything that they want their brand to appear in to appeal to that product’s target audience.

Using YouTube sponsorships means that you will be making similar deals with brands worldwide.

The benefits for you usually come in the form of money, but other forms of compensation (like free review copies of products) are also common.

Can Small Channels Be Sponsored?

Of course, this is where many of you may be asking if you can even take part in this. There are multiple forms of sponsorship, and the higher the level of sponsorship, the more difficult it is to obtain for a smaller channel.

[You can also read our article on YouTube sponsorship for small channels.] Let’s take a moment to talk about the three different forms of sponsorships, in order of difficulty.

1. Affiliate sponsorships are the easiest, but least profitable. These sponsorships use affiliate links and codes for product pages and online shopping platforms, offering discounts to users/kickbacks to the creators, or both. When people use your affiliate links, the partner will see how much traffic and revenue they received from your affiliate link, and will reward you accordingly.
2. Product sponsorships involve receiving a copy of a product, typically for review/tutorial purposes, to showcas on your show. Technology, gaming and fashion YouTubers are all in the best positions to make usage of product sponsorships, since their reviews/tutorials are often focusing on singular products at a time. These critics also act as influencers, which encourages brands to send them review copies to get their products out in the wild.
3. Paid sponsorships are the hardest, but by far the most profitable. This is where the sposnor forgo all else to just outright pay you to talk about them or their products. These often occur in intermissions within the video, and don’t usually come to the smallest YouTubers…but is a goal worth working toward.

These are the three levels of sponsorship that a YouTuber can aim for. Now, let’s talk about the four premiere ways for creators to connect with brands to enable these sponsorships.

What Are The Best Sites For Sponsorship?

Grapevine

Grapevine is an influencer marketing platform, and one of the most popular YouTube sponsorship sites. This is because with their relatively low requirements, they’re the easiest to break into to start getting real sponsorship opportunities. Grapevine allows you to sign up any time, but it won’t be useful to you until you pass its threshold.

Desired Threshold: 1000 Subscribers

Famebit

Famebit is another of the popular YouTube sponsorship sites, but as an influencer marketing platform, it has higher requirements than its contemporary in Grapevine. Famebit can’t be broken into until you’ve passed their threshold, which is…

Desired Threshold: 5000 Subscribers

Reelio

Of the YouTube sponsorship sites out there, Reelio has undoubtedly the highest requirements of them all. This is because it works with only the best and biggest brands, which means they only want YouTubers with the widest circles of influence to do sponsorship deals on this platform. If you’re a small YouTuber looking for sponsors, Reelio isn’t yet open to you, but if you play your cards right, chances are it will be so you can start making some well-deserved money.

Desired Threshold: 10,000 Subscribers

Channel Pages

Last but not least, there’s Channel Pages. Channel Pages is peculiar on this list, because unlike the others they have no real thresholds or gateways to concern yourself about. Of course, your sponsorship opportunities are still linked to your reach and overall performance, so don’t expect to walk in here with the big talk and start getting everything you want right off the bat.

Another benefit of Channel Pages is that they don’t look to just link creators with brands- they want to connect creators with each other, too. Channel Pages is free and has no real fences to leap, but its effectiveness as one of the YouTube sponsorship sites may be up to debate.