Who should you be doing collaborations with?

Collaborations are extremely valuable for Creators growing their channels. 

But, we’ve noticed many creators struggled and are often confused on WHO to collaborate with. To be more specific what qualities should you be looking for in other Creators when looking to do collaborations.

There are a number of different factors that you should be taking into consideration when trying to figure out WHO is the best person to collaboration with.

What should you be looking for in fellow creators when collaborating:

Compatibility:

We believe compatibility is the #1 factor you should be looking for when looking to collaborate with another Creator.

Being able to work well with another Creator is the key factor in creating a successful collaboration. If you can’t work well with another Creator you certainly won’t get the results you were hoping for out of the collaboration.

Lack of compatibility in a collaboration can be very obvious to your audience and also be harmful to the audience of the Creator you’re collaborating with.  

Selecting a compatible creator that you can work well with will allow you to create the best content ultimately resulting in the highest chance of success for the collaboration.

 

Complementary content:

It’s important when you’re doing a collaboration video with another creator that you’re working with someone who does have complementary content to your channel.

What do we mean by complementary?

These are some examples of a few categories of types of channels that we consider complementary:

 

It’s important that your audience can relate to the category and is interested in the other Creators content even though it may not be exactly the same.

Creating complementary types of content can be a great strategy to change up the content on your channel and expand your audience. 

Complementary Categories for collaborations

Channel Size:

We first strongly recommend that as a creator you have over 1,000 subscribers before you begin looking for collaboration. (For more information why click here.)

Creators should be looking for another Creator with a similar channel size range. It’s very important to remember the top priority should not be searching for a Creator that has more subscribers.

Being focused on only working with creators bigger or exactly the same size is a very poor strategy for Creator when searching for collaborations. This approach will likely result in many missed opportunities to grow your audience.

Keep in mind that working with Creator who has a smaller audience often means a more engaged audience than a Creator with a much larger audience. The result, a conversion of viewership over to you’re channel when doing a collaboration with a small channel may be higher.

Below are some recommended channel ranges for success. Exceptions can occur.

Subscriber Range for collaborations

 

Creators with more than 1,000,000 subscribers can virtually work with any creator below or above 1,000,000 subscribers.But under normal circumstances, they will not receive the full value of efforts with someone under 100,000 subscribers.

 

Upload Rate & Consistency:

Working with a Creator that is constantly uploading and have met the milestones they have established. This is a great qualifier to determine how serious the creator is about creating content and whether they would be a potential collaboration individual. For example, if they post daily they likely have more opportunities than if they post long-form content that only goes up once every couple of weeks or monthly it may be harder to work with. This shouldn’t disqualify them as a candidate, since having longer-form content could result in a higher conversion rate to your channel.

 

Collaboration Experience:

  • Finding other YouTubers who have previous collaborations can help make the process easier.  
  • They usually have a better understanding of what the dos and don’ts of collaboration are along with what type of collaboration content that works best for them.
  • There may be some Creators who have not done any collaborations but may be aware of the benefits of collaboration. There are many Creators who may have a specific idea are great to work with. It’s why we built YouCollab for that purpose and allow you to find creators relevant for you.

 

Here are some factors that may be exceptions to what we recommend.

 

Niche Category:

  • A creator’s channel in a very specific category you may be very limiting. The creator needs to compensate for certain factor such as the channel ranges you are willing to work with.
  • Many creators are open to working with other creators that may not be in a similar channel size range because they’ve realized that are benefits. They have realized that their potential is significantly larger than their existing audience. 

 

Location:

  • Location is a variable that is important to some types of YouTubers who prefer doing videos in person.
  • Not surprisingly the largest concentration of YouTubers in the world are in the top of the top cites including New York City, Los Angeles, and London.
  • Obviously living in proximity to one of these cities will result in significantly more opportunities for in-person collaborations.

 

If a Creators doesn’t live close to one of these cities it may be difficult to do in person collaborations with someone. Doing online collaborations online is still a great alternative.

We recommend maximizing major events in the YouTube community such as VidCon, Bufferfest and many others.

 

It would be ideal to plan collaborations when going to major YouTube related events such as VidCon, BufferFest, etc.

 

The easiest way to do collaborations. All for free! Visit YouCollab.com