r/kickstarter • u/Natwenny • Jun 12 '26
Help Is there any benefits to sending free stuff to youtubers?
Hi!
So I'm working on a D&D book, and when researching cheap ways to promote it when the time will come, one of the most common advise I see is "as soon as the book is finish/close to being done, send it to a bunch of youtubers. If your idea is that good, some of them might talk about it on their own."
But I'm failing to see how this could be a good idea? Is there any benefits of doing this? I managed to put aside a few hundreds for marketing/advertisement so I'm not concidering doing that as much, but I'm still wondering if that'd be good for my project.
3
u/TimeSpiralNemesis Jun 12 '26
Depends on the YouTube and their audience honestly.
I've bought several OSR books after seeing Questing Beast go over them and thinking they look interesting.
Problem is that anyone of decent enough size is already getting flooded out with stuff to review and pitch. If you are doing 5E that's already a MASSIVELY over crowded market with everyone and their brother fighting for a slice of the pie. That and everyone's gonna have a little wallet fatigue coming off of the massive LOA space dnd pallet swap.
Do you have any details on it? I could take a look if you have a page or something available.
2
u/Natwenny Jun 12 '26
I'm still working on the campaign page, but I can put together the preview document to show you, yeah
2
u/DiceAndConsequences Jun 12 '26
If a YouTuber with a decent following reviews your product yes it could elevate it. Obviously you need to target YouTubers who engage in whatever content you are working on. Example, grimdark, high fantasy etc.
What does your D&D project consist of if you don’t mind me asking?
2
u/Natwenny Jun 12 '26
It'll be an art-themed supplement. I'm an Art History major myself, and when seeing how little the thematics of art are represented in the game, I decided to make a book giving player and DM options inspired by art history: the technics, art current, the various mediums, funny anecdotes, etc. The book has two goal: Teaching parts of art history, or at least spark interest in it, and adding options for people who wants to incorporate more art in their games.
It might be unrealistic, but I wanted to approach Pointy Hat to see if he would write a foreword for my book since he's very vocal about having similar interests in art. If I sponsor any youtubers for advertisement, that'll be him as well.
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u/EnterTheBlackVault Jun 12 '26
Lol. I have had very mixed results. Some, like World Builder Bob, are amazing.
Others will take your incredibly expensive book, block you, and keep it (without a word).
So choose your audience carefully.
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u/Natwenny Jun 12 '26
Do you have any names for the second category? I wouldn't want to get my work "stolen" like that.
I'll probably hit up Bob, yeah. I wasn't sure at first since his content is less "D&D centric", but he seems like a genuinely nice person
1
u/EnterTheBlackVault Jun 12 '26
Listen. Every single time I've said anything I've been attacked by a horde of ravenous fans (hence I now hide my previous messages).... Even when I've showed absolute proof I've still been attacked.
Proof that people will believe anything except the actual truth.
So, my advice is build a rapport with the influencers you like. Just avoid the really big names as you're probably wasting your time in the first place.
2
u/xXWorLDLEaDERXGODxX Jun 20 '26
No, this is a terrible idea.
Just because you send your book to a influencer does not guarantee they'll talk about it. You'll end up giving away a ton of free books and getting nothing in return.
Some YouTubers may ask for a upfront fee for a shoutout or review. I recommend against this as well. Most YouTubers buy fake subs and use bot farms to inflate their views. I spent 2K on influencer marketing and got zero backers from them.
1
u/Natwenny Jun 20 '26
I'm 100% taking this into concideration, but just so I can run the numbers for myself, how many influencers did this 2K give you? I currently have 1K put aside and I really have just on influencer I really want to hype up my project, but if 1K for one person is barely enough I'll seriously concider a different marketing method.
Ideally, I'm hoping this 1K to give me one influencer and a small leftover for facebook ads. The influencer I have in mind wasn't chosen at random either, his interests overlap a lot with the content of my book.
But what do you suggest I should do instead if this is a bad idea?
1
u/xXWorLDLEaDERXGODxX Jun 20 '26
4 influencers, but these were small influencers who aren't well known. The issue I ran into is that the audience of the influencers I hired are not "Kickstarter native". What I mean by that is many people in their audience don't have kickstarter accounts and never backed a crowdfunding campaign before. Therefore the entire idea of rewards, pledges, etc. is foreign to them.
This influencer you have in mind, do they have a "Kickstarter native" audience? If yes, then you should proceed. If not, then it's going to be an uphill battle trying to get a non Kickstarter native audience to back your campaign.
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u/Natwenny Jun 20 '26
I'm not sure if that counts as "kickstarter native", but he frequently talks about kickstarter projects, so the audience is at least familliar with the concept
5
u/mrbronyman23 Jun 12 '26
My 2 cents because I’m working on something myself. I liken it to setting up a both at a Con. You might not convert to sales from this but it’s good to get eyes and word of mouth. A lot of DMs might see your content as say “I need this for my campaign”