Paid vs Sponsored vs independent reviewers i.e. YouTubers focus

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Blackpaw

Blackpaw

Member
Apr 23, 2020
3,202
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Idaho, United States
Okay, first this is something that has been on my mind for a couple of weeks and I think needs to be said, and no one will be mentioned company or person or channel. This is purely how I see different levels of sponsorship directly or indirectly from a company to their “frontline” users, i.e. the ones with bigger YouTube channels. And I to use the phrase from George Friedman, “You can never not be bias.” AND I am not trying to trash anyone I know doing YouTube etc costs money and few people have the resources to do it all themselves, so sponsors / etc are needed, i.e. Patron.

Next, I base the opinions / views below based off knowing professional athletes, climbers, and mountaineers for years. I learned to climb from some people who went up Mt. Everest and summited. Some these people had corporate sponsors, some were paid by a major credit card company to do a commercial after being the first to win a gold metal as woman in their sport in the Olympics, and some that got company discounts to use the company’s product on a climb. The last group I loved because I always got to tag along on purchases and get 50/60% off retail. Or buy their gear after they got back from a climb in some far away place. I have so much Patagonia clothing for a reason other than just loving the brand.)

Tier 1: Directly paid (cash) sponsorship by the manufacture or business to review or use the product and some times it is hard to swallow that these people are really unbiased. These people’s youtube channels borderline on commercials, and can be educational, but definitely not unbiased because you trash too many of a company’s products they won’t come back.

Tier 2: Sponsorship, meaning you provide the product for free or at a huge discount to a channel to test, use and etc. I call this type of sponsorship pro-form which is the term used in the outdoor / sporting industry. And this also includes the company paying your expenses or similar events, i.e. trade shows.

Tier 3: Semi-sponsored, which means the YouTuber is loaned equipment for review, use but doesn’t get to keep it and must send everything back after the review is done. (Keep the products fresh on the channel.)

Tier 4: They pay for everything themselves or loaned by a private party to review, i.e. your buddy has a FX Impact for your to use on your channel or a subscriber does, etc.

So in the Tiers I think of Tier 4 being the most reliable, but as we have seen there are always clicks and groups that band together around a certain product / manufacture. I don’t believe one brand can do it all for anything and the only manufacture / owner I have ever hear say this is Ed of EdGun, and it is a 100% true.
 
I don’t believe one brand can do it all for anything and the only manufacture / owner I have ever hear say this is Ed of EdGun, and it is a 100% true.
Click to expand...

The reason being that it’s moot and understood. What a boring world if we did not have competing brands and ideologies. The only machine I consider near perfect in a “do all” sense is the human body. As for sponsors? I always put more value on the impressions of buyers and actual users of a product. It is not difficult if you do due diligence to figure which are the boringly solid PCPs out there. Good post.
 
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I take it all with a grain of salt. No one is going to admit that they give great reviews because they got paid to say what they said. People are making a living doing what they are doing and are being paid for what they say. It is a commercial and I am okay with that, I guess I am jaded ... heck, I don't even believe some of the shot groups because they can be edited just like everything else. To me, the real test is when we get buyers of the products to enter their opinions and reviews on forums like this one and give their real life experiences with the equipment. When I go to Amazon and check out something that I want, I always go to the section at the bottom and check out the reviews of buyers who have purchased the products to see what their experiences are ... but then, there are some from competing products who seem to enjoy going on there are trashing any rivals they might have. In conclusion ... people lie ... add some money into the equation and they lie a lot 😉. 

Shalom

John
 
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I believe what you say is spot on but will add;

Some will take on any product if they are paid or receive some sort of sponsorship and only point out the good parts in it therefor they can't be trusted.

Others truly believe what they are saying although they haven't taken the time to research the product well enough to know of it's pitfalls. Not good for us.

There are others though who truthfully represent the products no matter the compensation as they have a reputation to keep up and have the integrity they need to do so. For the most part these people choose only the good stuff to represent so as to keep there reputations clean and shiny.



I find the latter's representation of goods to be very accurate and forthcoming as they will point out the weak points in a product as well as the strong.

It can be confusing and a bit difficult at first separating these people into their groups but once you able to life is better.

Another thing to remember is that, often as not, the people advertising these products may know little of their long term durability. So the companies manufacturing the goods reputation must be taken into consideration when making a purchase. With all of the rebranding going on it can often be difficult to sort out the bad from the good.


 
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I think a lot reviewers are like actors. They get paid to say and act a certain way on camera or in print. Sadly in the airgun world that is most all of them. Thankfully there are places like this around so people can see what happens when the cameras aren't rolling. 

I don't fault anyone for making a living propping up products, but I definitely see them as the commercials and paid programming that they are.
 
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Agreed, and maybe some do pay for it all themselves and cycle out their stuff (and are economically able to) so they can keep things fresh. I have had friends who get into a hobby then move on to the next and sell their stuff at bargain basement prices, my glock, R9 TK, Viper and HMR 17 I all got this way. But these friends of mine are economically able to do this and I just get lucky to be there some times to get the goodies at an amazing price / s.


 
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Very good actors sell the most items in sheer volumes of that brand and THE sponsor is the smartest business person to pay them. Could even sell ice to an Eskimo.

The sponsored reviewers have to give good reviews otherwise they don't earn their living after other companies get wind of it and won't send them free items to review to resell if they know this reviewer is going to be 100% honest resulting in potential Bad publicity and lost sales. Everyone wants to send free stuff to people who only give good reviews which is common sense and totally understandable. They prey on the gullible and movie goers. Box office hits make the most money. Best actors. Props are props.

I say just buy everything yourself and just return what you don't like. Don't trust anyone who are getting any kind of free stuff. Most don't know how long it's gonna last. What about 1 year update revisiting the advertised items that they used daily? Sure anything's great when brand new. Someone should be sponsored for all brands of sub $2500 compressors and do 5 year review followup if still chugging along after daily use. Everyone should volunteer to be sponsored for their compressors sound good?

When you spend $2000+ and the "equipment" can't make the 100 and 200 yard perfect shots like you see on YouTube you will also know what I mean. Marketing genious. I must admit that Even I succumbed however I do know first hand what's real and what's not. I just pray I get the good ones from that run that's all.
 
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When you spend your hard earned money based on glowing reviews you see on video and find out first hand that the items are overpriced crap then you really wanna be their best friend after that don't you?

I feel sorry for the non vocal victims who all bought them on the video hype who actually couldn't afford to buy it in the first place especially when they come across significantly cheaper items that really smokes it.

If I were business minded and motivated by greed I totally understand how all of this works.
 
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Disclosure is the most important aspect to consider when reading or watching "reviews." 

I do reviews here on the forum for Airguns of Arizona. I send all products back to them when done. Since the first gun, I've explained the situation (disclosure). It's a very simple arrangement: lend me a gun for a few months and I share everything about that experience. 

I state what I like and don't like about the guns I review. I share true chrono readings and real groups, typically 10 shot groups, and not just the best ones. 

I'm not paid for my "opinion" and therefore share how I truly feel about a gun. Airgunning is a hobby for me, my happy place. My real profession generates enough income to be financially secure. I do not want time spent enjoying airguns to become a job and so I have zero intention of trying to turn it into an income producing endeavor.

There are those that are either fully or partially financially supported by their reviews. I'm not saying that's wrong as some of them truly invest insane amounts of time producing "content." The economies of the entire world are based on people selling the hours of their lives, so the YouTubers making a living doing "reviews" are no different than the rest of us. BUT, we all have some loyalty to the source of our paychecks, and THAT is where the grain of salt comes in. 


 
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I look at it this way I have bought my fair share of stuff because it sounded so great in the review, then it is a WTF reality, and returned it.

Thank God for stores like REI...I think they changed their return policy because of me. 🤣 In graduate school I returned a computer bag that was “too noisy” and they thought I was insane. But you know it is bad when you approach the library desk after the bag exchange and the librarian looks up and says, “Oh I didn’t hear you coming, and my reply was, “yup new laptop case that doesn’t sound like a cow bell.” BUT that first bag had great reviews in the REI comment section for its durability and water resistant, just no one must of been bothered by the bag making a huge amount of noise when you walked.

I am grateful to have found the forum and you all have been great for helping me build my knowledge level.
 
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So you can take this to another level as well…

Agreed, a lot of product is distributed in various methods from loaner to keeper and in between. Some folks are monetized by YT and other media platforms but I don’t think they’ll be filling out a loan application with “YouTube Influencer” in the job description. Be assured many, many have tried and failed to make some inkling of cash flow from it but soon realize it’s way more work and time consuming than they thought. They would have made more money writing and singing Rap.

But I digress….

What is most concerning to me is the attempt with a great deal of success, I might add, in convincing the newcomer to air guns “their” product is the Holy Grail of air guns. All it takes is money.

Not happy with 2” groups at 100 yards? Well, for the low, low price of $2000 this gun will shoot sub MOA at 200 yards! Oh! And don’t forget! You need a $800 scope with $100 rings too! Let me fix you up with a couple of thousand rounds of slugs! If you ain’t shootin slugs, well, you just aren’t with it! And because you’re a great guy, we’ll ship everything free of charge!!

The above paragraph is paraphrased slightly but I bore witness to this very thing this summer. New guy called me and was asking some questions about airguns and I don’t think he heard a word I said about his starling problem at a chicken farm…

But you know, it’s not only in the video media, it happens in the written word. As someone mentioned above about reviews on Amazon. Some people hunger for the “like” button to be tapped by their name. I’ve read articles about people that will write eloquent, stellar reviews of products they have never owned or used. The article continued about a woman who admitted she simply researched information on the web and made stuff up so she could experience the self-validation notifications. No monetization. No free stuff. Just a “like” next to her name.

Anyway, if any of you need psychoanalysis I’m here to help. I may not be able to recommend the cheapest gun with the most power and the greatest number of shots you can shoot in a locked room full of sleeping mountain lions but I can help you with your closet monsters.
 
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" Tier 4: They pay for everything themselves ", that would be why Southern Gunner is one of my favorites. And I'm sure I'm missing several in that category.

But that don't mean I don't have a bunch of favs in the other categories. It's like anything in life, you just have to decipher the B.S. out of the equation and learn what you can.
 
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Anybody that's gained experience and wisdom, in any endeavor at all, will eventually get pretty good at spotting sincerity from salesmanship. It matters not, to me, if they are altruistic or trying to make a living. What matters is the quality of the reviews they do. If they are posting empirical data it is helpful. If they fudge the numbers, or the groups, people will be able to tell and it will end their reviewing pretty quick. The reviews that I personally find of not much value, at any tier, are the ones where the reviewers do not alter the gun, -most of them. I buy something carefully and forever. Selling it is not a consideration, which is not very common around here. The first thing I do is take a gun right down and check and clean and polish and adjust everything to my liking. Even though I understand that loaned review items can't be handled this way because of time, I don't believe that any review is a complete review without doing this work. At the very least, if the trigger is adjustable, adjust it! As far as bias goes, so what? Seriously, everyone has it, about just about everything in our lives. It comes from our own experiences and is valid to each of us for our own reasons. The real thing to consider is why someone else has the bias that they have. As long as it's a technical preference bias and not a monetary one, than it's something to think about too. All of the reviews are a lot of work and gives us a view that we otherwise would not have had. I really appreciate them, even the paid ones. I remember what it was like buying anything before the internet and there wasn't sh!t for information.
 
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