Paid Blog Offers

[Muttley Snickers]

I don't mind some of Peter Oakes videos and tutorials but haven't watched any in a while, not sure what the hell happened here though, the entire video page is now just one big advertisement flyer.   

The Breadboard-Peter Oakes.
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheBreadboardca/videos
   

[Red Squirrel]

I have to admit in your shoes I'd be tempted. 2k for one video is pretty decent.  That's basically one of my pay cheques.  I guess this is what some people refer to as "selling out" though, as the channel ends up being all these sponsored reviews and stuff as all these vendors come with these "offers". 

[bitseeker]

Such a boring offer. 
Check out the offer Lous Rossmann received from a TV company. THAT one was hillarious 

I watched that yesterday and that was hilarious!

It was a bit funny at first, but his rant, although understandable, isn't correct relative to business norms. He's addressing it as if the contract was written for or to him and for a project where he's the artist. It's not. Rather, it's a boilerplate contract that is sent to every artist to cover a variety of situations. It's not personal and he was taking it personally. Companies don't tailor every contract for every potential relationship because it costs too much. If someone naively signs it, no need to get a lawyer involved.

He's correct in that the company that initiates the contract has it tailored to their own benefit. (Sometimes a company will have a mutually beneficial contract.) As a result, the recipient of the contract is obligated to read it and has the option to rebut it. That's contract negotiation. If he wanted to pursue the opportunity, rather than compose a long reply to the organization about what he didn't like, he could have marked up the contract to his (or his lawyer's) satisfaction and sent it back. Thus begins the back-and-forth.

This also applies to engineering. If you have to visit other companies for meetings, presentations, interviews, etc., beware of what you sign. Often, large corporations require you to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) before you can get past the lobby even if no confidential material is involved. Don't blindly sign it because it's often one-sided and may impose unexpected liability or intellectual property restrictions on you or your employer. Many times, I've had to cross out offending portions of an NDA before signing it.

tl;dr: Assume a contract is not in your best interest unless you or your attorney wrote it. Don't take the boilerplate content of a contract personally. Don't sign a contract without knowing what's in it and rebut/edit/refuse it if you don't like it.

[EEVblog]

It was a bit funny at first, but his rant, although understandable, isn't correct relative to business norms. He's addressing it as if the contract was written for or to him and for a project where he's the artist. It's not. Rather, it's a boilerplate contract that is sent to every artist to cover a variety of situations. It's not personal and he was taking it personally.

Of course it's personal, it was his contract after all (and it was somewhat personalised for him) and they wanted him to sign it.
If they didn't want him to take it personally they shouldn't have written such a horrifically bad contract to begin with.

He's correct in that the company that initiates the contract has it tailored to their own benefit. (Sometimes a company will have a mutually beneficial contract.) As a result, the recipient of the contract is obligated to read it and has the option to rebut it. That's contract negotiation. If he wanted to pursue the opportunity, rather than compose a long reply to the organization about what he didn't like, he could have marked up the contract to his (or his lawyer's) satisfaction and sent it back. Thus begins the back-and-forth.

That contract was not salvageable, almost everything in it was bad.

[zapta]

He's correct in that the company that initiates the contract has it tailored to their own benefit. (Sometimes a company will have a mutually beneficial contract.) As a result, the recipient of the contract is obligated to read it and has the option to rebut it. That's contract negotiation.

The side that authors the contract sets the tone and controls the negotiation process. It's like fixing a bad design, there is a limit how much you can change.

[jancumps]

The side that authors the contract sets the tone and controls the negotiation process. It's like fixing a bad design, there is a limit how much you can change.

Most contract proposals of businesses that want to make a deal and that have competition are balanced.

[rrinker]

 No matter how many disclosures you make, no matter how many upfront notices you make, there will always be that subset of people who assume something that's not. You can whack some people over their heads with a big sign saying the following is a paid review and they will STILL think that any favorable review is an unsolicited endorsement. It's just not worth it for the potential damage to an otherwise stellar reputation.
 We know what it really would cost - Dave revealed his price in that thread in the General section. After which he would be gonski and enjoying his retirement on his private island, so no more EEVBlog for the rest of us.

[coppice]

There are some perfectly good opportunities for vendors to pay for totally ethical blogs. For example, applications blogs, or how to drive a peripheral blogs, that specifically highlight how well a device can perform a particular task. These types of blogs should contain mostly hard material, and should have very little which is merely opinion. I see no valid reason not to be paid to produce them.

[bitseeker]

It was a bit funny at first, but his rant, although understandable, isn't correct relative to business norms. He's addressing it as if the contract was written for or to him and for a project where he's the artist. It's not. Rather, it's a boilerplate contract that is sent to every artist to cover a variety of situations. It's not personal and he was taking it personally.

Of course it's personal, it was his contract after all (and it was somewhat personalised for him) and they wanted him to sign it.
If they didn't want him to take it personally they shouldn't have written such a horrifically bad contract to begin with.

I agree that companies shouldn't be that way, but they are. Hence, the old saying, "It's not personal, it's business." Unfortunate, but too often true.

He's correct in that the company that initiates the contract has it tailored to their own benefit. (Sometimes a company will have a mutually beneficial contract.) As a result, the recipient of the contract is obligated to read it and has the option to rebut it. That's contract negotiation. If he wanted to pursue the opportunity, rather than compose a long reply to the organization about what he didn't like, he could have marked up the contract to his (or his lawyer's) satisfaction and sent it back. Thus begins the back-and-forth.

That contract was not salvageable, almost everything in it was bad.

Agreed, and crossing out almost everything or simply saying that the contract is unacceptable is sufficient, rather than long explanations about each point. If a company really is interested in doing a deal, then after failing to get you to go for the ridiculous version of the contract, they'll pull out the mutually beneficial version or have one drafted.

Of course, I'd think twice about doing a deal with such a company. My point is that his experience is not unusual.

[Brumby]

I think Louis has provided an invaluable service with this video.

There are a lot of people out there who are good at doing a particular job, but really lacking in business skills.  This is a heads up for people who might be star-struck at the idea of getting paid for something they are already doing - and not realise they need to critically examine things like a contract... especially when they have had no formal input into its draughting.  In such a situation, they should expect the contract to be heavily weighted in favour of those who had it put together and to then identify and address the concerns.

Certainly, there are boilerplate documents out there - but when one is presented to a particular person, then it does become personal.  The issues about which Louis gets 'animated' are prime examples of the sort of thing ANY potential signatory to a contract should have a very great concern.

[EEVblog]

The side that authors the contract sets the tone and controls the negotiation process. It's like fixing a bad design, there is a limit how much you can change.

Most contract proposals of businesses that want to make a deal and that have competition are balanced.

Not in the entertainment business.
Their opinion is either you sign it or you can bugger off. There is little to no negotiation for Joe Bloggs.
If you don't want to sign the contract for Idol / X-factor / insert reality show here then there are 100 other people who will.
Also, they have no problem with canning a show idea, that happens more often than not.

I was approached once to co-host a kinda science based reality show (Derrick from Veritasium was he other host they approached), but it was some crap about science pranks or some such, terrible idea. But it was a huge name with National in the title who had contracted this production company to find people and develop the idea etc. It last a few emails before the whole thing flopped, money down the drain, but that's the business.

[EEVblog]

Agreed, and crossing out almost everything or simply saying that the contract is unacceptable is sufficient, rather than long explanations about each point. If a company really is interested in doing a deal, then after failing to get you to go for the ridiculous version of the contract, they'll pull out the mutually beneficial version or have one drafted.

And if it's "just business" as you say, then the company shouldn't take Louis's rant personally and would come back to him if they really wanted it.

[Muttley Snickers]

I just found this related video on Youtube and might just leave it here for the time being.   

[T3sl4co1l]

Now, what I'd like to hear about -- and I don't see it being discussed -- is such an offer [as Rossmann's] even legal?!

Even such simple absurdities like "throughout the universe" can be more dangerous than silly.  Some discussion:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB125658217507308619

Why would you add a qualifier to an already completely general "all"?

While the individual clauses of the contract may be reasonable enough in a suitable context (for example, controlling ones' image, because that person irrevocably becomes part of the brand), I suspect that so many of them, so strict and onerous, strung together, without any discussion of Artist rights (beyond payment for episodes), or of considerable and ongoing compensation to make it beneficial, would simply be thrown out if it actually went to court.

It's a basic tenet of US contract law (I think; IANAL) that the agreement be mutually beneficial, and that one cannot remove basic, guaranteed freedoms, even if both parties knowingly consent to the terms (example: dom-sub contracts, that some couples use: they aren't legally binding).

For the nearly limitless responsibilities given to the Artist, and the nearly complete lack of compensation (indeed, the levying of royalties from any source of income Artist may pursue), I suspect that contract amounts to indentured servitude, and is therefore null and void.  It's a waste of paper, that should've never been written in the first place!

Tim

[EEVblog]

I don't mind some of Peter Oakes videos and tutorials but haven't watched any in a while, not sure what the hell happened here though, the entire video page is now just one big advertisement flyer.   

Wow 

[EEVblog]

Now, what I'd like to hear about -- and I don't see it being discussed -- is such an offer [as Rossmann's] even legal?!

Anything is legal to sign.
And they are free to sue you if you break any agreement you sign.
Doesn't mean they will win though.
Legality of anything can only be ruled after the fact by court.

[T3sl4co1l]

Anything is legal to sign.
And they are free to sue you if you break any agreement you sign.
Doesn't mean they will win though.
Legality of anything can only be ruled after the fact by court.

True enough!

(I mean the latter sense, of course; but it is kind of disappointing that such things have to be subjected to the expensive scrutiny of the court before they are found as such.)

Tim

[EEVblog]

(I mean the latter sense, of course; but it is kind of disappointing that such things have to be subjected to the expensive scrutiny of the court before they are found as such.)

Well it's not pot luck. Based on case law you can often be fairly sure if you will either win or lose before it gets that far.
Same rule applies to advice from lawyers. Just because a lawyer says something is ok or not ok does not mean anything legally, they are just guessing based on their experience and case law history. Many a person has lost it all and then complained that their lawyer had ok'd it 
Trap for young players.

[tszaboo]

2000 bucks for a 3-4 day work? Ok, so that is about 60-80 USD/hour, before taxes, below the engineering contracting rate. Not a good deal, if you dont have the time.

Maybe you should just subcontract the blogging to someone in India and make half the video there, place the blog post in a weird location and the video on EEVBlog3.

[steve30]

I normally ignore things from people who want to 'reach out' to me.

I certainly don't think I'd want to be 'seeded'.

[Yansi]

Interesting video I watched today ()

Just wanted to note, that even my f*king looser youtube channel with about 650 subs and 600k views (that I dunno where I got from) has been approached at least once from some chinese component and doodley doo arduino supplier wanting me to do reviews for them.

However their product range is mostly what I hate (arduino and stuff around it). The only things in my interest was few STM32 micros they have on stock. ... however, due to my work position in blahblahblah I have access to every blahblahblah's thingy or two and had to kindly decline their offer. The haven't offered any other reward than the item for review either. So not worth it, even for a dumb EE student like me.

[zapta]

2000 bucks for a 3-4 day work? Ok, so that is about 60-80 USD/hour, before taxes, below the engineering contracting rate. Not a good deal, if you dont have the time.

You need to consider also the potential devaluation of the eevblog brand.

[jancumps]

Anything is legal to sign.
And they are free to sue you if you break any agreement you sign.
Doesn't mean they will win though.
Legality of anything can only be ruled after the fact by court.

True enough!

(I mean the latter sense, of course; but it is kind of disappointing that such things have to be subjected to the expensive scrutiny of the court before they are found as such.)

Tim

True. I was advised to just sign a job contract with an obviously illegal chapter in it (by a legal service - they do that service for free here if you're member of a union),
because that chapter would not be enforceable in court.
The contract included an exclusivity clause, and that's not valid in Belgium except for particular types of jobs.

[XynxNet]

Authenticity is in my opinion one of the main reasons for Dave's success.
It is kind of ironic that companies think, that's something they can buy into.
Keep up the good work and your principles, Dave!

[zapta]

Authenticity is in my opinion one of the main reasons for Dave's success.
It is kind of ironic that companies think, that's something they can buy into.
Keep up the good work and your principles, Dave!

Check Dave's video, they can buy it but for much more ;-)