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This Christmas, everyone is a winner

For many years now, social media influencers have carried great sway in the field of product promotion.

As one of those "influencers", I've been sent a lot of products for review. Those who sent those products are very much aware that if people like myself say good things about those products, sales will result.

However, unlike many such influencers, my reviews have always been objective and I'm not slow in pointing out the flaws or deficiencies of products. On occasion I've also issued strong "don't buy" warnings when I've been looking at something that is clearly not fit for purpose.

Many other influencers however, make significant money from affiliate schemes so they prefer to gloss-over any shortcomings in a product because they know that every sale which results from their promotion will earn them cash

Indeed, I've spoken to more than a few fellow influencers who admit that the vast majority of their income is derived from these affiliate schemes.

Unfortunately for me, I've been a little too principled to include affiliate links with my reviews. I do not want my reviews tarnished with even the perception that I might be less than 100 percent honest -- just to earn a few more bucks.

Unfortunately, creating honest, objective, researched principled reviews of products on YouTube can be a little tiring and boring. What's more, YouTube pays peanuts these days when compared to a few years ago so the hourly rate for such efforts continues to fall and is now well below minimum wage.

So, with all this in mind, I've decided to have some fun in the lead-up to Christmas.

For the next seven or so weeks, I'm going to become a top YouTube shill.

This won't happen on my dedicated review channel because I don't want to compromise the integrity of that channel. However, on my more fun-oriented channel, I'll be accepting anything and everything that is offered by vendors and I'll be making videos which showcase or include those products.

These videos won't be reviews. I won't be coming up with a list of pros and cons.

Instead, I'll just use the products and try to have as much fun as I can with them and show viewers how I get on in the videos that result.

To be honest, I think this could be a new genre of content that will hopefully be attractive to viewers and fun for myself.

Given that the channel I'll be using has nearly 200K subscribers and over 105 million views, I think I can offer vendors a pretty good connection with potential customers in the lead-up to Christmas.

As an uber-shill, I'll be accepting virtually any kind of product. Hopefully there'll be some cool (and expensive) stuff like ebikes, e-scooters, 3D printers and other techie things. In reality it might just be a pile of cheap Chinese tat such as $20 drones, Bluetooth speakers and ear-buds. Worst case it'll be nothing at all and I'll be left checking my mailbox, day after day, to no effect.

I already have a mountain of video ideas and can't wait to exercise my video-making skills to entertain my audience.

The burning question on most people's minds right now will be "what's going to happen to all that stuff once you've made the videos?"

Well I may keep a few of the more useful items but I expect to donate the vast majority of it to local charities in the lead-up to Christmas so that the less fortunate amongst us might get a little extra in their Christmas stocking this year. That will also keep the taxman happy that I'm not pocketing or selling a whole bunch of undeclared free stuff.

Let's see... I get to make cool and fun videos. My audience gets some (hopefully) entertaining content. The vendors get some free promotion to a potentially large audience... and the poorer folks around here get some cool Christmas presents.

Hey, everyone's a winner!

If you've got something you'd like included in one of my videos, drop me an email but get in early, Chistmas is only weeks away!

Carpe Diem folks!

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