How to find YouTube influencers to sponsor

The tempting first search is the category: "tech YouTubers", "fitness channels". It returns the biggest names, who are the hardest to reach and the most expensive, and says nothing about whether their viewers would buy from you. Ask instead whose audience already looks like your customer. Write a few lines before you open YouTube:

• Who they are. "Home baristas with a first espresso machine who want better shots" is useful. "Coffee lovers aged 25 to 45" suggests no search at all.
• What problem they have. The thing they type into YouTube before they know your product exists: sour espresso, a squeaky bike chain, a toddler who won't sleep.
• What they already watch. Reviews, tutorials, vlogs or long comparisons. This decides the kind of creator, not just the topic.
• Where they live and what language they speak. A channel with a perfect topic and an audience in the wrong country can't sell for you.

Those lines are most of a brief. If your market has a page in our YouTubers by niche series, it lists that niche's searches, sub-niches and pitfalls.

Creators make videos for what viewers search, so search what your customer searches. Three kinds of query find different creators, and a good list uses all three:

Problem searches

What the customer types when something is wrong: "why is my espresso sour", "how to stop a cat scratching furniture". These surface tutorial channels, many of them small, whose viewers arrive wanting a fix.

Product-category searches

The thing itself: "espresso grinder", "standing desk setup", "trail running shoes". These find reviewers and enthusiasts who already talk about products like yours.

Comparison and "best X for Y" searches

"Best budget espresso machine for beginners", "Brand A vs Brand B", "is it worth it". Viewers of these videos are close to buying.

Patterns that tend to produce useful searches, with your own words in the brackets:

• how to fix [problem]
• why does my [product] [problem]
• [problem] for beginners
• best [product] for [use]
• best [product] under [price]
• [product A] vs [product B]
• is [product] worth it
• [product] review after 6 months
• [product] setup
• [activity] routine
• [product] mistakes to avoid
• [product] for small spaces

1. 01

   Run each search with filters on

   Use YouTube's search filters: upload date, to keep to recent months and active channels; type, to choose videos rather than Shorts, or to list channels; and duration, to keep long videos if that's the format you want. Ten to twenty searches across the three kinds above is a good first pass.

2. 02

   Read the results by channel, not by video

   For every relevant result, open the channel's Videos tab and scan the last 10 to 20 uploads. One video on your topic among twenty on something else is a one-off, not a fit.

3. 03

   Put every plausible channel on a long list

   Keep a spreadsheet: channel name, link, the search that found it, subscriber count. Don't judge hard yet. If you want ten creators to contact, a long list of forty or fifty gives you room.

4. 04

   Note the signals for each channel

   Fill in the columns in the table below. It takes a few minutes per channel and saves you paying on the strength of a subscriber count.

5. 05

   Cut to a shortlist

   Drop channels that haven't uploaded in months, whose topic only grazes yours, or whose audience is in the wrong country. Then watch two or three full videos from each channel left. Our guide to vetting a YouTube creator has the full checklist.

6. 06

   Find the contact details they publish

   Creators who take sponsorships usually publish a business email. See how to find a YouTuber's email address.

Subscriber count is the first number you see and the least useful one. It records how a channel grew in the past, not who watches now. These signals say more:

For the arithmetic behind the engagement column, and why the median beats the average, see YouTube engagement rate.

Search ranks a few channels well and buries the rest. Once you have a handful of good fits, use them to find more:

• Channels sections. Many creators list channels they recommend on their home page, usually ones that make similar things for similar viewers.
• Comments under similar creators. Smaller creators often comment on bigger channels in their niche, and their names link to their channels. Viewers also mention other channels they watch.
• Videos your competitors already sponsored. Search a competitor's brand name and look for the "Includes paid promotion" label or a sponsor line in the description. Those creators take deals in your category, but ask about exclusivity.
• Collaborations and guests. Creators appear in each other's videos. A guest on a good-fit channel is often a good fit too.
• YouTube's own suggestions. Watch a few videos from a good fit in a fresh browser profile, and the suggestions alongside will lean towards similar channels.

Once you have a shortlist and a contact for each, the first message matters most. Our outreach email templates cover paid integrations, product seeding and affiliate offers.

Nakodo does the first half of this for you. It reads your website and writes a brief you can edit: what you sell, your markets, the kind of creator that fits with a subscriber range, and 3 to 6 groups of YouTube search keywords. It then searches YouTube for videos from the last 12 months and works out median views and engagement for the channels behind them.

Every creator gets a fit score from 0 to 100 with its reasons in plain sentences, such as "7 of 12 recent videos match the brief's topics". Watching the videos and deciding who is contacted stays with you. Nakodo then finds the business email each creator publishes and emails the ones you choose on your behalf. The method is on how Nakodo works.