I have been pondering the question of spending money on YouTube sponsorship channel specifically to raise book sales. I’m not sure I have all the answers but let’s unpack the question anyway.

First, what is ROI?

ROI, in case you have not heard of it before, is a marketing term that stands for return on investment. ROI is the benefit of the advertising spend over the cost of that spend.

For example, if I spend £100 on advertising and get £200 in sales, my gross ROI is 2:1 – £2 for each £1 spent. However, if each sale also costs me £1.10 in materials then I get back 90p for each £1 spent (a non-sustainable outcome). On the other hand, if my cost per unit is 50p my net ROI is 3:2 – £1.50 for each £1 spent. In theory, as long as we can take this to a large enough scale, this is something we can keep doing and earn more money.

YouTube sponsorship

Unless you have watched only a few YouTube videos, you will have seen one where the presenter says “This episode was brought to you by Big Company Inc.”. They are not saying that from the goodness of their hearts, they say that because they got paid to say it.

Likewise, the big spender is unlikely to be sponsoring a channel out of some inherent kindness, they hope to improve sales as a result of the recommendation.

As authors, we could also look at doing this too. We would have to reach into our (often limited) pockets. For this reason, we need to do everything we can to make sure that our chosen sponsorship deal brings an ROI that is some amount more than the amount spent.

Selecting partners

An author sponsoring a YouTuber is likely to get enough sales to make it worthwhile only if they can first identify a channel whose audience would be interested in the author’s books.

For example, if you have a series of cooking books and sponsor a channel that is all about fast cars, then the chances are you are going to have a poor to non-existent ROI. I think it goes without saying that a cooking channel would be a better fit.

But what about us fiction writers. What sort of YouTube sponsorship opportunities can we go for? That rather depends on how well you know your target audience.

If you know that your ideal reader loves science and robotics, then you will likely do quite well with a few test spends with channels that talk about science and/or robotics.

How big is too big?

The bigger the channel, the more money they can reasonably expect to ask for an advertising slot. The chances are that they will want to see at least as much money as they could expect to earn allowing YouTube ads on their video.

It would be wise to start making approaches to potential clients that are of a size consistent with how much you are willing to spend.

Assuming the channel has at least a few hundred views per video, you can start to do some maths to work out what constitutes a good deal.

Banner ads typically tend to see an average response rate of around 0.06%. A YouTube mention is likely to be some amount better than that. Nevertheless what if we assume the worst case? A channel of 5000 views per video might give you 3 sales at 0.06%.

Using better numbers

According to one source I found, YouTube adverts (not sponsorships, but adverts) see a 0.514% click-through at a cost of $0.026 per click. A recommendation is likely to result in something better than that.

Assuming comparable figures, that example of 5000 views per video might see 26 people going on to visit the product page. This would, according to the source cost less than £1. Assuming half go on to make a purchase and you earn £1 per sale, you just made over 1300% on your investment.

Wow, I honestly did not expect the numbers to come out that large.

Test trading

Before you go dumping £500 into a single sponsorship, it would be wise to test the waters with a few smaller channels. Something of the order of about 10,000 video views as an average.

You might, for example, be able to negotiate a £35 for seven video shoutouts. You would have to bear in mind that you are repeating advertising at the same audience. Some sources suggest that people need to hear a message three times before they act on it. Others suggest that you would see a slow diminishing of returns.

However, we are talking about testing out a trial of less than you probably spend on shopping. Even an author on a tight budget should, with forgoing a few luxuries, be able to afford that investment.

Your sales will depend very much on how well you chose your test channel.

You may wish to offer the content producer you have partnered with one or more signed copies of your book. If they are a channel that likes to give things away, extra copies to use as prizes will benefit the channel and may increase your visibility with their audience. A win-win for both of you.

Measuring your YouTube sponsorship success

You will want to measure your success over time. Pay particular attention to the weeks before your deal goes live. Note the average weekly sales you have been seeing.

The week (starting with the day the first mention goes out) will be your first measure. Is it higher than the average of the previous weeks? If it is, that is great. If there is no change, don’t worry just yet.

Regardless of if you see a spike in sales on the days the sponsored video goes live, watch your sales in the weeks and months that follow. Different channels take different amounts of time to get their viewing figures up. After at least four weeks, you should have a clear picture of how the sponsorship impacted your book sales.

Calculating your YouTube sponsorship ROI

It is now time to do some maths. First, find the average of the weeks from when your sponsorship went live and deduct the average of the weeks before that. This is your sales increase per week.

Multiply your sales increase by the profit you get from those sales. Not the sales price but the amount of the sales price you get to keep. This is your return value. This might be easier to work out for self-published authors but you should still be able to track sales figures assuming your publisher lets you see those numbers.

Divide your total return value by the amount of money you spent and multiply that by 100. This is your ROI as a percentage. If your number is more than 100, you have a positive ROI. The more you exceed 100 by, the better the investment was.

If your ROI is less than 100%, you lost money. However, maybe your sales continue to remain a bit higher. So you may need to revise your ROI over time.

Is YouTube sponsorship for you?

If you can build a good relationship with content producers, and negotiate a price you are comfortable with, you may find that YouTube sponsorship is great for your book sales. Some large businesses build their entire sales model on such deals. I see no reason why book authors cannot do the same thing.

Ultimately, deciding if YouTube sponsorship is right for you depends on your ability to identify the right partners and how comfortable you are with risk. After all, you have very little way of knowing how well your books will sell after you spend money to get a content producer to recommend your book.

If, after several test deals, you fail to get above 100% ROI, this might not be right for you. However, as your skill in picking partners improves, and your confidence grows, you might be ready to sponsor larger and more expensive channels.

Have you tried YouTube sponsorship before?

I would be really interested to hear from authors who have sponsored YouTube content creators before.

• What sort of ROI did you see?
• How easy did you find it to locate a good partner to work with?
• Did you see a sudden spike in sales or a steady increase?
• Would you sponsor again?
• What lessons did you learn that other authors should know about?

If you have sponsored before, are thinking about it, or have never even considered doing so, I would love to hear from you. Let me know your thoughts in the comments section.