So, you want to book your first sponsorship?

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I spent the better part of three years promoting a tech company that did not pay me.

I knew I could be getting paid, but I had no idea HOW MUCH I could be getting paid. I also had a full time job so I wasn't very "eyes open" about new ways to make money.

The company was Amplitude. I learned about them when I worked for an app named Burner and my boss chose them as our new product analytics tool. I was immediately smitten with Amplitude and I started weaving tutorials into my talks, workshops and blog posts. I thought it was the greatest growth tool ever. And it became instrumental in how I practiced and taught growth.

Over the next couple years, I created a ton of very public content about Amplitude that eventually got me on their radar. By 2019, I was writing for their official blog, hosting their team for events and speaking at their conferences. But I still was not getting paid.

That same year, I went independent. All the sudden, I needed all these activities—which genuinely I was doing mostly for free—to pay me back.

I talked to Amplitude's marketing team and we decided to do a sponsored YouTube video together. This was the first time Amplitude paid me and it was my first ever sponsorship as a creator.

I made so many mistakes in how I fumbled this opportunity. My talks and workshops had brought major accounts over to Amplitude who would go on to spend thousands with them. And I didn't earn a dime of that.

Part of my naivety was that I didn't know anyone doing sponsorships. It felt like something only pro-athletes did. Me? Sponsored? I didn't have any channels to sponsor. What could companies be sponsoring?

I've gotten much smarter since those days. Now, sponsorships are a substantial part of my revenue and I treat them with much more strategic care. I understand the opportunity better and I know who to seek out as sponsors. I would never do that much free labor again.

Some people think you need to be a huge YouTuber or a well known podcaster to get sponsorships, but as my story proves you don't. If you can create value for a company, you can book a sponsorship. You just have to know which companies you and your audience are most valuable to.

So, how do you figure that out?