How to get sponsored by brands?

Eyes on the prize — that's what every creator would say. And if you ask most creators what their top two priorities are, they'd say: building an audience and monetization.

Justin Moore, who runs Creator Wizard, is the go-to creator for all things growth and landing deals. 🔥

We caught up with him to talk about creator sponsorships — in today's newsletter, we're sharing this conversation.

But, First: Who's Justin Moore?

Now, let's dive into the conversation. 👇

Thousand Faces Club: Justin, do you remember your first brand deal?

Justin: Actually, I do! My wife April started a YouTube channel in 2009, and I was helping her behind the scenes. Back then, you couldn't monetize on YouTube — you were creating out of passion, and brands wouldn't pay you for promotions; instead, they offered free products for video plug-ins. April was stoked about this as she'd get makeup and skincare products. One day, a Korean skincare reached out to us in 2011 and offered to pay us, and we wondered what to do about the deliverables or compensation.

Thousand Faces Club: That's awesome! What happened then?

Justin: That's a lot of money even now, right? We were shocked a brand was willing to pay us $700 for a relatively less amount of work — I mean, it would take care of some expenses, right? Say groceries, utilities, electricity. It was an eye-opener for us, and we thought, why not go after 10 other brands for brand sponsorships. It started as a side hustle but it’s the genesis of what we do today.

Thousand Faces Club: Interesting! That brings us to this question: When should YouTubers start looking for brand deals?

Justin: A significant phone carrier company approached our agency with a challenge. Their products resonated with the Financial Independence Retirement Early community, but they struggled to find creators who spoke to that audience. When we were hired to strategize for them, we looked at influencers with high and low following, and found a YouTuber named Mike, who had less than 1K followers. He created content around budgeting for active duty millitary — that was his niche. The brand hired him and were super excited about his content which they also used to run ads. The lesson here is you don't have to wait to achieve an arbitrary threshold of subscribers or followers to start working with brands. When you start your content journey, you don't pitch ‘let me talk about you to my 500 followers’ — instead, you say, ‘let me help you make more compelling content’ for you to use on social media or paid ads.

Sign up for Creator Wizard here. 👇

Thousand Faces Club: Great advice! Can you tell us what are your top three learnings about brand sponsorships?

Justin: I have three very simple ones: be reliable, communicative and nice.

Thousand Faces Club: You're offering courses on Creator Wizard. Who should enroll for these courses and why?

Justin: I have two courses — the first one is Gifted to Paid, a course on how creators can convert free offers from brands into paid partnerships. This 90-minute course is for creators in their 0 to 1 journey. The second one is my signature course, Brand Wizard, which helps creators get more sponsorships and money. This course is largely for experienced creators.

Found this conversation helpful? Please watch our entire podcast with Justin Moore. 👇

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I’ll be back with another story next Tuesday. 👋

— Sunaina Patnaik

Thousand Faces Club is an initiative by Phyllo. Phyllo is the universal API for creator data. Sign up for free!