As your YouTube or Twitch channel grows and your audience gets bigger, your monthly revenue from it should also increase. The main income you’re looking at are subscriptions, tips, donations, and ad revenue.
Some people get to the point where they earn enough to become a full-time content creator. Others are happy when they can get a solid side income from their channels (you can read our post on how to monetize your channel here). Regardless of the group you fall into, just take a moment and try to remember the first time you uploaded a video on YouTube or launched your first stream on Twitch. Think all up until the point where you are now, reading this post. For how many hours did you grind to build your audience? I bet the numbers are insane.
You’ve built something great. You are the channel to go to for your audience and it has its worth for many brands out there.
In this blog post, I’d like to give you a bit of insider knowledge and explain how marketers look at your channel. Hopefully, you can use that to get more sponsorship opportunities or to earn more revenue from brand collaborations in the future.
Two main reasons why markets are interested in your gaming channel
1. Influencer marketing is all the rage
Marketers are always searching for new ways to reach their target audience. Marketing is (and always will be) an attention game. As people shifted from TV to social media and video platforms like YouTube and Twitch, marketers followed. They took over the marketing solutions available on these platforms — ads, but they also noticed people who started creating value on these platforms — people like you.
2. Gaming is hot
Digital marketers are mostly in their twenties or thirties. This means that they know that in the last few years gaming has evolved and grown. The gaming industry now is bigger than the music and the movie industry combined. This makes collaborating with gaming channels more interesting than ever.
What makes your channel interesting?
You‘ve put a great amount of effort into your content. It was solid, hard work. and it resulted in an engagement with your community that most brands can only dream of.
Your audience probably consists of a good number of younger gaming enthusiasts. This group is extremely hard to reach via traditional advertising methods like banners and videos. One of the best ways for a brand to connect with them is, you guessed it, YOU.
Also, when a brand wants to launch a marketing campaign they get many people involved in the process: designers, marketers, creative directors. When a content creator works with a brand they can act as a one-man-band. They plan, produce and deliver the whole campaign themselves with minimal help. This is obviously time and cost-efficient for the company.
As you can see, your channel holds some serious value for brands. ‘All good and well’ you might think, ‘But how can I get brands to support my channel or pay me?’.
Let me tell you about everything you need in order to persuade brands to collaborate with you
Advice 1: Create a channel resumé or media kit
A channel resumé (or media kit) is a great tool to show brands the real value of your channel.
A channel resumé (sometimes called media kit) is a one or two-page document that shows off the most important things about your channel. This should include your personal story, channel content, stats, and your price list.
a) Your personal story
For brands, it’s very important to know the person behind the channel. Why? If they decided to partner up with someone they need to know who they are collaborating with. Be sure to mention the reason why you started your channel and how you managed to make it grow. What kind of games do you mainly play? What are the values and interests of your community? Don’t forget to add links to your channel and social media here!
b) Your content
- YouTube: Select 3 videos you are most proud of. Take their thumbnails, video description, and URL and add them to your resume.
- Twitch: Take three clips that describe best what your stream is all about. Take their thumbnails, add a short description and the URL and add them to your resume
In Indesign, Photoshop, and Word you can turn text into a clickable URL. Your document will be read online, so it’s easier for the marketer to click and view your content.
c) Channel statistics
You can get your stats from your personal analytics dashboard on Twitch & YouTube or you can use sites like SocialBlade or Sully Gnome.
The numbers and data worth including are:
- Average views per stream/video
- Average views per day/month
- Audience view loyalty
- Concurrent viewers
- Audience geographical spread (where are your viewers coming for)
- Audience age spread (how old is your audience)
- Any numbers that hint engagement with your content (like the average number of comments/likes / dislikes on a video)
d) Price list
This is one of the most important things, but many influencers forget to include it. Name the services you would like to perform and the price for each service.
A good starting point to see which services you can perform for brands can be found on our website in this section
If you are not sure how to put a media kit together take a look at this < https://www.bizmavens.com/make-a-media-kit-that-rocks/> and that post < https://www.melyssagriffin.com/how-and-why-to-create-a-media-kit-for-your-blog-free-template/>.
Advice 2: Team up with other gamers
Unless you are PewDiePie or Ninja your channel reach might not be able to compete against traditional marketing channels like Facebook ads or Google Ads. They are easy to use and they have a massive audience that is just a few clicks away from the marketer.
If your channel is not insanely large, companies will not pay a marketer few hours’ wages to establish a collaboration with your channel and your channel only. The promised ROI (Return on Investment) for them is just too small and you have to prepare yourself for brands not responding when you reach out to them.
Platforms like Famebit, Wehype.it or Adshot: Try to make it easy for brands to work with many creators at the same time. Joining one of these sites can give you extra opportunities to find sponsorship deals — and you don’t have to do it all by yourself!
You are valuable for brands, so dare to ask for payment in return for your services.
Even though marketers have taken an interest in gaming channels, you still have to convince brands of the value your channel and what you can bring to the table. Get to work on your media kit and think about all the services you can offer. And, if you ever have any difficulties finding sponsorship deals yourself, you can always rely on other parties to do the hard work for you.