See The Creators Your Competitors Pay

Ask for the brand by name and you get the creators who have run sponsorships for them, with the videos that prove it and the dates each deal ran. It works for your competitors, for brands you admire in another category, and for any creator you want to check before you pay them.

Because somebody in your category, with a budget and a finance team, already decided YouTube was worth spending on, and did it more than once. That is a better argument for a campaign than any case study, and it turns the internal conversation from should we try this into we are the only ones who have not.

One of three things. It did not convert, which is a real warning. Or the brand cut the whole channel or the person running it left, which says nothing about the creator. Or the creator turned it down and moved on, which is often a good sign. You cannot tell which from the data, but you can from one email asking them straight out.

Four in your exact category in a year means that audience has heard the pitch four times. Not automatically disqualifying, but it should change what you pay and what you ask for. Ask for a category exclusivity window of 30 to 90 days. It costs less than you would think.

Yes, and read them differently. A paid integration means a brand was confident enough to pay upfront. Affiliate only means the creator took the performance risk, which sometimes means they could not command a rate and often means they genuinely believe in the product.

Five years of YouTube, read video by video, so you can see the whole arc of a relationship rather than the last thing that happened. That is what tells you whether a deal repeated, when it stopped, and who else has been in that slot since.