Stream Elements Sponsorships Exposed: The Truth Behind the Offers

[00:00] dodgy sponsorships that most of the time AR actually sponsorships at all this has bothered me for ages but because most of this is happening through or by a

[00:12] respected and beloved brand I didn't want to be seen as someone who starts drama and I'm still not sure this video is going to go out but you know what stream elements no I can't earn $177,000 through this sponsorship it is literally

[00:26] impossible you're at worst lying and at best you using deceitful wording to trick small creators into doing free advertising for Brands and most of the time you can't even get the spammy emails correct maybe I should refer to

[00:40] you as username for the rest of the video where to start well first let's explain why these sponsorships aren't actually sponsorships stream elements sponsorships are actually what's called performance-based campaigns and are more

[00:53] similar to affiliate deals essentially you'll agree to a campaign with stream shitty mobile game on your stream however you won't get paid unless you and your viewers reach a series of performance-based goals and let me tell

[01:08] you these goals are Insanity I'll give you some examples in a second but first let me show you what a real sponsorship is owned your One-Stop shop as a version of own Pro this means not only can you now get full overlays from

[01:24] webcam borders alerts labels and more set up in literally three clicks but you overlay packs without paying anything and if you want to use literally any of paid and get access to their entire library and for a little extra month

[01:42] also get an entire epidemic sound subscription gaining access to over 40,000 songs and 990,000 sound effects if you want to support me check out the that 30C ad read of a product I genuinely do recommend I will be paid a

[01:58] flat negotiated rate by owned if this video doesn't do well I still get paid and on the flip side if the video does amazing they don't have to pay me more we have an agreed contract of deliverables I am in control of that is

[02:12] a sponsorship now if owned had said to me I need to get 50 new signups to own Pro to earn upwards of $500 AKA $10 for every sign up that would be a performance-based campaign this is slightly different to an affiliate deal

[02:25] mind you which would be something like if you do use the owned Link in the that purchase now there is nothing inherently wrong with a performance-based campaign they can work and they do work if they are done

[02:40] ethically but this is where things go wrong with stream elements if you have an email telling you that through their sponsorships you can earn thousands of

[02:52] dollars hell it doesn't even matter if you have viewers this Creator in my community did a 10-minute test stream to zero viewers and was offered $2,000 to promote raid Shadow legends that sounds amazing $2,000 for zero

[03:08] specifically let's look at what they offered me and walk you through how it's pretty deceitful to send an email like that for context recently I went live to test new features on Twitch for a video I used an account that I haven't been

[03:23] live on in years as I'm on YouTube now I had 65 average viewers yes we peaked at 80 or 90 thanks to some raids but consistently over 4 hours it was 65 average the next day I was offered a dozen campaigns by stream elements as

[03:38] $6,500 seriously look at this Royal match 3700 Monopoly go 6400 Star Trek fleet commander 16,000 raid Shadow Legends

[03:51] 16,500 this is life changing money nobody can deny that if someone offered you this money to stream a game you'd froth the mouth and scream yes yes how do I get it please well to answer that firstly we have to do a 2hour stream of

[04:06] the game or brand that sounds pretty easy but remember that's a minimum because then if 58 of my 65 average viewers complete the tutorial of said game I'd earn a whopping $58 now in theory that doesn't sound too difficult

[04:20] game they are making an account and then they are spending 5 to 10 minutes to go through the tutorial that's only a doll per person which means if I got them 58

[04:33] new signups I would be paid $58 that's a bit lower than the 16,500 advertised but let's keep going and see if it scales better now if those 58 $232 okay okay keep going if 58 users and remember I had 65 average clear the

[04:52] catacombs of bar bunk with three stars which we all know exactly how easy that is right I'll earn 522 okay so if 58 different users all get through the first three goals then we will earn a total of 812 bucks that's pretty good

[05:08] well not quite let me be very clear here conversion rates for brand Integrations about it by an influencer are incredibly low even when the product is good and on

[05:22] topic I've done brand Integrations on videos with 100,000 views or more that got 200 to 500 clicks on the link and even then only 50 to 100 actually sign up this is less than 5% of the viewers engaging with the link and less than 1%

[05:37] actually signing up to add to this in marketing we have data that says for a person to consider buying or signing up for a product they need to see and be advertize that product on average between 8 to 12 times and that is if the

[05:50] product is on topic and relevant to them with all of that in mind imagine you're me you're streaming slay the Spire an amazing beloved game to 65 average viewers then you get told you could earn 16,500 bucks let's pretend I accepted

[06:04] and then I went live my goal is to get 58 signups right which for context is 90% of my average viewers they are telling you to get nine signups for every 10 viewers you have that is not going to happen because very likely I

[06:19] means you'll have less average viewers by default but also I'd be playing a potentially shitty mobile game nobody wants to watch that so now you're

[06:31] sitting there with 20 average viewers begging them to sign up and spend hours of their time and money so you can get paid a fraction of what you were advertised because yes you don't technically need to reach the full 58

[06:44] you could just get 20 signups and earn $20 but again that's a far cry lower than the big bold $6,500 now to their credit they are also going to pay me a guaranteed payment of $130 as long as I do that 2hour stream

[06:58] to my 65 average this guaranteed payout I believe was a change initiated over the last few years when other people called stream elements out for these performance-based campaigns this payment would be $70 an hour which is pretty

[07:12] good I earned nowhere near that when I worked a real full-time job out in the real big bad world except when I did 2hour long sponsored streams to 150 viewers on Twitch I was being paid a minimum of $500 an hour that amount I

[07:26] always let the brand set and most of them set even higher than that now is was during the height of covid so maybe it was higher but either way it's a

[07:38] little bit more than 70 bucks an hour and remember these offers are based on my stream of 65 average now we also have to consider the fact that if you want to not just going to be a 2-hour stream you're likely going to have to go live

[07:56] over and over trying to convince your viewers to not just sign up but slug through hours of content to reach the endgame goals which sometimes also require them and you the streamer to spend money on the game now I know this

[08:11] was all a bit wordy but I really hope you can already see how these campaigns and goals are heavily marketed to look like you'll earn insane money for a tiny amount of work when in reality it just isn't the case now you could argue these

[08:24] campaigns aren't a scam they're just [ __ ] that's that's all it is I get dozens of [ __ ] sponsorship offers a day and I don't go around claiming those are scams either and you know what I agree until you remember these offers aren't

[08:37] going out to people like me who know better these are going out to people with zero viewers people with no experience people who have small communities and desperately want to go full-time as content creators they're

[08:49] going out to you people who will accept a campaign and then spend dozens or in some cases hundreds of hours promoting the brand for a tiny amount of money share your wins Channel and at least once a week someone shares how they got

[09:04] their first sponsorship and they're super excited when I read this now I no longer ask them who the sponsorship is or what the system is because I don't Shadow Legends through stream elements I desperately want to be hyped for these

[09:19] small creators but the fact is they usually either delete their post a bit later when they realize the truth it's not a sponsorship or they post how they feel like [ __ ] because they couldn't reach the goals and they feel they were

[09:31] never going to be able to reach the goals they essentially were tricked into doing hours of work by a fake sum of money that was never attainable sure they might have gotten three maybe five signups for the brand maybe earned 20 to

[09:44] 30 bucks here or there if one or two viewers really pushed hard to reach the castle of beback boys and three star it but that's what these Brands want you have hundreds and hundreds of small streamers convince their hardcore Die

[09:57] Hard Ride or Die fans three or five of them to sign up per community and then hope that out of hundreds of small creators promoting it they might get a few long-term users who become whales and spend a lot of money on the game

[10:11] sure that small Creator they signed the contract they saw the goals they should beloved brand like stream elements says you can earn a lot of money and you're

[10:24] not just a beginner you're also desperate which isn't an insult this is a dream job for many so they are desperate to go fulltime when all of this happens you're going to believe that offer is real sadly the brands and

[10:37] stream elements don't care about the quality of the content or the quality of promoting the brand they are going for Pure numbers that's why their spammy emailing people with zero viewers or have even deleted their stream elements

[10:54] accounts and this isn't even me diving into all of the posts I've seen from creators saying they did the entire campaign only to then not be paid because of weird technicalities or people saying the signups all counted

[11:08] until the campaign ended and then a bunch vanished I can't vouch for the validity of every single Creator who's posted about this cuz I'm just one guy but it's wild how many posts there are out there when you start to Simply look

[11:21] have done these campaigns and feel like they are amazing or had a good experience and would recommend others do them as well I'm not going to deny your experience I'm simply trying to bring light to a different experience and

[11:37] whether it was positive or negative we can all agree that this entire system is built on deceitful tactics at best it's a poorly run and poorly managed attempt at connecting brands with creators that's at best but at worst it's a

[11:51] computer-generated spam Farm designed to get hundreds of small creators to spend hundreds of hours collectively advertising brands for barely any money that it becomes practically free labor AKA a system entirely designed to take

[12:05] advantage of creators who don't know any better which again I want to bring it viewers his goal was to just make sure he wasn't lagging and he was offered a

[12:17] $2,000 campaign just quickly I realized I didn't give clear constructive feedback I thought that things that need changing would be obvious but just in watching this that you can do to fix it one change your campaign Outreach and

[12:32] minimum guaranteed not the maximum guaranteed it's deceitful two fix your Outreach so it's not sending emails out to literally anyone and everyone who

[12:44] goes live even once three realize the majority of the people that you're outreaching to are currently going through an economic crisis a cost of living crisis and they are desperate to keep a roof over their head so if they

[12:56] mobile game and play through the entire tutorial maybe give them more than a dollar per person I'm pretty sure the mobile game companies can afford it the

[13:08] worst part is I love stream elements their scene editor and widget tools are only few alerts and widget platforms that actually work with YouTube so what

[13:20] options are there I'm obviously never going to recommend streamlabs for again the obvious far worse reasons but creators are stuck between a rock in a hard place where even respected and trusted brands are now doing things like

[13:33] this if myself or any other educator makes a guide telling someone to use stream elements alerts or their chat widget and a brand new Creator listens and trusts us they'll go and sign up and use them we are practically guaranteeing

[13:46] that a brand new Creator who doesn't know any better is going to receive a campaign offer like the ones I've shown in this I don't expect they'll change video to bait drama or even call them out really I just feel it's my

[14:01] responsibility as a human being as a person with a platform who has recommended and even been sponsored to promote their tools in the past that I say something so that you are better informed of your worth you deserve to be

[14:13] paid for the hours you spend working on something if you still want to take the campaign and earn something I understand that it's better than nothing but essentially I guess the entire moral of this video is you deserve better and

[14:27] stream elements a brand we all respect and used has let this entire creative space down with these spammy low effort campaigns I guess I'll see you next week