I’ve been reviewing products for a very long time. My reviews began as an off- shoot of my making art. I’d post and invariably folx would ask about my materials. They’d ask if I had tried this, or that and if I had thoughts about X product for beginners. So I started to write reviews.

My reviews always focused on a use case for artists like me- people who keep and art journal and make art in other ways. Also with making stuff.

I reviewed things that I used regularly.

I was contacted by a few brands asking if I would like to get their products for free. I always indicated that I may or may not review them and that it would always be at least a month before I posted a review. I tend to not post anything too negative but I’m actively critical about how a product performs and around customer service.

With the exception of one brand I’ve never had a brand or maker reach out angry about a review. The one maker who did reach out in anger was one who took offense to my mentioning the inclusion of bible quotes on their packing slips. I had bought several products from this person and was taken aback by their angry screed written in the comments. As a result I cut all ties with them and deleted all reviews of their products.

I don’t take payment for reviews. I do accept free products and also use referral links. Lately all my review products have been things I’ve either purchased myself, for work, or gotten through the amazon vine program.

There’s been a controversy brewing within the art YouTube space. I’ve been waiting for it to blow up, and the fuse has been lit.

Flooding or blitzing.

These both refer to a marketing campaign style where a brand will reach out to creators and makers and artists and offer them free product for review. This is fine, but it’s happening with many many many people all at once. If you have been on art youtube at all you will recognize certain brands immediately and possibly associate them with the phrase, “This company gifted these to me.”

The big controversy is that many of these brands are now attaching demands onto creators when they “gift” these products. I’ll include a video to explore more of this.

In the past, when a brand made demands about the content of the video, or  to see the video before it was posted, that came with a marketing contract. A true review is one where the creator has full control over the content and the opinion.

In the case of these flooded reviews or blitz reviews where brands are putting pressure onto creators it’s to push the algorithm on YouTube to show more of these videos.

When I click on a video about tempera sticks* it will then push a lot of videos into my feed on tempera sticks. My feed will have 4 or 5 videos on tempera sticks when it didn’t have them before. If I search for watercolors and art journaling I will get a bunch of videos about the particular brand mentioned in the video I ended up clicking on.

Brand names are incentivized for creators to use to drive people to their videos.

When I post a review it gets double the clicks and views when compared to my art making videos. Even the instructional videos.

For me, as I’m struggling to remonetize my YouTube Channel. I’m incentivized to post more reviews. YouTube used to push my art making videos. Back in the day all I had to do was post a journal flip through or a video of me making art and I’d have hundreds of clicks in the first few days. Now only reviews get over a hundred clicks in day one. I’m happy is an art process videos gets fifty.

I’m sitting down and making great content and using YouTube’s analytics to figure out keywords and titles and everything else. Honestly, it doesn’t seem to matter much at all.

I thought it would be useful to revisit my own guidelines for reviews:

• Materials shall be used for a minimum of a week. More time is preferable.
• Reviews shall have pros and cons.
• Any art material will be used on more than one paper and more than one journal.
• Materials may be gifted to me or purchased for my own use or for use at work.
• Unboxing videos will be used as a thumbnail within the greater review.
• NO haul videos. (these do not add any useful information other than to create excitement as part of flood/blitz advertising)
• reviews will only have my own opinions and will not include any copy sent from the manufacturer or marketing department.

As a follow up to this, I am willing to work with brands to create videos. If a company wants to send me materials and pay me to create content using their materials, yes I will do that. But it will be clearly stated as a sponsored video series. It will not be a hidden review. Artists need to make money and if YouTube doesn’t pay enough (it  doesn’t) then we need to create contracts and use the marketing budget of brands to do so, but we should do it on our own terms and walk away from brands that suck.

*One of my new favorite materials