Let’s talk about ads on Snazzy Labs. I started this channel nearly 9-years-ago. What started as a hobby has become a near full-time job which I’m incredibly grateful for. Being able to make money doing something I love and am passionate about is awesome. But not only am I a creator—I’m also a viewer of a lot of other channels. I’ve been in your shoes. And I know how much ads can suck. The purpose of this video is to help to find an equilibrium—where you don’t hate the ads I do when I have to do them, where the brands I work with are happy with the results, and where I’m able to continue YouTubing as a career and grow my channel even further.
Why do I have to do ads in the first place? Doesn’t YouTube pay enough? No. Google is continuing to pay it’s creators less and less money. Last month, my channel got 4x the amount of views that it did in the same month of last year, but I got paid about the same amount—so YouTube is paying 4 times less than they did last year. Many YouTube Creators have come to rely on platforms like Patreon—where the audience pays the creator. Maybe that works for them, but I’m not comfortable with that. Ads are a far better solution. They pay way more money, and so I can do them less often. Right now, I only have ads on about 1 in 5 videos. If I moved to Patreon, I’d have to beg for money at the beginning and ending of every single video to match what advertisers are paying me now. YouTube is a free platform, and you shouldn’t be expected or guilt-tripped into supporting me financially when brands are so anxious to advertise on my channel.
At the same time, I refuse to let the premium quality content I make, be watered down and cheapened by crappy ads. Here are the promises I make to you as a viewer:
1. I will only ever work with brands whose product I use and love—I get emails every single day offering a LOT of money to sponsor or advertise on videos—and I say no to nearly all of them because I will never advertise for crappy services or products because that’s not fair to you—to be told something is good when it isn’t.
2. Brands are not allowed to alter or change my ad integration. A lot of you didn’t like the Privacy ad from my last video. It was a 4 minute ad in an 8 minute video. If I could go back in time, I’d do it shorter. I apologize. But the ad wasn’t 4 minutes because Privacy said so, or because it was in the contract. It was 4 minutes because I really genuinely love the service and wanted to demo all of its cool features. I don’t allow brands to dictate how I make my videos. I apologize for the super long ad, I’ll exercise more self-restraint, and it won’t happen again.
3. I will NEVER do a paid review. I will always verbally state in the video, and disclose in the video description if a product is sponsored. Furthermore, I pride myself on journalistic integrity and will not provide special treatment to brands that have advertised with Snazzy Labs in the past.
4. I will NOT do fully-sponsored videos—because those are B.S. For example, Wix, the website building software company, paid a ton of YouTubers a LOT of money last year to make an entire video about their service. And no offense to the YouTubers that accepted, but I said no. Not only because I don’t think Wix is a very good service, but because videos where the whole thing is an ad are not genuine, they cheapen my brand, and most importantly, they’re not fair to YOU as a viewer. That’s not the content you subscribed for.
5. I will only advertise when by doing so, I can continue to provide unique, non-clickbait, and high-budget videos that would not be possible without support from advertisers. I have an incredibly cool video next week that—spoiler alert—is sponsored, but it’s a very expensive project that would not have been possible otherwise. And it’s a freaking cool video that’s well-worth sitting through a short little ad.
I don’t pretend to have all the answers on the best way to advertise—given the negative feedback from my last video—it’s apparent I still have a lot to learn and experiment with, so I’d love to hear your thoughts on the types of advertisements you’ve seen on both this channel and other channels that you’ve either liked or hated and provide suggestions in the comment section below for how I can continue to make Snazzy Labs videos the most unique tech videos on the Net. Thanks so much for watching, thank you millions for your support, and as always, stay snazzy.
