Top 7 Tips - How to Get FREE Stuff to Review on Your YouTube Channel

So how do you get free products to review on your YouTube channel?  I'm gonna share seven of my top tips. Coming up. Hey, what's up, guys, So one of the super cool things about building your influence on YouTube is that you can get free products to review on your channel and this is powerful because sometimes those product reviews don't just get you free stuff and there is not just the ways to monetize those product reviews but also they can build your brand because if you pick a good product, it can attract an audience that would be interested in your channel. They don't know you yet but they are looking for products so they end up finding you. So product reviews are very powerful but how do you get free stuff to review on your channel? 

1.Pick a Niche

Well, my first really big tip is I think the most important thing and that is to really pick a niche for you channel. I found that even if you're just starting out or you have a smaller YouTube channel, if you have a focused niche then you can get free stuff really well. On the other hand, if your channel's really general, it's sometimes a lot harder. For example, one of the members of our course, Video Ranking Academy, his name's Jaben and he has a barbecue channel so it's everything barbecue. 

How to barbecue meat, ribs, chicken, barbecue accessories, all those types of things and when his channel was only a few hundred subscribers, he was already getting free accessories from companies. He got a free meat sponsor. He got a bunch of cool stuff as far as barbecue accessories, spices, rubs, all those types of things. Why? Because his channel had such a focused niche, right? So one of the most powerful tips I can give when you're trying to get products is actually to start with your branding and to try to really pick one area. That way, companies at a snapshot within five seconds can say, okay, I get what this channel's all about and I can see that this would be good alignment for us to work with this person.

2.Researching Companies

Tip number two is to then start researching companies. So where do you find companies to work with? So a couple things that I like to do is first go to Google, right, to spend blocks of time and do some research on Google. Another way is hashtags. Hashtags on Instagram, hashtags on Twitter. It could be a good way to see who is in different spaces, finding companies to work with and one of the big tips here is that no matter how big your channel is, whether you're just starting out, a few hundred subscribers or even if you have 100,000 or more, typically companies like Microsoft, Apple, huge companies, those usually aren't the companies that work with YouTubers as often, right? It's usually gonna be those B or C level companies that are gonna be more open to working with you so that's kinda just a caveat. And so doing the research and another huge tip here is you actually could look at other YouTube channels that are a similar size to you and look at what videos they're potentially doing that are product reviews or sponsored videos or brand deals. What that'll tell you is that those companies are open to working with a YouTuber that has 500 subscribers, 700 subscribers.

Makes sense. So when you see the people you're following in your space, if they're getting brand deals at that size and you're a similar size or maybe a little bigger, you could probably jump in to that same conversation if that was a product that you are interested in. 

3.Create a list of Companies

Tip number three is then to create your list of ideal companies you would want to get free stuff from and so in this case I like to do Google Docs and on there you wanna put their website, put their Twitter handle. That's a great place to reach out and we'll talk about that in a bit and also if you can figure out who the contacts are from that company, like who's their director of marketing or who's their social media manager and one hack that I like here is I've actually and I've done this successfully from start to finish is I actually go to LinkedIn and I type in the company name and then you can see who works at that company, right, and it'll say their job role and their job position so that way I figured out who the social media marketing director of one particular company that I worked with and then I found them on Twitter and that's where I started the conversation and so that's why you wanna get all of this data.

This is the data that you're gonna use to reach out to different companies to start the conversation to get free stuff. So at this point, you've clarified the branding on your YouTube channel, you've began researching companies and creating your list 

4.Create Reviews Before you Reach Out

but tip number four is to actually make sure that you already have some product review videos done or some videos reviewing products or creatively showing off products done before you reach out to the company and the way to get started with this is to just spend the money, review something that's around your house, review, if you're in the beauty space, to review some beauty products even if you just buy them from the store. This is huge because what you wanna do when you give that first impression is show that you actually already have a history of videos that they can reference, a body of work, a little bit of a portfolio. You maybe only want maybe one to four examples but it's good to get those on your channel so you have momentum even if you're just starting out. You're probably not gonna get any yeses if you send a link to your YouTube channel but can't show that you have a body of work and some examples that they could expect you reviewing their product to look like. 

So make sure to upload one to four product reviews ahead of time before you reach out. 

5. Email The Company

So now tip number five is to actually email the company. So if you go back to your list, you figured out what their email is and sometimes the email's better if it's maybe their press email, it's maybe their marketing email or maybe it's just their general email and you can reach out to them and so you wanna put together an email that's professional, that's mentioning that you have a YouTube channel, mentioning that you do review products, ask them if they ever worked with YouTubers before, give a couple links to your work and here's the big thing. Always be focused on what is the win for them.

You never would wanna start an email and say, hey, I really love getting free stuff and will you send me some free stuff? More like, I love to promote products that will add value to my audience. I'm super passionate about this arena and I would love to spread the word about your product. Always just take your whole kind of thinking and have it be around the win for them, what's in it for them? Try to put yourself in the shoes of the person receiving the email that would say, man, this is a cool person, it sounds like I'd wanna work for them and that they're passionate about our success, they're passionate about getting the word out about our product. 

6.Follow up with Social Media

So the next thing is to email them and then number six is to follow up with social media and so my favorite platform for this is Twitter and I found that most brands and most companies are on Twitter so typically after I've sent off the email, I tweet their account and say either, sometimes I start the conversation there and I just ask, hey, do you ever work with tech YouTubers?

That's my niche so insert your niche. Do you ever work with beauty YouTubers or beauty influencers or do you ever work with barbecue YouTube channels, right, and insert that and then share a link to your channel but the other thing that I would do is with Twitter is I'll say, hey, I just sent you an email about possibly collaborating on a project. Just wanted to give you a heads up, no rush and that tweet is just another signal 'cause you gotta remember just because they don't necessarily even respond is maybe because they didn't see it, right? A lot of times, companies, people, they're so busy and so I found out that following up in multiple ways on multiple channels could be a great way of getting the attention of a brand and it's probably important to add a caveat there that again persistence is powerful. The reason you have that list is 'cause maybe you wanna go through the list once, maybe you feel discouraged. You're like, nobody really replied. Leave a break, add some new things to the list, create more videos and then go back to the same list and reach out again. Persistence is powerful. So just because somebody was silent one time doesn't mean that they won't potentially work with you and send you some cool stuff to review. Just have kind of a rhythm. I like to maybe once a quarter go back through the list and re-reach out, re-ping the people that I'm interested in working with and I've seen that then maybe a quarter later, half a year later that then something ends up happening. So don't get discouraged. Keep persistent and you'll get great results. 

7. Power Tip: Go To Live Event

And tip number seven is once they reply back and send you some free stuff is make the video and then after you've put out the content, always follow up with an email saying here's a link 'cause sometimes they just might not see it, right, and even if you post on social, they might not be aware so follow up and also ask them if they would want to potentially work with you again and a lot of things that you can do especially if you're just starting out is maybe you have to put extra hustle in upfront but once you've proven yourself, you can kind of level up, right? So they might say, man, that was a great video. We wanna give you this more expensive thing or take things to the next level. So once it's done, let them know about it. And then one extra power tip that I found to be really cool for starting conversations to get free stuff for your YouTube channel to review is to go to live events so whatever event. 

I mean, whether it's a wedding convention, a tech convention, a beauty, it seems like every niche, fitness, every niche has conventions, right, and so when you get face to face with people, that can be some of the best ways to start conversations with brands and companies in person that you can then take online and you can get hands on with the products there and then eventually they might say, sure, we'll send these to you. We'll comp these to you if you do a review video. So that's one thing to also look into for getting free stuff to review on your YouTube channel. Question of the day. What is the focus and niche of your YouTube channel? Remember, that's the most important thing.