This is pretty bang on....
As a small & new manufacturer - trying to get my products out there has been an absolute shambles. The stories I could tell! I've sent about $5k of product out with basically nothing provided.
All the influencers ask for freebies, then dont deliver, "oh i'm really busy"... "i sell brandX on my store & your product is a competitor - so i cant"... "all my media slots next year are booked"...
My response is now: you pay full price for the product, then once its published - YOU specify the metrics you can hit & i'll refund the full price & shipping to you. If they can invest in their own venture, why the heck should i?!?
TLDR - you dont get honesty/integrity above ~40k subscribers (of course a gross generalisation & there will be exceptions, but I have a good amount of data behind this approach)
There's the entertainment channels (Airgun Alley) - who outright state they're entertainment, & he does a superb job - they're excluded from this.
What to look out for....
There's 1 brand in particular to be VERY weary of - if they review it, chances are they dont review much else or are horribly biased.
Do a quick scan of their channel, are you seeing the same brand over & over?
Do they publish a video on the exact same day as everyone else on that item?
Here's how influencing works: (according to an old school influencer that we all know)
- You get a little channel running & find a niche, it starts to grow
- Manufacturers notice you & start sending you free stuff
- You grow lots & lots, as you've got stuff to play with
- You get big enough that you can start to influence sales/opinion in a positive & negative way
- You get offers to have your channel join a group of others & get externally managed
- You get some good enough money from YT & start to do it full time, your quality improves
- You've put all your eggs in the basket
- You get big enough that manufacturers start to not like you reviewing other stuff
- The legal implications of saying something bad about a product becomes VERY apparent
- All the manufacturers turn around & say that they wont send you anything unless you only review their stuff
- You can chose to be *****, or lose access to equipment & your channel dies
What to look for - generally I find ~5-10k subs is a really sweet spot for quality, thoroughness & independence. It will be MUCH lower production quality, and far less content - but if its the content you're looking for, that's where a lot more "truth" seems to happen.