Paid Blog Offers

[jancumps]

I think that it's the personality as a whole, not the <isolated> authenticity.
There's a load of authentic bloggers out there that don't get a view. Ever.

[vze1lryy]

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.

Contract law often favors the side who DIDN'T write the contract when it makes it to court. The reality is that most people who claim they will sue, do not actually sue.

Think about it. Court costs money. The people who sign contracts without having an attorney read them are people without the money for a lawyer.

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.

I agree, and would also like to add, realize the lost momentum!

Every second dave spends on the forum, his channel, and his projects he spends building his brand. Every second he spends on this blog idea, he spends putting down his own ideas. While this might sound silly to a lot of people, losing momentum on your own projects to invest in someone else's project requires a higher level of compensation than the amount of compensation we'd want if we were working for ourselves. Even if what Dave does today doesn't return him much $$$, what he does today might lead to an idea that tomorrow that manifests itself as an additional $30,000 in revenue over the lifetime of his brand.

If he spent tomorrow working on this terrible offer, he might have missed an opportunity to build his own brand by virtue of being busy doing something else. The opportunity cost has to be taken into consideration. It is why self-made successes who are busy doing their own thing will charge insane amounts of money to go "off course" for an idea they do not believe in, because they often don't know how much they are missing out on by taking themselves off track to do unrelated work for someone else.

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.

For me I never wanted to be on television. Instead of say no, I gave them an opportunity to listen to my concerns, and send me a piece of paper that incentivized me to change my mind.  If that is their idea of changing my mind, then just gtfo. If I had applied, I understand them offering me this, but they came to me.. they actually showed up here twice because I wasn't available one day.

I worked in entertainment, as a technician, not much a recording engineer, for several years. From tiny NYC studios to Avatar studios, I got to be in the room with a lot of smart people, and occasionally, some pretty ignorant people, and I got to be in the room later to hear how everything worked out. From that time, I did learn that the biggest and oldest scam in the entertainment world is the concept of exposure. For every 1 person that becomes famous or even makes $60k/yr of of a career started off exposure, there are 100,000 that just get used up for nothing by it. As my friend who runs his own label and studio as a living says on one of his albums - "can I take it to the deli and cash it in for a sandwich?" If no, RUN!

I've tried doing reviews before and... it doesn't work out well. Even for free. I am just not involving myself in reviews of unsolicited gear.

[Merlot1970]

2,000 dollars is chump money to be getting involved with these crooks

[EEVblog]

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.

I agree, and would also like to add, realize the lost momentum!
Every second dave spends on the forum, his channel, and his projects he spends building his brand. Every second he spends on this blog idea, he spends putting down his own ideas. While this might sound silly to a lot of people, losing momentum on your own projects to invest in someone else's project requires a higher level of compensation than the amount of compensation we'd want if we were working for ourselves. Even if what Dave does today doesn't return him much $$$, what he does today might lead to an idea that tomorrow that manifests itself as an additional $30,000 in revenue over the lifetime of his brand.
If he spent tomorrow working on this terrible offer, he might have missed an opportunity to build his own brand by virtue of being busy doing something else. The opportunity cost has to be taken into consideration. It is why self-made successes who are busy doing their own thing will charge insane amounts of money to go "off course" for an idea they do not believe in, because they often don't know how much they are missing out on by taking themselves off track to do unrelated work for someone else.

Bang on.

[ez24]

This is the kind of paid blog offers I get and turn down often.

Too bad you black out who they are - now I cannot make them an offer.  How about PM and I will do a video on their development kit.  Is it wrong to do a paid review if disclosed?  They are all over Amazon.  I would do it, disclose it, donate the money, and take a tax right off.  After all, didn't you do this once ? I think the date was Apr.1, but I forgot the year.   

[bigsky]

Here's a question for Dave and others who are more familiar with advertising rates than I am... What would be a fairer price for the advertising generate by this proposal? Their $2K figure is just a laugh, but would it be worth $20K, $200K, or somewhere in between?

From the EE Times ratecard, a double-page print spread for 12 months would cost about $50K, and I'm sure what they're asking for would have at least a similar impact. But if EE times can $8K for an online welcome ad for just one week, maybe even $50K is cheap. As Dave said, 50K+ views is typical for one of his videos, the degree of viewer engagement is very high, the video is up forever and continues to get hits, so all that has got to be worth a considerable amount.

But we all enjoy listening to Dave knowing that his opinion hasn't been bought by anyone, and long may it stay that way 

[bitseeker]

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.

Yes, "if they really wanted it," being the key phrase there. As you pointed out, some companies are just looking to see who'll sign such nonsense and move on to other "victims" if they can't have their way.

[bitseeker]

From that time, I did learn that the biggest and oldest scam in the entertainment world is the concept of exposure. For every 1 person that becomes famous or even makes $60k/yr of of a career started off exposure, there are 100,000 that just get used up for nothing by it.

So true. Many industries are like that. It's a pyramid where few make a lot and many, many struggle to make anything (and are taken advantage of while trying to get somewhere).

As my friend who runs his own label and studio as a living says on one of his albums - "can I take it to the deli and cash it in for a sandwich?" If no, RUN!

I like it!

[nardev]

Ha ha, could be Mikroelektronika

[Stefan Payne]

Sadly there are many many sites who do exactly that...

They get paid from the manufacturer to do a (positive) Review of something...
Or have some other Things going on...

That's why some products are rated better than they deserved to be rated, sadly...

[iampoor]

Here's a question for Dave and others who are more familiar with advertising rates than I am... What would be a fairer price for the advertising generate by this proposal? Their $2K figure is just a laugh, but would it be worth $20K, $200K, or somewhere in between?

From the EE Times ratecard, a double-page print spread for 12 months would cost about $50K, and I'm sure what they're asking for would have at least a similar impact. But if EE times can $8K for an online welcome ad for just one week, maybe even $50K is cheap. As Dave said, 50K+ views is typical for one of his videos, the degree of viewer engagement is very high, the video is up forever and continues to get hits, so all that has got to be worth a considerable amount.

But we all enjoy listening to Dave knowing that his opinion hasn't been bought by anyone, and long may it stay that way 

CPC (Cost per click) for google adwords is ~1$ a click (this is on the low side), I would think that for a video with 50k views, starting at 20 thousand $ might be reasonable place to start? 

I really wonder what bloggers like Colin Furze get paid. He runs the only Youtube channel that I am 100% okay with being funded by sponsered content, since the projects are so cool. 

[bigsky]

CPC (Cost per click) for google adwords is ~1$ a click (this is on the low side), I would think that for a video with 50k views, starting at 20 thousand $ might be reasonable place to start? 

That might even be on the low side. Watching a 30 minute video is a bit different to clicking on a link. For example, when Dave does a review of a piece of test gear, I will watch it in full and get a pretty comprehensive understanding of the item, what it can do, and how well it does it. Even if the manufacturer sent a salesman round to do a personal demo for me (which would cost them quite a bit), it wouldn't have the same impact as Dave's expert opinion. And the teardowns have great value as well - being engineers, we're interested in build quality and what's inside things.

I really wonder what bloggers like Colin Furze get paid. He runs the only Youtube channel that I am 100% okay with being funded by sponsered content, since the projects are so cool. 

I enjoy Colin Furze as well - but he doesn't do equipment reviews in the same way as Dave - so there's not the same issue with independence. He got HTC 1.1 million views from the video you linked to - must be worth a considerable amount!

[EEVblog]

Here's a question for Dave and others who are more familiar with advertising rates than I am... What would be a fairer price for the advertising generate by this proposal? Their $2K figure is just a laugh, but would it be worth $20K, $200K, or somewhere in between?

Depends on how you price your "service".
If you consider it a paid gig then the time you spend making and supporting the video (hourly rate say $200), and then throw in some extra for your "brand" and audience.
Or you could price it based on views (or this could be the "extra" bit mentioned before), take your views and price it at several hundred dollars CPM at least. So 100k expected views = $20k say.

Lets say the video was a biggie and it took you 40 hours work, that's $8k in your time, plus $20k for the eyeballs.
That would be a realistic industry figure.
Remember, they want your audience, because it's something they don't have.

From the EE Times ratecard, a double-page print spread for 12 months would cost about $50K, and I'm sure what they're asking for would have at least a similar impact.

Nope, not close.
People treat ads differently to personal opinion, especially the personal opinion of someone they trust.
Also, a eyeball watching a 30 minute review video is orders of magnitude more valuable psychologically than that same eyeball flicking past your ad in a magazine 12 times, maybe only reading it fully the first time if you are lucky.

the video is up forever and continues to get hits, so all that has got to be worth a considerable amount.

That's called "long tail" views, and would be something you would promote in your ad rate sheet.

[peteroakes]

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 

Hmm, Noted. I had not realised I was giving that impression, so sorry to all my viewers, I will have to correct that. But just to clarify, I have not sold out, The same as Dave, I do not get paid for any of my videos, and follow my own direction, but as you can see, I have had some of my sponsors being very generous with goodies recently, I just chose to put their logos at the beginning splash page to acknowledge that. Looking at it the way shown in the quote though, I can see where your impression is coming from. And I am long over due to get back to some of my other projects.
Peter Oakes
www.youtube.com/thebreadboardca

[peteroakes]

And I like to think I do not hide things from my viewers, I can't afford to buy equipment (At least not much) so rely on vendors and distributors to donate them to me (Sponsor is the better word I guess), the only deal I agree to is to show the products and if it is a review item I will say where it came from and include logo's etc, if as is the case with my soldering station and other tools and components, there to help with projects, i will provide links to the sponsors sell pages and still state that company X provided these to me.The one thing I don't do, which is the same as Dave is to agree that the review will be positive or not, nor provide reviews of the video before publishing.

I think the only video that deviates very slightly from that is where RS Components asked if I would like to provide a short video to be used at the world maker faire in Rome as the support of a new Siemens IoT2020 Educational industrial Gateway, this video was not paid for but I did it as it would get me loads of exposure at the Faire... Awesome yes! and I was creating a review of it anyway, and a bunch of tutorials, Tutorials are the main stay of what I like to do

[hans]

Remember that thumbnails for video's are to catch attention on YT: a marketing banner for your own video's, not some kind of marketing sponsor banner for some one else. If you don't get viewers for your content, you won't get any for your sponsors either. I would be very thrifty with putting logo's onto my own work and videos. MAYBE an 'acknowledgement slide' or some intro scene if you have main sponsors of your channel, but other than that I would keep stuff like that to a minimum.

Yes it's nice that they sponsor stuff and equipment but if you dedicate time in a video (or even a dedicated video) to it that's already their marketing done (unless agreed otherwise I suppose). Any future use of the product can be seen as a further kickback to them, but I wouldn't mention it explicitly again and again. If people ask just refer them to a mailbag or whatever. If you then mentioned it explicitly they sent it to you for free for a honest review, there is not much else to say.

TBH I know your channel (it's in my RSS watch feed), but I had the stereotypical ad thing in my head too. Personally I hate advertisements and I hate branding; including marketing, logo's, sponsored content, etc. I know it can be a 'necessary evil' to survive and keep the lab equipped with nice gear to shoot interesting content with, but in the end I would click on a video for the content primarily.

Well, that's just my 2 cents.

[ez24]

And I like to think...

Under your Profile you can put links to your sites and YT, and they will be displayed in every post you make.  It would make it easier to see what you are doing.