What should I charge to make product reviews?

Jungle Explorer

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A company that makes outdoor sports equipment has contacted me and asked me if I would be willing to make review videos for their products. I have received these offers before from other companies, but never responded because they were for products that I am not interested in. This company however makes products that I like and I already own some of their products and have even made review videos about them; which may be why they are contacting me.

I like their products and so I responded that would be willing to work with them. I assumed that they would send me products to review for free and I would do the reviews in exchange for the free products, but now they are asking me how much I charge per video to make the reviews. I have no clue what is reasonable or how to even calculate what I should charge. I mean, realistically speaking, the way I make review videos does actually take time, money and work to produce the video, so I can see why some people would want to charge for doing it, it just never occurred to me. I thought the free products was the pay.

Anyway, I was just wondering if anyone here makes review videos for a company and if you can give me some pointers here? I have made many review videos of products I buy, but I have never done it for a company before.

Thanks[DOUBLEPOST=1510816286,1510806774][/DOUBLEPOST]So, I did some searching on google for the answer. One guy suggested that I should figure out my average view ration and charge .02 to .04 cents per view based on that number. Since my channel is about more then product reviews, I decided to go with just the view count from the videos I have made about this companies products already. The average view ratio for those videos was 11 thousand per video. At .02 cents per view, that is $220. Now that sounds like a lot to me, but considering that I don't make simple unboxing videos like some people do, I actually do live in-field test of the the products I review, that might not be enough. For example, if I am reviewing a fishing rod, I will actually go fishing with that rod and video me catching fish with it. That takes time and money to make that video. Also, I do more then just post the video to my youtube account. I have my own personal website that the video will go on that is linked to facebook and twitter pages, where the videos will go be posted to as well.

I just have no idea what is normal for this. Anyone else here do this?
 

The BBQ Chef

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Been having a think about this and I think you answered your own question.
The company in question makes things that you own and use and at that point I'm sure they make other things that at some point you'd spend your own money on. Why don't you just do the video for a free item and suggest that if they're happy with the video you have an ongoing relationship where they send you their new product first.
That way you have an ongoing relationship with a company you like, items that you can review that will intern bring views to your channel.
If you wade in with "It's going to cost me XXX to make this video so I'd like XXX amount in return" they may just walk away.
If Weber contacted me and said they'd sent me a free BBQ for a review video the only thing I'd be asking is "When do you want it to be live" :)
 

Jungle Explorer

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Been having a think about this and I think you answered your own question.
The company in question makes things that you own and use and at that point I'm sure they make other things that at some point you'd spend your own money on. Why don't you just do the video for a free item and suggest that if they're happy with the video you have an ongoing relationship where they send you their new product first.
That way you have an ongoing relationship with a company you like, items that you can review that will intern bring views to your channel.
If you wade in with "It's going to cost me XXX to make this video so I'd like XXX amount in return" they may just walk away.
If Weber contacted me and said they'd sent me a free BBQ for a review video the only thing I'd be asking is "When do you want it to be live" :)
I agree with you but the issue is, they are the ones that are asking to pay me, not me asking them. I suggested that they could pay me a commission based fee of 5% based on sales from my video that they could track through a cookie, but they said they would rather pay me a flat rate.

I responded to them last night that I would produce the first video for free to see if they liked my style I would charge $200 per video and for that price they would get all of this.

1. Full 1080P HD Video
2. Product Unboxing and Setup
3. Discussion of product attributes
4. Actual in field usage and live testing of the products
5. Publishing on my Youtube Account
6. Promotion on my own website with it's unique page and with custom links to the reviewed product on amazon.com.
7. Posting on my Facebook business page
8. Posting on my Twitter page
9. Posting to my Google+
10. Posting to Instagram.
 

The BBQ Chef

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Ask them to embed the video into their website as well, then all their clicks count to your channel.
 

Xynudu

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I do product reviews for Banggood and have been approached by two other major/similar retailers.

There is a product review war going on between these companies, as they have finally realized the power/influence of YT as indirect advertising at low cost to them. So they are desperately looking for good reviewers/channels.

I currently don't charge, but I am aware that $100 a video is on the low side of what big YT reviewers charge.

Until you are big/popular at doing reviews I think charging may kill the goose that lays the golden egg, however in your case suggest $100 and see what happens. If they say no, you still have the option to do it for free.

Given the amount of work involved in making a decent review that's a fair price.

Cheers Rob
 

Jungle Explorer

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Thanks guys. They counter offered and offered $50 per video. They said the reason was that I did not have enough subscribers for them to pay $200. I was like, "Yeah Baby!" I would have done them for free, but why not get 50 bucks to boot. You know what I mean?

Just to give you and example of the work I put into my videos. My son bought a new .22 old western style pistol from budsgunshop.com. We went out and shot it and I decided to do a review of it. This was about 3:00pm this afternoon. I did an 8 ammunition test on the gun, complete with all stats, a decibel level test and also a target demonstration. The testing equipment required to complete all this cost several hundred dollars, not including the multiple cameras it takes to capture all the angles, (I have no video guy to video me. I do it all myself). The video shoot took almost two hours. The ammunition cost was around $10. I have been working on editing the video ever since. It is now 12:30am and I just finished the editing portion. I had to do many dozens of calculation to post all the final data in the video for each type of ammunition used. The video is currently rendering and that may take an hour. It is 26 minute long video at full HD quality, with multiple embedded overlay videos, titles and other graphics. Once the video is done, I will have to watch it to make sure everything came out alright, which it never does, and then I may have to edit it and re-render it. So I am looking at getting to bed around 3:00 or 4:00am. So the total work time on this video might be 12 to 14 hours of work, not including the upload process, writing descriptions and sharing on social media. These may add a couple more hours.

This is an easy video for me. A fishing equipment video is a lot harder. I have have to actually go fishing, which can be an all day process. Then I have to comb through hours of video to get the shots I want to use. I think $50 is decent price for the vender considering all the work I do to make great videos. One day my channel will be worth more and $50 will not cut it. But for now, I am ecstatic to land my first sponsor. Yeah!
 
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Super interesting post. As I was reading through the thread I thought you would easily get $200 considering that your average product review video gets about 11,000 views. Evidently the sponsors didn't see it that way.

A lot of sponsors are experimenting with digital influencer marketing at the moment, it is still a relatively untested field. It may be a good idea for you to send the sponsors copies of your analytics one week or one month after publishing. The sponsor will be interested to see the geographic and demographic coverage, and will be grateful to you for giving them more than they agreed to.

In my opinion we will see an increase in both the pay and the popularity of these kind of product reviews from smaller YouTubers in the next few years. There is no way that a manufacturer could get 11,000 eyes on their product, as well as an engaging explanation, AND know the age group and location of the viewers from any other media platform. Certainly not from Fishermans Weekly or whatever name fishing magazines may have...
 
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Jungle Explorer

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Super interesting post. As I was reading through the thread I thought you would easily get $200 considering that your average product review video gets about 11,000 views. Evidently the sponsors didn't see it that way.

A lot of sponsors are experimenting with digital influencer marketing at the moment, it is still a relatively untested field. It may be a good idea for you to send the sponsors copies of your analytics one week or one month after publishing. The sponsor will be interested to see the geographic and demographic coverage, and will be grateful to you for giving them more than they agreed to.

In my opinion we will see an increase in both the pay and the popularity of these kind of product reviews from smaller YouTubers in the next few years. There is no way that a manufacturer could get 11,000 eyes on their product, as well as an engaging explanation, AND know the age group and location of the viewers from any other media platform. Certainly not from Fishermans Weekly or whatever name fishing magazines may have...
So, the deal has been struck, they put money in my account and my first two products are in the mail on their way to me. I am really excited. For the amount of work I put into my videos, $50 is way too low, but I have to start somewhere.

I think it would have been a great idea for me to share my demographics with the vender like you suggested. Wish I would have thought of that. 92% of my viewers are men between the ages of 18 and 54. That is the perfect age range to sale fishing equipment too. You are so right about the views venders get on youtube. It's not only that they get views (11,000 in my case), but it is views from a targeted class of demographics. If you pay for an ad on TV, you might get a lot of people that watch it, but they might be kids, or people that are not interested in what the class of products your are selling. But with a youtube channel like mine that is dedicated to outdoor sports (hunting, fishing, camping, etc.), the views you are getting are coming from people that have gone out and searched for what they are specifically interested in. So, 11,000 views on a fishing rod product review on my channel, is 11,000 views from people that are specifically looking at that product with interest in buying it. That is an advertising GOLD MINE!

How do I know this? Because I just bought a brand new SJcam SJ7 Star action cam to improve the quality of my video for these product reviews. I watched about 30 youtube videos about the top 4K action cams on the market and chose the SJ7 Star because of the product review videos I watched on youtube. That is how I know that paying YT creators to make product review videos is a gold mine for manufacturers.
 
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