I got Invited to the Shady Underworld of Influencer Scams

It's not just the big Crypto influencers and celebrities! Offers start coming in at around 10k subscribers - and they aren't small!

Recently with the billion dollar collapse of Crypto Exchange FTX it came to light that some of the biggest stars were shilling for Crypto companies and getting paid big money in the process. Kevin O'Leary is estimated to have been paid $15 million to promote FTX.

You have probably heard there is a major lawsuit pending against influencers that shilled for FTX including Tom Brady, Larry David, Shaq and others. Matt Damon recently wrecked his reputation and became a ridiculed meme with his "Fortune favors the brave" cringy and most pretentious commercial suggested you would be as important as astronauts and famous explorers if you bought some crypto.

You have to wonder why major stars, already worth hundreds of millions, would risk their biggest asset, their reputation for a few dollars. Beyond just doing commercials some celebs like Kardashians, Snoop Dogg, Floyd Mayweather actively shilled crypto products while claiming a lot of money can be made. People lost billions in the crash and specific stories of of life savings being lost while celebs made millions are all over the internet.

But you may not know even some of the smaller influencers you might follow can be part of scams that earn them hundreds of thousands of dollars, and cost you money in the process.

I started YouTube over 13 years ago with other channels that never really took off. Franchise City started in 2015. This was the only channel we broke over 10k subscribers and something very unique happens at around 10k.

Companies start to actively email you to shill their products. If you have a business channel with primarily English speaking subscribers, which we do you get a lot of interest. It wasn't a lot of money offered at first but you get offered free products and a few hundred dollars to promote these products.

As we grew so did the offers. From crowdfunded inventions like robot vacuums and men's wallets, business services and the ones that offered the most, Crypto and other investments. Once you reach 100k subscribers the offers change significantly. An influencer with a good viewer base could easily generate an extra 10-30k a month just sponsoring products. For a young YouTuber who is struggling that is a lot of money to say no to. Outside of the obvious Crypto scams some of these products and companies look legit. To an outside observer FTX looked legit and many people would not have a problem promoting them, unknowingly promoting a scam. Some of the offers we received were publicly traded companies, mining companies, not fly by night operations.

Even the biggest names in business on YouTube are shilling known junk for money. Graham Stephan, a massively popular YouTuber with over 4 million subscribers has promoted numerous shady operators online including Kevin David, who himself has 1.5 million subs and is a web entrepreneur just fined 53 million for selling bogus courses on Amazon FBA. Stephan also promotes "Established Titles" which suggests you can buy a 1' ft of land and legally become a Scottish lord. This has been proven to be a con and the company that owns Established Titles also owns Kamikoto knives which you may have seen on many larger influencer channels. These knives have been called out as not being high grade steel as claimed, but junk steel sold at a high cost. Several detailed videos have been made online debunking the scheme and how they pay for reviews.

Other big name personalities that promote Established titles and Kamikoto knives include Ben Shapiro, Paul Watson, Sam Seder and many others. These people are all in industries where their credibility is the highest priority - while shilling these companies pays well, it can destroy a reputation quickly.

What I found very interesting is shortly after I received sponsorship emails, I would see respected smaller channels that I follow here on YouTube, that I thought were straight up, doing "reviews" a week later after I got the offer. Obviously they had accepted and were shilling the product for money without disclosure.

Some of these are very credible, well known channels on YouTube that are seemingly not disclosing they were getting paid for that sponsorship. They are presenting the story in a news article format suggesting that they found this great investment and consider it a good one.

Losing a couple of hundred bucks to crappy steak knives or a bogus lordship isnt that bad - but losing thousands to bad investments - that is another thing entirely.

Always be aware that influencer you watch and trust may be getting an undisclosed kickback for the positive story they are covering on art investing, NFT's, stocks, real estate or steak knives.

#franchisecity #influencermarketing