How to vet YouTube influencers before sponsoring

Do this for every creator on your shortlist before you agree a fee. It takes twenty minutes or so per channel, most of it spent watching. You need nothing but the channel itself and a spreadsheet.

1. 01

   Compare recent views with subscribers

   Open the Videos tab and note the views on the last 10 to 20 long videos, skipping any less than a few days old. Take the median, the middle value, and divide it by the subscriber count. A channel whose videos reach a fair share of its subscribers still has an audience that watches. A channel whose videos reach a sliver of them may have grown in a different era, or on a different topic. Our guide to YouTube engagement rate explains why the median beats the average.

2. 02

   Check that views are consistent

   Look down the list for one video with many times the views of the rest. A viral outlier makes the channel look bigger than its typical video, and it's often the video that brought you there. Price on the median, not the outlier, and check whether the outlier is the only one on your topic.

3. 03

   Read the comments

   Open two or three recent videos and read through the comments. Specific questions ("does this work on a 2019 model?") and real discussion suggest viewers who pay attention and act on what they watch. Pages of "great video", emoji and "first" say much less. Links to unrelated offers, and other channels promoting themselves, count against.

4. 04

   Look for signs of bought engagement

   Likes far out of line with comments, comments from empty accounts posting the same phrases, or views that jump with no change in comments are all worth a second look. The table below lists the common ones. Work out the engagement rate with our engagement rate calculator and compare it with similar channels.

5. 05

   Check past sponsors and how they were disclosed

   Scroll recent descriptions for sponsor lines and discount codes, and look for the "Includes paid promotion" label YouTube shows when a creator ticks the paid promotion box. A creator who discloses clearly will do it for you too. A competitor's sponsorship last month may mean an exclusivity period.

6. 06

   Watch several videos in full

   This is the brand safety check, and nothing replaces it. Watch at least three whole videos, including the one that found them and one from a few months back. Listen to how they talk about other people, what they joke about, and how their existing sponsor segments sound.

7. 07

   Check the upload rhythm

   Note the dates of the last ten uploads. A steady rhythm, weekly or fortnightly, makes timing easy to agree. Long gaps may mean a break, a change of direction, or a channel winding down. Ask before you plan around it.

8. 08

   Separate Shorts from long-form

   Compare the Videos tab with the Shorts tab. Shorts are watched in a swipe feed, where a view counts as soon as a Short starts to play, so a channel with huge Shorts numbers may have a much smaller long-form audience, and the reverse. Judge the format you're paying for on its own numbers.

9. 09

   Look for clues to audience geography and language

   The language the creator speaks and the language of the comments are the strongest public clues. Currencies, shops and units mentioned in videos help too. The country in the About panel is the creator's own setting and says little about viewers. For certainty, ask the creator for a screenshot of their audience's top countries from YouTube Analytics.

No single sign proves a channel is fake or unsuitable. Each is a reason to look closer or to ask the creator, who will usually have a simple answer.

Public numbers only go so far. Creators can see far more in YouTube Studio, and asking for a few screenshots is a normal request before a paid deal:

• Audience by country and age, from YouTube Analytics, for the last 90 days.
• Views on recent sponsored videos, and if they'll share it, any results a past sponsor reported.
• Exclusivity, meaning any agreements that stop them working with brands in your category.
• How they disclose, both on screen and with YouTube's paid promotion setting. See sponsorship disclosure rules.
• Turnaround, from receiving the product to publishing, so your timeline is realistic.

With the answers in hand, you can price the deal on real views. How much to pay YouTubers shows the arithmetic.

Nakodo runs the numerical part of this checklist on every creator it finds. It takes up to 20 recent uploads and, from videos at least 3 days old, preferring long-form over Shorts, works out median views and median engagement rate. It samples comments from 3 recent videos and sorts them into questions, discussion, praise, spam and self-promotion. It flags channels that are Shorts-heavy, hide their subscriber count, sit outside your markets, have comments turned off, or have too few comments to judge.

Each creator's fit score shows its reasons in plain sentences, so you can check them yourself. Watching the videos is still your job. The full method is on how Nakodo works.