Apologies for it sounding confusing....my main intent is yes to share and hopefully inspire through my videos/photography in the long run, and maybe make a bit of income. However I'm mainly looking for sponsorship such as working together with a brand that will be advertised through my work (North Face for example) and get free gear, while publicizing my travels through their sponsorship.
My initial question was whether anyone had experience with this
well, here's the deal. everyone (and i mean
everyone, myself included) likes to get all excited about sponsorships and advertising, and youtube money, and all that crap, but you're all putting the cart before the horse as the saying goes.
it used to be that people asked these questions about travel blogging, but that market is stupid saturated right now, so now everyone's asking the same questions about being a youtuber, but it's literally all the same shit.
first off, you need to throw all those ideas in the fucking trash can right now. if you prioritize sponsorships and advertisers over content, you're doomed from the start. the only path to success in the youtube (and travel blogging) market is content, and LOTS of it. no one is going to give you a sponsorship until you've hit a certain level of popularity on youtube, probably at least 10,000 subscribers.
remember, sponsorships aren't you getting free shit for no reason. it's a type of advertising, and if no one is watching your videos (or you don't have very many up yet) there's no reason for a sponsor to give you
anything, since they won't get jack out of it (i.e. no word of mouth advertising).
so... what to do? well, like i was saying, you have to have
content and tons of it before you can even
consider getting any kind of sponsorship. once you start putting out videos once a week (more on that in a minute) you can count on it starting to pay for itself in
maybe a year at the soonest. that's a year of making interesting content that people want to watch.
second, you have to have a niche. the most obvious example here is that StP is the only website for 'punk' travelers, meaning people that generally hitchhike, train hop, and get around with extreme budget travel methods. if you can find a niche for your channel and an audience interested in that niche, and you produce quality content for a long enough period of time that you start to build an audience, THEN you will start to see returns (whatever form those returns might be, advertising, sponsorships, etc).
travel blogging works
exactly the same way and every travel blogger and youtuber will tell you that what i say is true. this has come from 10+ years of studying and watching travel bloggers, and the people that are experts in this area i either know personally or have bought/read their books. i also did the website design for locationindie.com which basically specializes in training folks in all kinds of ways to make money while traveling. lastly, i have personally made a decent amount of money off of one video i made that went viral, so i have a pretty good idea of how that works, and i've been studying youtube in anticipation of making high-quality videos for StP's youtube channel.
so. all that said, you need to make sure you're passionate about making videos, and basically forget any ideas about seeing any returns on it. if you can picture not having any sponsorships or advertisers still after one year of doing it strong and consistently and that doesn't make you want to quit, then you're off to the right start. passion first, build your community/audience next, and then you (might) be able to cash in.
the key is that you need to release videos consistently. this can be any schedule you like, whether it's once a week every tuesday or every two weeks, etc. but releasing regular videos on a schedule will keep the audience interested in watching, even looking forward to it each week, and sharing those videos with others, which is the key to youtube success. if you start slipping and only releasing videos once a month, or just whenever, no one is really going to pay attention and you're viewership will die off.
anyways, all this stuff is actually covered quite extensively in the
youtube creator academy. believe it or not, youtube really wants people to be as successful as possble, because that's how they make their money. if your show is good, more people will watch, which means they can serve more advertisements on those videos (which they then split with you once you have monetization set up) and usually, everyone wins. that's the idea anyways.
check out the creator academy, there is literally dozens of hours of material on how to make your videos better, retain viewers for longer periods of time, and use all the tools youtube has available for making your channel a success. everything i've talked about or hinted at is pretty much covered there.
sorry for such a long post, but i hope this helps you make some sweet videos, i really think you have the talent for it.