Happy New Year! Welcome to Finance & Fury’s Say What Wednesday. It’s been pretty quiet on the question front, I’m guessing with everyone away over the holidays… so today will be a quick episode covering the number 1 question I got all of 2018 but never answered – Sponsorship.
I get one or two emails a week from companies looking to promote products/services and everyone I talk to asks me why I don’t advertise? Do I make any money from sponsorship?
The quick answer is no, and I never plan to.
Preface – I don’t have anything against advertising. Lots of people now make their living from Youtube, Podcasts, etc. I think it is great. It’s the free market in action and allows people to make a living. Podcasting started as a little side project. I get bored pretty easily, so it was something to do nights/weekends. I enjoy doing this. Helping to educate people, talk about topics that don’t get covered very much. I get to learn as well. Thankfully the personal finance topics don’t need be researched (otherwise I wouldn’t be good at my job), but the topics on politics, economy, history, psychology, I research because I want to make sure I know what I am talking about. As a bonus, I don’t have to rant about this stuff to my friends/family – so I think they enjoy me doing it to.
Reasons I don’t want to do sponsorship.
Never intended. I don’t need the income. This might seem hypocritical as this whole podcast aims to teach ways of increasing your income. I don’t intend to stop working – I’d have to start doing 3 podcasts a day to avoid going insane. Wouldn’t it help to boost income? Yes, but ironically money doesn’t factor into the motivation. Cost/Benefit – How much would I earn, versus all the other cons.The cons:
Don’t know the products/use them Get it with professional referrals – risk to give recommendations on things if they are bad, and I don’t want the client to have bad experience It discredits me if product is bad. Most requests for sponsorship are for financial companies/investments/platforms. There are strong regulations around adviser kickbacks and I don’t want to have any conflicts in advice What if the product tanks? This is also why you rarely hear me talk about specific investments; they might be good today, even tomorrow, but what about 1 year from now? People listen to these episodes at different times If I personally don’t really believe in the product it’s not right to promote something I myself don’t use. Corporate interests – My content then has to be ‘advertiser friendly’ This used to be just naughty curse words, now it goes further and can restrict what you talk about I want carte blanche – I want to speak my mind. If you haven’t noticed, do bash on some things sometimes. It’s a slippery slope – it starts with small concessions, even self-censorship. Sponsors can control what you say. I don’t want to do it to you guys Personally don’t like sitting through other podcasts constantly plugging various products and companies. The whole point of this is to educate you guys and sponsorship wouldn’t help with that. This is why I scratched the intro – I don’t want to waste your time.
If you have any questions from Monday’s episode – what do you want to know to help achieve your goals? Or even how to get goals in place? Hit me up on the contact page 😊
