Talking About Brand Deals

I wanted to make a video about brand deals. I’ve been getting a lot more of these. I’m pretty much getting brands reach out to me daily or every other day. I’ve learned so much and I want to share it with y’all. I’m responding to some brand emails right now. I’m going to go through a couple and then I want to talk about what I’ve learned and things I’m having success with. This is coming from someone who’s been creating content since 2016. In the beginning, I was just getting free products and now I charge brands when they reach out to me. I will still take some free products. I’ll talk about that later.

This one’s going to be pretty chill and laidback since I just got done working out. I’m just trying to get the content out there without overthinking it.

First Brand Email

This is one brand. They said, “Let’s move forward.” This one is gifted now. I’m not going to say the brand’s name, but I’m reading more because they have some deliverables. This is something I’ve noticed with brands. They’ll agree to stuff or you’ll agree and then they’ll start trying to add stuff. I don’t do that cuz I think it’s kind of sneaky, we’ve been having this discussion in certain things. We hadn’t talked about once I accept the product or whatever, now you want to add some stuff. They’re talking about full usage rights. They didn’t say that in the beginning. They’re talking about delivery within a specific amount of days. It depends on the content. I don’t know if I’m going to do this one. This was for a free product.

Where My Brand Deals Come From

Most of my brand deals these days are paid. I get my brand deals from YouTube. I have two YouTube channels where I get brand deals. I don’t get a whole bunch on this channel. Most of the ones I’m getting now are from another channel. It’s a review channel. That’s how brands are finding me. Brands also find me from my Amazon storefront. I get Amazon sellers reaching out cuz they see my storefront. I have like a thousand plus videos over there. That’s where I’m getting the eyes on my content and attracting the brands.

Second Brand Email

This is another one. When they reached out, they mentioned paid, but it’s pretty much saying they would prefer product exchange, free product for the content. They’re saying they would prefer to just do sample based, but they’re wanting me to post on YouTube and Amazon. For usage rights, organic posting would be sufficient. I don’t know about that one either. I’m reading these so y’all can see some of the things that they say.

Mindset

Mindset is the most important part. I used to take free products and that’s what most creators, especially if they’re newer, do. Some are experienced and they still just take free products, that’s it. Once you understand your value, once you have a catalog of a good amount of content that gets results, in just years of consistency creating content, you shouldn’t just be taking free products. Just my thought. I don’t want to tell you what to do. I’m just sharing my experience. Get out there, learn for yourself.

I will only take a free product if it meets certain criteria or I really want the product or it’s a high dollar product. Let’s say it’s something that’s $500 or it has good resale value, like something I could resell. I could take it and still get paid. Let’s say it’s $500. I could sell it for $400. That’s a pretty good return. But these days, I’m mainly just focused on paid stuff because I do this full-time now. But not only that, I value my skill set and my content a lot more.

Understanding the Value of Your Content

First you have to understand what they get from your content. That’ll change your whole thoughts around pricing and how much you’re charging for this stuff. For example, if I make a YouTube video for a brand, it’s probably going to be something evergreen. The way YouTube works, it’s a search engine. If it’s evergreen, that content can continue to drive eyes, viewers, views for years. I have product videos from 2020, probably a little bit before that, that still get views. Think about it from that perspective.

Let’s say I did it for free or I just charged 50 bucks and that content is consistently driving views for years and they made 200 sales and I charged them 50 bucks. That doesn’t make sense. That’s what I mean by seeing the value in your content. I don’t really look at it like I’m just charging for a video. I used to say things like, it’s just a 30 second video, it didn’t take me any time, or the video within a month only got like 20 30 views.

I look at the bigger picture because I know long term, especially if it’s evergreen type of content, if it’s optimized for SEO, it’s going to continue to drive views. I also understand that I’m not just charging based on the views. I’m charging for my skill set of being a content creator that can deliver results, get sales. I’m charging for my time and I’m charging for the long term marketing that they’re getting from my content. Hopefully that makes sense. That’s the best way to explain it.

Content Creation as a Skill Set

You have to think about creating content as a skill set. Not everyone can create content and not everyone can create content that actually converts. What I mean is your content can get people to take action. Whether that’s clicking on an affiliate link, going to that company’s website, or getting sales. If you’ve done that, that’s how you can show value as a creator to these brands.

Using a Media Kit to Show Value

Something I do to show my value is I have a media kit. I talk about my experience. I talk about the results that I’ve gotten. I talk about how much I’ve sold on Amazon, YouTube. I’m showing them my affiliate links, how many clicks I’ve driven for certain products, and then the numbers of my channel. That’s how you show value and you can get paid good money for your content versus other creators where they don’t understand how to leverage their experience and show value as a creator and not just a random person creating a random video.

Negotiating With Brands

Something else I’ve been learning, this was a big shift and I started seeing way better results negotiating. What I used to do, I would just send a couple messages, maybe they turn it down, that was it. But I’m seeing now, you have to negotiate with these brands. What I’ve noticed is some brands will offer me a low ball offer and then I’ll come back with my offer and sometimes they’ll turn it down and then some of these brands will come back because your energy matters too.

I don’t seem desperate like a lot of creators and I get it because I used to be in that stage where we’re just kind of desperate to get products and things like that. I get it, but my energy is very like, this is the value I have, this is what I can offer you. I also get a good idea of what they’re looking for with whatever campaign they’re running or the results that they’re trying to get. Then I just lay it out there and I let them decide what they want to do at that point.

It’s been some brands where it’ll start off lowball offer and I negotiate and I get them to pay me a higher fee. Something else I’ve learned is cuz I didn’t understand my skill set in the value of my content, I would start my prices really low.

Starting High When Negotiating

Smart negotiation, something I’ve learned is to start high because I can work with that. We can work down versus if I start low. Let’s say I’m just charging $50 for a 30 second video or something. I can’t really work with that. We’re going to get them down to 10 bucks, 20 bucks, it’s not worth my time. Versus if I just start off at 500, we have some room to negotiate. I’ve seen where that works, to where maybe they don’t bite on that top price, but I can kind of work down and we can come to an agreement.

Always Ask for Payment

This is very important, especially if you’re new, just asking for payment because some of them don’t even talk about payment and then we’ll start the conversation, then I go into payment. If you don’t ask for it you won’t get it. I think that can apply to a lot of things in life. You got to ask. This is what I charge. A lot of them are picking around for creators that’ll just do it for free because there are so many creators that will do it for free. If you want to get paid, you got to have the courage and the confidence to ask, to tell them what you charge.

Thinking Long Term With Brands

This is the last point I want to talk about. This could be a whole series. If y’all want me to do a whole series about this, let me know. Or if you have any questions about this, leave them in the comments. This is more of thinking long term because I think especially when it comes to making money online, you can get caught up in short term thinking and trying to make money fast, but it’s not benefiting you long term. You have to think about the long game.

With some of these brands, I think it’s smart to approach it in a way of building relationships with certain brands that you really like. I have a couple brands right now that I have a really good relationship with. The first video I did for free was a high dollar product that was selling, and actually both products, I just wanted them and I know I could sell them if I want to and make a good amount. But I’m looking at the long term with this brand.

That’s not to say that I can’t pitch later because I know my content can drive sales and get results so I can leverage that later. Do you see what I’m saying? That’s just how I think and how I approach it. We all want to get paid, but I think it’s smart to have, and part of your strategy is to build relationships, because if you get a good relationship with a brand, they may keep sending you products. Now you have a good flow of products, consistent products coming in because you built that relationship. There’s a lot of ways you can approach it and there’s a lot of different ways you can look at it when working with these brands.

Third Brand Email

I want to go through some of these emails again. This one, let’s see what they said. This brand, I reached out to them on Creator Connections. I’m an Amazon influencer. I just get inbound too from my YouTube channel, but a good amount of the brands are from Amazon or maybe I’ll reach out to them. This brand emailed me. Initially, they tried to get me to make content for a product that wasn’t selling, it was a new product or something. That didn’t make sense.

It’s in a niche, it’s in the fitness niche. I do a lot of those products. I could use some more free products right now. I told them, “I noticed you have this product that’s selling. I can make content for this product. Can you send me this product?” And they said yes. That’s just something little, but for me it’s a big deal because certain things I wouldn’t used to ask, or they’ll turn me down immediately and then I just go on to the next one. But now I’m learning how to negotiate, how to just communicate what I can do and what I want. It’s not going to hurt for me to mention something like that.

Fourth Brand Email

Here’s another one. This is a pretty popular brand. I’ve seen them on Amazon. It’s a new product. They’re launching this in May. They want me to be one of the first users to share my experience. Let’s see what else they got here. They didn’t really say anything else. I don’t even know if they’re talking free content for the product. This is where I could take it for free because it’s a piece of fitness equipment. I could do a lot, I can get a lot of pieces of content out of it because I could compare it. I could also sell it. These are like money makers for me.

But I could also pitch paid. I’m not afraid to pitch paid because I have the results in my experience, my content. It speaks for itself. I know how to communicate that value. I’ll probably put the ball in their court, talk in a way to kind of see what they’re trying to do and then we’ll go from there.

Managing the Brand Deal Workload

Honestly with these brands it’s a lot of back and forth, a lot of emails these days. Most of the time I spend is on emails, it’s not even on the content creation side, at least within the last couple months, because I’m getting so many emails. I don’t know what I’m going to do about that. I’ve been thinking about hiring a VA to help manage these emails. But that’s a whole other topic of just all the different parts of being a content creator. It’s a lot for one person. I’m a solo entrepreneur. I do all this by myself and trust me when I say it’s a lot because it’s these little tasks that just add up. They’re just such a time suck.

If you have any questions about brand deals, let me know. Be cool to hear from other creators and to see what you’re learning when it comes to brand deals.