LMG Sponsor Suggestions

[CPotter]

This forum post is brought to you by ______. Seriously though, if you have any suggestions for our sponsor reads or who you think we should be working with, feel free to drop them here. The point of this sub-forum is for us to get another perspective that we can layer on top of our due diligence when vetting new sponsor partnerships.

 

We also want to hear from you guys if you have concerns about sponsorships that you've seen, or brand talking points that you feel don't accurately reflect the experience. 

 

Myself and the other members of the business team will check this thread periodically - thanks in advance!

 

@JonoT @GeoffLMG @SeanW_ @BellLMG 

[tkitch]

There are other companies that do "Remote System Access" at much more reasonable prices than certain vendors who have supported you in the past.  (See: Pulseway)

 

Splashtop, teamviewer, etc.  

[Dillpickle23422]

1 hour ago, tkitch said:

There are other companies that do "Remote System Access" at much more reasonable prices than certain vendors who have supported you in the past.  (See: Pulseway)

 

Splashtop, teamviewer, etc.  

I dont think linus particularly cares for teamviewer.

[tkitch]

Just now, Dillpickle23422 said:

I dont think linus particularly cares for teamviewer.

same for me, but it's a functional product, and it doesn't cost 400 bucks a year.

[Dillpickle23422]

Just now, tkitch said:

same for me, but it's a functional product, and it doesn't cost 400 bucks a year.

Yea, I think LMG has posted a video about teamviewer being so bad, as they purchaced a perpetual licence and now try to get them to pay monthly too. That's my reasoning behind why they probably don't want teamviewer as a sponsor.

[Needfuldoer]

IIRC from WAN Show, he bought a perpetual license for one version (at significant expense) but they started trying to sell him a subscription to the rolling release anyway. This included sales cold calls in the middle of the night his time (because their support assumes everyone is in EST) and nag screens in his licensed version (which couldn't be disabled because that version is missing the "don't show me ads" tick box in the settings).

 

EDIT: Found the clip!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCRzaGUKEFA

 

[GhostRoadieBL]

Might be nice to see some near-tech companies like Airstream (new self driving electric camper van) or Watergen (device that pulls drinking water from the air)

Would love to see more photography companies sponsoring videos for LTT or ChannelSuperFun I'm sure DJI would be a good fit for some of the trade shows once they are back in person.

[ToboRobot]

As a Canadian I really want to support an LMG tech eRetailer.  Bonus if you have a couple retail locations!

[Wutgaspump]

Hearing ad reads from Ridge Wallet is exhausting. The company has AT MOST $10 in supply and labor costs to manufacture their wallets, based on what it would cost me to purchase the supplies and build an identical wallet. It's two pieces of metal and an elastic band, and if they didn't charge an 800% mark-up, they wouldn't have to spend so much money on advertising. 

[LuxorAB]

You guys should try lttstore.com

[darknessblade]

22 hours ago, Dillpickle23422 said:

I dont think linus particularly cares for teamviewer.

The only Way teamviewer gets a sponsorship on LTT content. will be if they have a special deal giving users buying trough the LTT link a Permanent perpetual license 

[RaulFury]

Personal Experience -

Firewalla - https://firewalla.com/

I received my Firewalla Purple and it's the real deal! This is the perfect company to partner with as it's a very-well refined firewall product with powerful features. I work in IT, however this product is perfect for regular users as it has very user-friendly settings and options.Their guides and support system have been amazing thus far.

Key takeaways:

- Strong Firewall for your home / Vulnerability/Port Scanning your network

- Ad blocking (All of your home devices)

- Live Throughput for your network WAN and historical data

- Network Segmentation

- VPN (Connect to home and/or connect with third party VPN)

 

The company has had several successful indiegogo fundings when they release a new product, once released, they sell them directly.

Primary reason for my shout-out to them is that the potential of their product is astronomical and if it was more popular, that would help their growth and ability to continue to update and support their ecosystem.

 

Thanks - Let me know if you guys need any more information.

[Nightmare12]

Do you guys plan on doing another special edition Case/skin with dbrand anytime soon?

[The Emperor]

I believe gamers need to eat better/healthier! I really want to see LTT consider obtaining sponsor spots from organic responsibly farmed produce and agriculture. An easy one would be Pasture Raised Eggs. Please don't do Cage Free or Free Ranged. I've provided a YT link to a pasture raised egg/chicken farm and a link to certified humane explaining the differences between Pasture Raised, Cage Free/Free Ranged. 

https://certifiedhumane.org/article-explains-difference-pasture-raised-free-range-eggs/

[LaPlume]

Does this topic takes anti-suggestions? A Canadian computer company basically had me loose a job, my savings and more.

 

There is a company calling themselves "Canadian computer 'developers' " who basically just sell clevo designs, and nowadays makes you pay extra for unlocked BIOSes.

 

I won't name them until I get the "greenlight" it's okay to speak of anti-suggestions, but here it is, spoiled to avoid "visual spam" if anti-suggestions aren't okay:

Spoiler

The setting:

In 2014, I, european citizen was in a remote part of the world, where basically no western European consumer-facing retailer accepted to ship products.

I had a job offer fitting my skills that required me though to get some pretty good hardware (wouldn't be an employee per se, but a contractor), and basically would cost me 90% of my savings at the time.

I needed a powerful workstation, both CPU and GPU wise, good chunk of ram, with OpenCL acceleration, fairly color accurate screen, and lots of storage... pretty much needed a lot of everything.
I had space constraints, needed to move around with it... a Clevo design seemed right, and "this company I won't name yet" was the only one I found world-wide that would ship it to me for less than 500€ (330€ still), AND was in a country with supposedly good customer protection laws.

 

Long story 'short';
Received it, keyboard half-working, GPU wouldn't support any kind of load, neither OpenGL or DirectX. They ghosted for weeks, answered, then ghosted me for months. I was only able to send it back (at my expenses) and get it back after almost a full YEAR. Needless to say, by that point, I already lost my potential 'mission', but could still get use of it to work. Except that if they changed one of the two GPUs in the crossfire, and the keyboard, and if the keyboard now worked, the crossfire never did.

The thing even had issues reaching pre-boot environment. Playing WoW? If you don't mind rebooting every few hours okay, but obviously any kind of heavy render task would be an instant freeze.

By that point I was out of warranty, out of money to even sue the stuffing out of them, and out of options. I spammed them through mail for years, I reached out to them on social media, no dice.

 

No job, no savings, no resources and no health coverage at the time, years of troubles (2014-2018) and a roughly 6k$USD paperweight. And tbh 6k$ today would still make a monstrous difference to me.

In 2016 I removed one of the two GPUs, repasted everything, reflashed the bios. Got some use out of it, still couldn't render stuff reliably but was a better-than-nothing gaming machine... still though was instable enough that I would be on the hook if I tried to sell it.
In 2018, the IPS screen started to rot. I shelved it, just done with it.

In 2021, birthday ritual I had for a few years by that point, booting my bane up, just checking if it's still lights up, that cursed paperweight. It didn't. One of the 4 8gb ram sticks died, while the computer had been on a shelf, unused aside that 'ritual'.

Yes, I still have that thing on a shelf, and no, I can't resolve myself to sell the few usable parts for less than a tenth of what this company stole from me on paper, which is less than the reality...

 

Fun fact: they don't answer me, but they kept sending me emails about their new computers proposing to take my old computer back for a 30% discount on the new model which would in the end net me 4k$. Nah dawg, you made sure I would be poor for a while, can't afford your 'sympathy'.

 

Fun fact²: Yes I tried to bait them in by answering their 'offer' signifying "why not, but I have a few questions", see if they still received/read my emails or not. They answered!! So they do receive and read my emails. But as soon as I mentioned past mails, order number, ticket number.... silence. Unsurprising, right? That was in 2016. The last time I got them to answer was when I was still trying to fix my brick, almost out of desperate delusion in 2018, few months before the IPS screen started to rot.

I still have my order, bill, support tickets, emails... and a more fleshed out rant about the whole story in every detail on an other forum, which had a community dedicated to Clevo gear... forum which is now defunct, but my post survived through web.archive.org. The last advice I had been given on that thread was: "seriously, just get over it and sell it/dump it. You're punishing yourself more by holding to the junk". Yes.

Edit: TLDR:

A Canadian based computer company sold me a non-working computer for ~6,000 USD on paper total, that I tried to RMA at my expenses despite them trying to ghost me during warranty, that still didn't worked, and then intentionally have been ghosting me since.

[GhostRoadieBL]

Black rifle coffee would be a great sponsor, they seem to be virtuous

[Salazaar]

Not so much sponsorship per say, but when's the LTT brand Secret Lab chair coming...?

[CPotter]

On 2/12/2022 at 9:31 AM, Nightmare12 said:

Do you guys plan on doing another special edition Case/skin with dbrand anytime soon?

No, not in the near future anyway.

[Not_A_Spider]

I would pay money to see Linus do a hellofresh cooking stream/video, even if it's just only part of a video for the sponsor spot. Dunno if there are other food boxes or if they operate in Canada but hellofresh is my go-to and they've done a lot of sponsorships on twitch in the past. Mirroring what someone said earlier I ate terribly and was intimidated by cooking before getting a hellofresh trial.

[wanderingfool2]

KiwiCo - Having finally bit the bullet and ordered a subscription from them I can truly say I'm happy with what they are sending (even though slightly pricey).  I also like KiwiCo because it's still a STEM kind of thing, yet clearly not anything that people can say is swaying opinion products and such.

 

The sponsorships I have issues with is the VPN ones.  In general I find VPN claims to be very sketchy and it's about trying to figure out who to actually trust

[katjaneway]

It might be fun to do a spot for Bones Coffee. They're based in Florida, they roast all their beans fresh to order, and the flavors are wacky and amazing. They're the best coffee I've ever had. 

[JonoT]

15 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

KiwiCo - Having finally bit the bullet and ordered a subscription from them I can truly say I'm happy with what they are sending (even though slightly pricey).  I also like KiwiCo because it's still a STEM kind of thing, yet clearly not anything that people can say is swaying opinion products and such.

That's awesome! We were strict on this one since it's marketed towards parents with the end user being with children. We wanted to be sure it was a positive, fun, and an actual learning experience throughout

[wanderingfool2]

53 minutes ago, JonoT said:

That's awesome! We were strict on this one since it's marketed towards parents with the end user being with children. We wanted to be sure it was a positive, fun, and an actual learning experience throughout

Yes, I do agree it is geared towards children...the way I look at it though is that it's a subscription that was used to promote education and didn't really sound scummy/click-baity to me.  The only thing that I would say regarding KiwiCo is showing what is given in standard boxes (as it does seem to highlight the higher paid boxes which you have to order separately from the monthly crate).  Sure, it would get tiring if it was an ad every week...but I mean if you could get sponsored by them like once a month I would have no issue with it (as truly if I was growing up again, I would want to something like KiwiCo).  It could even be something like Linus doing "it's that time of month again" showing the KiwiCo crate that arrived for his kids.

 

Like my experience with KiwiCo was I got exposed to it through a makers channel and thought it looked cool.  When my niece was old enough, I got it for her.  The first month she got it, I seriously wished I got something like that as a kid.  For the second month, she genuinely was looking forward to getting it and building it.  The first month's crate she proudly was going around saying that she built it.

 

While I do think think the amount of STEM it introduces her to isn't as big of a thing as it's made out to be; her reaction and willingness to try building things is more than worth it.  It really is at least partially introducing her to STEM and figuring out how things work.

[IkeaGnome]

1 hour ago, JonoT said:

That's awesome! We were strict on this one since it's marketed towards parents with the end user being with children. We wanted to be sure it was a positive, fun, and an actual learning experience throughout

While I do think there are a lot of viewers that are too young to have kids and all that, I think there is a much higher portion of your viewer base that is "older" than it might seem. 

Even if I don't regularly watch videos, as I think a lot of the "older" people do, I still when I go to buy something go back through old videos to find links and codes. 

For Gfuel for instance, there's a creator I've watched a few times, makes great videos, but they're not something I can sit and watch all of. I use their code. If I use something that I know has been a sponsor of a channel before, I'll use that channels code and link.

 

Any thoughts on making a list of sponsors that would make that easier? Maybe a sticky at the top of this forum section? If the way links on videos is already being looked at being reworked, maybe that's something that could be part of that rework.

[JonoT]

11 minutes ago, IkeaGnome said:

Any thoughts on making a list of sponsors that would make that easier? Maybe a sticky at the top of this forum section? If the way links on videos is already being looked at being reworked, maybe that's something that could be part of that rework.

Yep that's the plan!

 

This whole section is a work in progress but keep an eye out this Friday for some changes.