Ethics for ni6hant regardless of which 7+ YouTube channels or 6+ Instagram accounts or 2+ reddit accounts or any such public facing service I use.
These things apply everywhere, even in real life. Remember, I have been recommending products long before YouTube was a thing. I just came online a few years ago.
I don't take sponsorships at all. No matter the money or how much lee-way you give me or how much free products.
If you're a brand reading this, make good products, either provide good warranty support for the life of the product or make it repair friendly, robust enough that warranty isn't needed in the first place and provide parts either in the market or direct to users, AND I WILL NOTICE.
I got a mail from a random company about doing a sponsorship video about a retro game console that was very expensive compared to what a normal person can get. So I sent them the whole email basically of transparency and honesty and I realized after reading that mail from a brand perspective, no brand that is willing to screw up their customers will be willing to work with me, and as it turns out, most of them are like that.
After reading the email I sent, I thought if they now accept, it's still going to be a big burden because this is something done when you scam someone, the foot in the door strategy, once I accept even on product from them, they can burden me in legal work and I am not here to do legal work.
So, I have decided to stick to no sponsors and affiliate only income or donations.
Hey man! I have fucked up my life and my career and possible any future prospects of a family, the last thing I want is a burden of recommending something that turns out to be a scam later. As my Dadi/Grandmother used to say: "Kisi ka haaye nahi lena chahiye" loosely translated to, "Don't do something that makes others think they have landed in a horrible situtation because of you".
Whatever money I get, I will do the most out of it or if nothing, will go back to making money locally by doing anything, I still know AutoCAD and technically I am still a Civil Engineer, all I need to do is go out and get a license, rent a shop and that will be the end of YouTube and start of real life.
But I won't be able to look myself in the eyes if the money in my account came from scamming someone(Yes, it's a scam. YouTubers can play dumb and say they didn't know Honey was a scam and shit but you had to do your due diligence, you didn't).
However, this video will explain this in more details than I could:
If I ever take sponsorship in the future it will be very clear wherever I review the service/company in the blog or the video or wherever it is. In DMs if I still am continuing them, I might skip them due to the huge number of messages in a day but considering people come to DMs via such videos itself so it is understood in those case.
To this date the companies that have sponsored me are:
As it says. No explanation needed.
I have already taken this oath when I started my new phase of channels years ago, but every time I feel like I should keep things to myself, I immediately make a post/blog/short/video about it depending on the ridiculousness of the video.
Have already been doing this for years. For example, a very common scenario that the same laptop is 1000 rupees cheaper on Flipkart and only a bit more on Lenovo. I only get commissions for Lenovo and not for Flipkart so in this case I WILL NOT PUSH YOU TO BUY LENOVO IN ANY WAY. I will still give you the correct response and what I think and will keep my own benefits to the side when talking to anyone. If it so happens that the place you buy stuff from gives be commission then I will ask you to use the links otherwise no issues. I even don't mind offline.
If a comment or a DM seems like it's something others have been asking or I suspect this might help more than one person, I will write a blog, make a video or do something in the public domain because it might help more than just you and then come back and give you a link for the same. This is the reason why YouTube started in the first place.
Criticism is completely fine. You can completely disagree with me and what I say and you can even provide evidences as to why I am wrong but abuse is not tolerated. If the platform's own service doesn't take an action against you, I will, and a ban is permanent lifetime ban.
Bans cross-over channels and platforms so ban on one channel will get you banned on all other channels.
Don't manipulate me or lie to me. I don't work for any companies so there is no reason to not be totally honest with me. One of the reason I stopped doing Discord Tech help was this. There was one person who wanted to buy a Macbook but had got an LOQ instead and a few months later instead of telling me that he wanted a refund or sell the LOQ so that he could buy a Mac he started making many false issues in hope I might get a refund. Once I found this out, I stopped talking to him without explanation.
Organized Scammers.
First few months they allow a few affiliate tracking but after that they suddenly stop tracking anything and keep the profits for themselves giving varoius excuses from time to time. And they have the same explanations that the person might not have clicked the link and so I suspected until I used the link to order a laptop in front of me and saw the tracking not happening at all, that's when I knew they are scammers.
If this was not enough, later they had the audacity of asking users to paste random ssh commands inside run that changes registry parameters just for the sake of verification of logging in. I will not be surprised if this company just changes their name randomly during operation.
Why I approached them in the first place?So both
Flipkart's Own Affiliate Links starts with fkrt.it and not fkrtt.it.
On the only account I have with Flipkart, for years it has been showing to pause your affiliate since there will be no payout. I still use their link shortener which is still working even if the affiliate is not working.
Flipkart's Own Affiliate Links starts with fkrt.it and not fkrtt.it.
I could have continued using other scammer's affiliate links, see above, but I thought if they are willing to scam me, what are they willing to do users?
I still see people using Flipkart's own affiliate links so I guess I am not large enough YouTuber for Flipkart to allow me affiliates.