Welcome to episode two of honest answers. Today I'm going to try to
demystify another aspect of the inner workings of Lionus Media Group about
which there appears to be a lot of confusion. How do we make enough money
to afford all the staff, studio space,
and equipment that we have?
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the link in the video description below. So, it feels appropriate to open
this discussion with one of the main ways that people think we make money,
paid advertising videos disguised as reviews. While we actually couldn't be
fined for that type of behavior here in Canada where the advertising guidelines
and even then they are guidelines not laws here are only just now being
revised for the age of social and influencer marketing for brands and
agencies that want to market to Americans. So 40 to 50% of our audience
hefty fines are quickly becoming commonplace with undisclosed influencer
marketing. So no responsible brand would
engage in this practice and we outright refuse to as well anyway because even
with proper disclosure, what value does a paid review or even a video with a
very similar structure to a review have to the
viewer? Which getting into how we do make money then doesn't mean that we
never do paid projects with hardware manufacturers. We absolutely do. Every
entry in the obscenely popular build guide series is clearly sponsored by
either Intel or by AMD. But in these and
other product placement deals, we retain the right for our hosts and writers to
have their own opinions with very tight restrictions on what a brand can alter
about the finished video. We grant these sponsors no special rights to positive
reviews in other videos or even space on
our editorial calendar at all. For example, perennial sponsors Corsair and
Cooler Master often promote products in pre-roll ads that we have never reviewed
and a Pacer is an example of a sponsor whose products we have never reviewed at
all. There's other baggage for LMG sponsors too. We have on multiple
occasions canned potential sponsors for refusing our terms and even existing
sponsors for not taking care of our viewers. Dbrand is a golden example of
what we expect in this regard. If an LTT
community member complains, they mobilize the robot army immediately and
do what it takes to fix it. This is critically important for us because as
I'm about to reveal in enough detail to make Nick and Ivon
wse, no amount of marketing funding in
the short term could possibly outweigh the long-term value of creating the best
content we can while maintaining the trust and viewership of our audience.
I'm not going to give exact numbers here. Firstly, because disclosing dollar
amounts would violate some of our contractual agreements. And secondly,
because exactly how much money I or Luke or Brandon or anyone else here makes is
none of your business. But however much it is, here is where it comes from. A
little under half of Lionus Media Group's revenue this year has come from
sources that are basically directly affected by the number of views that we
draw in. YouTube AdSense, you know, that little skip ad button you clicked before
watching this. And Amazon affiliate links, that shout out at the end of our
videos where you can buy the product that I'm reviewing or really anything
else and we get a kickback, make up equal portions of this. And Vessel, the
early access platform where you can watch our videos 7 days before they go
live on YouTube, makes up a smaller but still very significant chunk. Of the
remaining 50% in change, a quarter of that is the brands who sponsor us to
cover events like Computex, the Samsung Developer Conference, NAB, the Polaris
launch in Macau, and PAX East. Another
quarter of it is pre-roll ads and what we call standard product integrations.
You know how the Mastercase 5 has a variety of modular parts and MasterUp
gets you great deals on genuine products over at drawups/ etc, etc. and we bake
those into our Linus Tech Tips videos on YouTube. Techquiki and WAN Show ad spots
get separated out in our books. So, I'll do the same for you. They combine for
just under 15%. Then another 5% is
t-shirt fan and hoodie sales. Another 2% is patrons and contributors and banner
ads on the forum and.1% is one sponsored spot that we did
over on channel Super Fund for ODS games. Man, that channel loses a lot of
money. Anyway though, the remainder, so
just about a third of it, is the dozen or so projects that we've done this year
that fall outside of standard pre-rolls
and integrations. Some of them are dedicated, disclosed, fully sponsored
videos, like the recent tech then versus now video sponsored by Sage. Uh the my
grandpa meets Google video sponsored by the Google store and the unbuild logs
that we've done with some system integrators including I by Power and
Origin PC. But many of them are things that probably wouldn't even occur to
you. On the books for this year, we've got the sponsored Instagram posts,
tweets, and Periscope streams that we did from the North America and New York
auto shows with Ford and Toyota. We've got a series of retail staff training
videos that we produce exclusively for Intel's Retail Edge program. We've got
Dbrand's product placement and sponsorship of Scrapyard War season 4.
Logitech's Daniel Boral Innovation Center tour and Nerd Sports, a series
that Vessel contracted us to produce as an exclusive web series for their
platform. With that being pretty much
it. So then, why am I telling you all of this? Most YouTubers keep this stuff
very carefully hidden. The answer is because I believe you guys have a right
to know. And because I hope that it'll drive home once and for all why it's in
our best interest from both an ethical and even a monetary standpoint to make
the best content we can make. Whether that means working with long-term
partners, products from non-sponsors, or
even brands who can't be asked to reply to an email about a review unit. And I
do all of this hoping, even though I realize that no degree of transparency
will convince some of you, hoping that I can get across the point that we aren't
in fact actually paid NVIDIA shills. Nor
are we obligated to bow to any other manufacturer.
All of these hardware vendors, the ones on this list and any miscellaneous
smaller ones I might have missed, combined make up less than 15% of our
revenue so far this year. If that business went away tomorrow, Linus Media
Group would not only survive, but it would continue operating the way it does
without needing to cut anyone's pay or downsize our workspace. And this is
thanks to the partnerships we've built with non-h hardware brands who want to
reach our audience like Squarespace, Dollar Shave Club, Ting, Soilent, Gamma
Labs, VideoBlocks, Blue Apron, Tunnel Bear, and more. And more importantly,
thanks to you guys. You, the audience, are in black and white terms in every
measurable way worth more to us than
anything that a sponsor can offer. And I hope that you can understand why that
is. Now, to be clear, undisclosed paid
reviews are out there. I'm not saying to put away your tin foil hats just yet.
Some key ways to recognize them would be manufacturer links, especially tracked
or custom ones, in the video description with above the fold being a dead
giveaway or supporting social posts with weird hashtags that no one in their
right mind would give a [ __ ] about. But I'm just saying that thanks to self
flattery incoming careful planning on my part and my teams, you won't find them
here. Lionus Media Group's integrity is not for sale. It never will be. And now
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Squarespace, make sure to use offer code Linus to get 10% off your first
purchase. So, thanks for watching, guys. If this
video sucked, you know what to do. But if it was But if it was awesome, get
subscribed, hit that like button, or even consider supporting us directly by
buying a cool shirt like this one, or by joining our community forum where you
can ask questions, answer questions, and basically talk tech with a bunch of
other technofiles. Now that you're done doing all that stuff, you're probably
wondering what to watch next. So, click that little button in the top right corner to check out our latest video
over on the money sync that is Channel Super Fun. I'll just like throw these at
it. channel. Super fun.