Showcase (Guest Videos)
We want to offer musicians, artists and creators who create good-quality relaxation music or other creative presentations in line with our channel theme, the opportunity to present their work to our large audience, by showcasing your work in a “guest showcase video” on our YouTube channel.
We can offer the following:
We will create a unique guest showcase video, containing and featuring your music and/or your pre-made video, and then publish it on our 'The Honest Guys' YouTube Channel for viewing by our audience. (Example video from Ben here)
This exposure to our large, established audience will hopefully result in some interest in your work and ideally, people being directed to your chosen landing page(s) via your own links.
Accreditation & Links
We will emphasize within the video itself and the title/notes, that this is a guest video and the content is created by you, encouraging viewers to visit your channel and other links below the video.
The Practicalities:
We have a standard showcase agreement (available on request). It is a simple, limited, non-exclusive license agreement that protects your material, and also shows you have allowed us to use your chosen material in a one-off showcase video to be published on our channel.
You would need to supply:
* a signed copy of the agreement
* the pre-agreed music or video files (MP3 or MP4)
* a short bio/writeup of the artist and/or the material being showcased.
* any visual material, photos etc that you might want to be included within the showcase video.
NOTE: All copyright / distribution rights must be yours, for all materials supplied.
The Agreement
The spirit of the agreement is: In exchange for displaying your work and web-links on our platform, we monetise the video in the usual way, allowing YouTube ads to run on it as standard. It generates us a small amount of revenue, proportional to the number of views the video receives. (see FAQ’s below).
On mutual agreement of the terms, we then proceed to create the showcase video, with any necessary voiceover introductions and visuals (usually before and after the guest video plays).
You get to privately preview the video, and we’ll make any tweaks before it goes live.
Frequently Asked Questions Regarding Showcase Videos, and Next Steps…
1. Do you showcase any type of content or music?
No. we are a relaxation and guided meditation-focused channel, so we will only showcase content we consider fitting for our channel theme and will be received well by our audience.
2. Will I earn any money from my material featuring on a showcase video?
No money exchanges hands directly between us. The spirit behind the guest videos, is to offer our large, established platform (1M+ subscribers), freely to artists and creators who are seeking an opportunity to advertise and have their work seen by a larger audience.
The promotion of your material on our channel, is ultimately intended to produce increased traffic to your chosen web link(s), such as your subscriber base or merchandise pages.
It is important to understand being featured on our channel, will likely provide an increased, but fairly temporary, burst of interest/visitors to your chosen links. However, from a practical perspective, interest-alone is fairly pointless, unless there is a specific reason for it, example: you are promoting an album etc. Any increased visitor traffic needs to be directed wisely and efficiently, and it needs to be clear/obvious to your visitors, exactly what it is you are hoping to achieve from their visit, so that the visit does not go to waste.
Having good quality web-links in place is essential. For a real-world perspective: A lot of our regular audience will likely only engage with the showcase video once, and a percentage of them may choose to visit to your chosen link(s), this will also usually happen only once. So for each visit, you have just one chance to achieve whatever it is you would like to happen. Therefore, you need to decide in advance, exactly what you want that valuable visit to achieve. If it’s an album sale, for example, it’s essential to make certain there is a clear and easy (preferably direct) path for any visitor to arrive at the album sales page.
3. Will The Honest Guys Earn money from my showcase video?
Usually a token amount. We do showcase videos in the spirit of helping promote good-quality artists and creators who are struggling to get traction. In most cases, any revenue generated will likely be a token amount and unlikely cover the cost for the, often, many hours of work and resources that go into creating the showcase video.
4. What happens if my showcase video goes viral?
If your showcase video goes viral, then it’s great news! A lot more people will get to know your material, and hopefully visit your links, become fans and buy your merchandise.
In the exceedingly unlikely event that a showcase video goes viral, any advertising revenues earned by us on the video will also increase, but it will be in direct-proportion to the increased levels of advertising/promotion for the guest creator’s work and the potential link click-throughs. Ultimately the equilibrium of mutual-gains should be directly proportional to each other. Everyone wins, and nobody gains an unfair advantage.
However, once again, it is important to stress that increased advertising/promotion of the guest’s work alone, won't really mean much, unless you make it count. This is why it’s essential for the guest to have good quality web-link(s), and clear visitor direction, so any resulting visits are not wasted. (See notes in itallic, in question 2 above)
5. Will you use my material for anything other than a one-off showcase Guest video?
Absolutely not! The written agreement is for us to only use the material you provide in a single, one-off showcase guest video. We will never use your material for anything else unless we have specifically negotiated a separate agreement with you. This is reflected clearly in the showcase guest video agreement contract we all sign prior to the showcase video being made.
6. Will you sell my material or make it downloadable?
Absolutely not! The written agreement is for us to only use the material you provide in a single, one-off showcase guest video. We will never use your material for anything else unless we have specifically negotiated a separate agreement with you. This is reflected clearly in the showcase guest video agreement contract we all sign prior to the showcase video being made.
7. Where will the showcase Guest video be published?
At the moment, we only publish the showcase videos on YouTube. However, if in the future we migrate or expand to other similar platforms, it is possible we will include our showcase videos playlist on these alternative platforms under The Honest Guys name.
Any such moves will always strictly be done in the spirit of the original agreement of trying to provide a platform for your work and get it exposed to as wider an audience as possible.
8. Does any money change hands between us?
No. Essentially in this arrangement, your ‘currency’ is your material, and our ‘currency’ is our large and established platform. It’s a money-free mutual-gain arrangement, from which both parties potentially gain something of benefit.
From a business perspective, think of it as if you are buying advertising space on our platform, using some of your artistic material as form of currency; You as an artist/creator are buying high-quality targeted-audience advertising for your work, and the placements of your chosen web-links on our platform. You are essentially paying for it by allowing us to monetize your showcase video, through Google ads.
Subsequently, the more views the video gets, the more advertising your work gets, and the potential click-throughs you gain. It’s directly up to you how you choose to receive/direct any increased web traffic, gained from the showcase video.
9. Will my showcase video get me lots of new YouTube subscribers or merchandise sales?
We currently have a big, well-established YouTube channel with over 1.18 million subscribers, so by recommending and showcasing your material, it is likely to generate some interest. Obviously, nothing is guaranteed and it is impossible to say how many views your showcase will generate or how many click-throughs your web-links will get, if any. It's easy to assume that because we have over a million subscribers, that's how many views your video will get, but the real-world reality will likely be a long way away from that.
There really is no way to determine how many views a video will get. It really is just a case of doing it and seeing what happens with each video. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
10. I want to get my material in a showcase video, What do I do now?
Use our contact form to get in touch with us. Please include links so we can have a look at your material and determine if it would be suitable for our audience. We will get back to you in due course.
