Hi I thought I'd do a blab video on a topic that is quite sometimes talked about on either the eevblog forum or my blog website or I talked about on Twitter and stuff like that and it's to do with paid blogging and I actually put this eevblog forum post here and it's been reasonably popular. has been a bit of discussion about it about a paid blog offer which I got just the other day and there's nothing new about this. I Get paid blog offers all the time I've been getting them since, you know, like a couple of months after starting my blog back in 2009. I Think jeez, that's scary.

Anyway, they come with monotonous regularity and I turn them all down. and I've actually got a section on my website for reviews and telling the manufacturers if you want me. if you want me to review your product, then I There's all my rules. It's my blog.

I make the rules and I don't do paid advertising I've turned down every I paid pay reviews sorry I've turned down every single paid review that I've ever gotten and it's not something right? it's something. I talk about a lot on the forum and stuff like that. but I don't think I've ever done a video on it as such. So I thought I'd do a blab video because not everyone watches or read see, will participate in the Evie blog forum or will follows me on Twitter or something like that.

So you may not all reads my blog, text blog so you may not have actually seen this before. So yeah, let's just talk about it. Paid Blogging Now! I Or you can go to my website here I'll link it in I won't go through but I've got a whole bunch of rules saying that: I you can't review the video before I upload it I can say anything I want I can show competitors products what is it? You'll get compared against your competitors and I'll focus on negative things and you know, bla bla bla bla bla and I won't pull the video if you don't like it, etc. etc.

It's my blog. it's my rules. and I posted on the Eevblog form I actually redacted the name of the company and it's actually an agency for a big name that you've heard of. They contract these big manufacturers, contact the contract these PR advertising agencies and stuff like that and they're usually the ones who contact bloggers like myself and say hey, can you review this and we'll pay you X amount or whatever.

So I posted this so please forgive me for redact in the names. It was a personal email they didn't, you know? So I don't want to put their name there. You're not losing anything by not knowing who it is. Anyway, it's very typical of the emails I get so I'll just read it for you.

My name is LA and I'm an accountant executive at Blah I Just wanted to reach out to you today with a sponsorship opportunity with what? So they're obviously after a sponsorship thereafter, sponsoring a blog post and probably the most common thing I get is all the time which I I've stopped even replying to these people. especially if they don't go hi Dave They just send me an email saying hi and insert hyperlink of my website. they instantly go to the trashcan anyway. they want me to do a sponsored blog post and it's just so annoying.

I don't be sponsored blog post let alone sponsored reviews Anyway, sponsorship opportunity with one of our Qiblah We're looking to work with an ear in influential Youtuber such as yourself. Thank you very much to create some maker engineering content. Please find below a brief description of the program and what we are thinking. They basically want to send me a developer art kit.

We are currently working with Blur to promote a new Blur by creating educational content and encouraging fans to check out the developer kit on. Blah. We'd like to seed you with a development kit. Seed me so that I can then it can flower and sprout roots and everything else.

They want me to create one youtube video about the developer kit. This video should focus on the technical aspects of the care, what the developer kit can and also show you using it for a new project. So they want me to actually do a project for the thing, we would be happy to provide you with any key messaging that you can incorporate into your videos and this is very common. They will often provide in a talking point a list of talking points and things like that that you should talk about.

I Mean yeah, you don't have to, but they if you're stuck for things to say about it, they they really like to encourage because they've got keywords wank words that they want to get across in as part of their marketing campaign. Anyway, they want me to do that. Then they want me to write one blog post around the Blur and it's applications. This blog post will be posted on the main blog blog ie.

not mine on their blog and which nobody Oh view it watches I'm sure and will be listed as a guest blog from you. So they want me to write a blog post and thirdly, support the program via Six To Eight. They recently specific their Six to Eight Social. Maybe they've got some metric they've paid for some research that shows that you know six to eight blog post is optimal.

Before you know, it really sinks in to people's subconscious. Anyway, on your social media channels ie. Twitter Facebook my blog site all that suggests to help amplify your content. So it's like they're amplifying my content.

It's not there's you know I'm helping myself. Yeah, we will cross promote your social posts and videos on our blah you mean that Blur that nobody watches? Yeah, Great! This is a common thing with these companies. They think that they're that they're doing you a favor ie. the blogger a favor by putting getting you to produce content form and marketing in on marketing you on their channel on their blog but all their numbers are.

almost. most of the manufacturers blogs get bug reviews. most of the manufacturers YouTube channels get bugger-all views because they're so corporate and they just don't know how to appeal. They're not personal enough.

People hate corporate blogs, they don't read them, especially engineers like us. Anyway, they'll promote me on their social media channels. Yeah, thank you for this level of support. We can offer you a Blur basically a development kit thing and two thousand dollars I presume that US dollars the US base and I'd love to get you on a call next couple of weeks to further discuss the activation and finalize details.

Let me know what day time works best for you. thanks for looking forward to hearing from you, etc. Well thank you very much, but of course I've turned them down just like I do every other paid blog opportunity. and why do I do this well I I I really don't necessarily need the money I Like I Hate to say that but like two grand is not a lot of money for doing this and it's a lot of work.

I'm a professional blogger. It takes time to write to do all the stuff that they want me to do ie. make a video about it. Okay, I'd normally wouldn't have done this video, although if they send it into my mailbag, yeah, I might have done something with it.

you know that's how I generally work, but they want me to do specific content for them. so I because I'm accepting their money I'd feel pressure to actually create. You know a decent content for them whereas you know he sends something into the mailbag. You just get what you get, you know? But they're basically contracting me to produce content for them.

so as a professional I would naturally feel obligated to give them sort of you know, professional content back in return and takes a lot of time to do that. especially if they want me to create a project, right? This is just crazy. The amount of time I'd need to spend to make some sort of even hack together something. you know, a day, days of work, right to make a project and show this thing off and then they want me to write a blog post.

Do you know how long it takes to create a real quality blog post with embedded graphics and you know you're always thinking about what to say, how to say at what order. It can easily take half a day or a day to write a really good-quality blog post. and I'll show you a blog post in a minute, which is basically just text from me. But it took me forever to actually write that and so once again.

So there's like this Could be maybe not a week's work, but it could be a solid two, three, four days work or something like that. and then I've got to basically flog the stuff on my social media channel, which I don't do so I I'd be getting actually poorly paid for this two thousand dollars. Sounds like a lot of money, and it might be to somebody who you know to some student or something who has bugger-all money. And they've got a blog with that's you know, a YouTube channel or something that's given them, you know, making them, you know, fifty bucks a month or something like that.

Two grand. Yes, it can be a lot of money, but to a professional blogger whose time is incredibly valuable I still don't have enough time to make the content I want to make, let alone someone else's content. So two thousand dollars is not much for it. Like ass good, solid.

you know, maybe a week's work or something like that. And then, right. So it's that. I'm not really getting paid a decent rate for this and I'll show you why in a minute.

What two thousand dollars might buy you somewhere else. It's bugger. All okay. so they're getting this actually really cheap.

And second, I'd be branded a sellout, right? even if I made it clear upfront that this is a paid sponsored video whatever at the front of the video instantly. I you know, avalanche of criticism would be phenomenal. and I haven't done one of these ever. So as if I'm gonna do it for two grand, like you know, maybe for two million dollars, Um, I might do it.

but I'm not gonna do it for two grand and then see I'll be off to a private island somewhere and I'll blog from there, or just give up the game entirely. Anyway, for two grand, I'm not going to do that I'm not gonna sell out. And then of course, once you saw it. Once you agree to this, and especially once you've taken their money, they then start, they won't tell you upfront in this, but then they start, no look, they start manipulating you.

We want to. We'd love to see the content before you post it. and when you say oh no, I don't do that, they'll say oh, but it's just to make sure that you haven't made any mistakes. It's always because they want to make sure you're not saying anything bad about them.

They're not showing you the competitors' products or anything else, right? So when you're paying money like that, there is pressure on you to basically play by their rules. And I Don't play by anyone's rules I Never have and I never will. Especially for 2,000 bucks, right? So you know there's nothing. It's just a lose lose lose situation for me to take a deal like this.

It might be different for a you know, as I said some students somewhere he's got some YouTube channel and they're just starting up. That might be a lot of money and they might be, you know, happy to do it. They haven't sort of built up a reputation yet or something like that, but hey, let's go over to here. I've actually done.

a lot of people don't know about this. This is actually when I I thought I'd start creating text a blog post and this is the first one I ever did back in March 2013. So more than three and a half years ago I've done like half a dozen text blog posts. Now the title is bloggers don't sell out cheap and I go through and talk about the fake numbers, the fake impressions that these companies.

Not only it's like you know the likes of say Element14 and other you know companies that set up these huge online blogs and they think they the Ducks guts and they'll throw all these numbers at you and they're just basically BS Hardly anyone reads or participates in these sort of blogs. You know my TV blog forum is an order of magnitude orders of magnitude bigger then you know a lot of these things that they say are will promote you on there and you'll be famous And you know everything else. Yeah, basically don't fall for it. Anyway, there's a whole bunch of things here and I'm basically saying don't sell out cheap And really two grand might sound like you know a reasonable amount of money And it is.

You know two grand is you know, a decent chunk of what I make on YouTube each month. for example, my YouTube revenue. Um, it's a pretty damn good chunk of that, so you know I can if I got that every month had to be. you know, a reasonable addition to my income sources.

But maybe I'll talk about income sources in a minute. But yeah, I basically go down and show and I link to and I'll show you here. Oh, this is um EDM any times I and this is their rate sheet. Okay, this is their advertising rate sheet and this is why I say two thousand dollars is not a lot of money.

They are getting you cheap. They are buying you super cheap. Okay, I'm basically the world's biggest engineering YouTube channel and you know to get 50 there are very easily get 50 thousand views right? and and tons of exposure and people will watch the whole thing and they're captivated for 20 or 30 minutes that I'm doing the video. Not everyone watches for the whole length, but you know I've got metrics on that.

Maybe 50 percent of people are still watching. Twenty five thousand people are still watching after half an hour or something like that is fairly typical for my videos because most of my audience subscribed to me knowing I make long-form videos so most of them are pretty. You know, they watch a good lot of it. So to keep someone captivated like that is is marketing gold for these people.

And yet this, this is from 2013. Okay, this is quite old I haven't bothered to look for a new one. it's probably out there, but this is advertising rates for their print media which nobody reads anymore, and for their also for their online presence. They bundle these things together and you can just find this on their website.

It's not, it's not proprietary, you can just google it, and these are the sorts of hang on. where are we? Let's have a look at some of the rates. Okay, and they'll give you numbers, which as I said I typically grossly exaggerated. They'll actually include a fake multiplier in there, just plucked right out of their ass for the number of views.

Anyway, let's go down here. look at its total cost per week. If you want a welcome ad on their website 640 by 480 welcome ad that pops up you know on the E Times is at the E Times website. I Don't know? Yes Erie Times website.

It shows you there right over tires. Here it pops up and that's $8,000 us our week. Okay, and how many people visit that website? not nearly as many as what. Watch my video or visit the Eevblog forum for example.

So $8,000 a week? Wow Unbelievable And then look two hundred and ten dollars per CPM for a twig? What's a twig I don't actually know who want a twig is I should I'm in the business I shouldn't know what a twig is but Twitter and overlay for these things that you know pop up other is like sidebar ads and things like two hundred and ten dollars CPM CPM is cost per mil accost per thousand impressions. That is ridiculous. They're these orders and orders of magnitude more than what I charge for my advertising on my website, which I'll show you in a minute whereas whereas I'm that's where I make a bulk of my income and a leaderboard graphic look fifteen hundred dollars Is that a is that a month or a week because they had weekly before I Don't know, but it's a ton of money, right? They charge this massive amount of money and this is these companies that do this e times. Who used to have magazines and things like that? EDM used to have magazines.

It used to be really more expensive to advertise in these magazines and it still is. And they carried their prices over to the modern day. You know, online content and blogs and websites and things like that. So it's a massive amount of money.

So for a company here, the blanket company to get fifty thousand eyeballs for thirty minutes Because you know. imagine if you're flicking through the web a you've got a print magazine in his flicking through like this. you might see the ad once. that's it like and you might have a readership of twenty five thousand or something.

and I might just see it briefly for once and they just go. it's an ad, skip over it if it's not engaging enough and you know, or the E Times website you know, eight, their art annoying and pop our bed. Get rid of that. or you might have ad blocker or something like that.

They're paying $8,000 a week for that. and they want to pay $2,000 for a video which is there forever. It's searchable forever and and can't. A And then you want to write a blog post.

Room: You've got to actually do work creating the content. You've got to spend hours and hours. You know, dozens of hours working to create this content. They are buying you really really cheap and that's what I Talk about here.

Bloggers don't sell out cheap because as soon as you start blogging, you'll start getting in These offers. You'll be found. You'll get. You know, some of them are pathetic.

They fifty bucks will pay you 50 bucks for a whole year. Oh, it's like do Not sell out cheap if you're gonna take advertising charge. You know Mark I'm well under market rates for you to advertise I I Won't tell you the rates for my ads, but all these ads up. here's I links for example, they're takin the banner spot up the top is charges I charge a lot more than the ones down the side here and these are all randomly are allocated down the side.

and that's where a good bulk of my income comes from the ads on my website and also the ads on the forum as well. The top banner ad I've got fine chips calm slash art supply frame. They have T.i ads up there but they serve different types of ads. They've been the for responsive for years and then I've got a new bottom form sponsor macro fab down here and the forum gets an order of magnitude more views than the main website.

so there you know. Reasonably pricey but nothing like what you know the likes of a Times and other big websites and things charge and that some companies balk at my prices. they go. They asked for my rate sheet and they you know, freak out a bit now.

I can't afford that? that's and you know that's understandable. but I'm charging more somewhat towards more professional rates for my advertising. That's where I make a good lot of my income and so I don't need to take a crappy deal like this to actually do work producing content. which might be interesting, but hey, I'm basically forced, not force but I'm committing myself to produce that quality content for him for two grand anyway.

uh I just wanted to share that with you and how long have been yapping on for now ages and I just wanted to point out as well Louis Rothman's our videos we've had Louis on the power of mentioned you a few times before. check this video out. I'll link it in down below. he basically got a a television production company cable TV in the U.s.

approached him for a to do the unauthorized repairman. it's called like a TV show. He'd be the star of this reality show where he repairs Apple products and things like that and the contract they sent him. oh what a load of crap it is.

The what one of the worst contracts I've ever seen, but it's probably typical of the entertainment industry and he basically gives them a big thumbs up in the thumbs up. big middle finger in the video and there it is. Gtfo get the freak out and he's basically and it's hilarious. It is any reads the contract.

it's worth watching the whole thing. it is long 51 minutes but it's worth watching anyway. It's hilarious and they only wanted to pay him fifteen. think it's fifteen hundred bucks an episode and under all these oppressive terms and conditions he can't upload YouTube videos anymore.

Exceda, etc. It's ridiculous to star in a reality TV show for fifteen hundred bucks an episode and basically give up his entire online presence and online business or they would control it and take a cut of all his revenue. You know it makes my offer here of two grand just to shoot one video and do a blog post and stuff. Makes it sound pretty good, doesn't it? Anyway, If you want to see how bad it can get in the industry Wow check out that video anyway.

I hope you liked that look and what else do you don't want to say nothing? No I make a good bulk of my income from the ads and that's how I like it and like as well as you know Amazon and merchandise and patron Patreon supporters. and yet the Uture and I get the YouTube ad revenue as well the Adsense ad revenue. But I think still the biggest part is the advertising for me and as I say on my terms and conditions here, no I do not let it affect my opinion in any way, shape or form. And if you don't believe me, go watch some of my videos where you know these companies have let me.

They've never paid me to do it, but they've let me keep the gear. That's very common for bloggers in the industry to keep the gear and it's also beneficial because then I've got gear I accumulate this gear so that I can use in various some you know shoot outs down the road. tutorials, things like that, comparisons and reviews and you know, stuff like that. it's very.

It's very handy to actually acquire deal like that, but even companies that let me keep the expensive gear like this I really slag them off and I don't hide anything at all and I show competitor products and and some companies have hated this there you know I've done a they sent me you know a scope or something and I have done a review or teardown. they go, you showed the competitor yeah, tell someone who cares, you know because they want they were. what they were really after is quality content that then they can share on their blog and their YouTube channel or something like that and some of them are taken that you know they've cut out parts of my clips and gone and uploaded into their channel and things like that, you know I have no problem with that. but yeah, they basically want polished marketing material in exchange for what is to them.

ain't nothing cost. they can write off a scope or whatever it's it's bugger. all you know, it's even even expensive. Ten grand scope for example, doesn't cost them the two grand for the that you know a company like this might be paying for a paid blog thing and two grands not cheap.

I've turned down like four or five grand stuff before for producing videos because it's one of the as I say I don't accept paid reviews paid I don't do paid sponsored content I'm happy with just the ads and sometimes the ads are a bit. You know they come and go and sometimes I've got not many advertisers, sometimes I've got a lot of them and so it's not the most stable income, but you know over time combined with all the other income, it averages out quite well. So I don't need to take deals like this. and if you're an up-and-coming blog up I recommend you don't.

It's might sound like a lot a lot of money and you know, like go look, maybe you know if they sent this to you and you're an up-and-coming blogger, say look, I won't accept the money, but I'll take the product, you know and just let me do what? I want one? I've got no commitments, just send me the product for free and I might or might not do something with it. And if they don't like those terms, yeah, tell them to stick it. So anyway, I think this has gone on too long? I just wanted to share that with you. If you haven't seen it on the eevblog our forum, you should be on the EEV blog forum.

Seriously, what are the stats on the EEV blog forum? Now It's just insane. It's insane. What do we got? What are we got? forums stat? Lookit Look, this is the number of users online at the moment. We've got 500 and 751.

Guess 198 users in. That'll change a lot depending on the time zones and things like that and and forum stats. It's just crazy. There's like 800 posts per day, 832 people online per day, and it's just anyway.

It's crazy. It's the place to be to discuss stuff. So I'll link in this post down below if you want to see it. I Hope you enjoyed it.

Catch you next time. Stop. Come on.