These days, it’s not that difficult to become an “influencer.” Smartphones have given everybody the ability to record high-quality video and upload it anywhere, anytime, to any platform. With just a little bit of luck, timing, and creativity, you could go viral and acquire a large enough following to work with some of the brands you’ve always wanted to work with. Naturally, people have found ways to promote cannabis products and carve their own niche in the influencer world. This brings to light the fact that in this day and age, you can get paid to review weed.
The steps to becoming a “cannabis influencer” aren’t that difficult. More than anything, it’s about staying consistent. If you’ve been smoking weed for a while and don’t have any formal knowledge—you can honestly figure it out as you go. Visit Leafly for a quick guide or reach out to us directly and we’re happy to get on a 30min call to give you a quick rundown. Recording your journey to becoming more educated could be your first series.
Our team spoke with Respect My Region’s Chief Operations Officer and Lead Product Reviewer Joey Brabo to help put together some straightforward steps that should help set you on the right path to start to review weed and eventually get paid to do it. Check out what he (@JoeyJayPing) had to say below.
Step 1: Start Reviewing Weed
Joey shares that he began reviewing cannabis products as a budtender in Seattle back in 2016 and 2017.
He said “the samples and promotional products that budtenders were given I decided to use for reviews. Our reviews were simple and to the point. They included us reading the information on the packaging, showing the product to the camera, taking some photos of the packaging and flower or foods, and then writing up a standard 300 word article based on the reviews we saw from Dope Magazine and High Times. Back then we just wanted to create an authentic experience that helped people make informed purchasing decisions.”
When it comes to getting started, he recommends you visit your local dispensary or dealer and practice reviewing the products you usually buy. Try using your cell phone and then publishing them straight to YouTube.
The videos are honestly as simple as talking about things that are important to you when it comes to why you purchase weed. The smell, strain, potency, bag appeal, presentation, and information available on the packaging are all important factors.
Search for examples online and then create your own version of it!
We encourage you to subscribe to our Youtube Channel to consistently see new weed content that highlights the examples mentioned in this guide.
Step 2: Distribute Content
Content distribution is definitely some next level stuff when it comes to reviewing weed and getting paid by brands. The SEO power between Google and Youtube is extremely powerful and can increase the speed in which you gain views. The next few distribution steps are simple because you basically craft snippets and publish custom unique mini videos to social media to promote your main channels. The idea is to have one home for your main videos, and then edit snippets/teasers to use as promotional tools on social media such as Facebook, IG Reels, and LinkedIn.
Companies such as Facebook and Instagram have proven numerous times that they will flag cannabis content and take it down, sometimes removing your entire profile along with the post. This is why Brabo prioritizes LinkedIn, Google and Youtube, over Facebook and Instagram.
Can you imagine spending hours and good money on a platform that could remove your entire brand from their ecosystem? That is a major risk!
Do your reviews on Youtube, write them up in a blog, and promote those articles and the videos on LinkedIn and Twitter.
These two platforms are also friendly to cannabis content so we always make sure to include these two social media in our content’s distribution path. Instagram and Facebook should be included too but DO NOT utilize those two platforms as the primary locations to get in front of consumers. These should be a part of your strategy but not relied upon by themselves.
Step 3: Write Up Your Videos Into A Blog
People significantly overlook the power of writing a blog about your weed videos and embed the content into your website’s version of an article. If you have access to a computer, we encourage you to create a free WordPress-based website and start writing about the strain, product, flavor, smell, effects, potency, etc.
If you like to smoke Blue Dream or Runtz, consider reviewing a joint or smoking a bowl and talking about it. The video should feature you being yourself and the article should talk about what was discussed and encourage people to watch and engage with the video with a like and subscribe to the channel, and then repost if they’re a fan.
An example of a paid written article with a paid video review is available by clicking the highlighted words in this sentence. After the article is written up with the video inside, you definitely want to promote the blog on your social media channels. Story posts, DMs, email it to people, get your friends and family to go comment on it.
Instagram would love for you to encourage your followers to save your posts. Try promoting each article, video, reel, etc and asking your fans to save your posts. IG will definitely reward your profile a bit with more engagement and views to fans.
We also highly recommend you give TikTok a try and will be sharing some insights on that platform here over the coming weeks. Email us directly if you have questions or follow us @RespectMyRegion on their platform.
Step 4: Engage With The Community
This part is super important. Now that you’ve reviewed the weed, published the video, embedded it into the article, written up the blog, and posted it to your website and social media, it is time to go engage with the communities that you’re trying to present your content in front of.
Find the brands and businesses, the people that are already reviewing products, and the companies that are paying for those reviews. Go drop some likes, authentic comments, and begin DM’ing them showing some love.
Simply put, start supporting their existing content with your pages through story reposts, likes, positive remarks in the comments, etc. Eventually, you’ll want to DM them to ask to schedule a call or email them a services sheet, but there’s no reason to do that too soon.
In order to actually monetize your reviews, you want to dress them up as professionally as possible so you’re ready to present to a potential sponsor. This includes a sheet or presentation in the form of a PDF. This presentation should say who you are, what you do, what your goal is with the collaboration.
You may also want to outline what each of your videos or articles costs, what the projected ROI is for them, and the amount of time it’ll take to do it.
If you have any data supporting previous reviews you’ve done, provide relevant examples of that good content and make sure to share the social media statistics if you have them. Keep lower numbers away from your presentation if possible but remember to be transparent and authentic depending on what their needs or values are.
Step 5: Develop Series & Start Pitching
Develop an idea for a series and start pitching. Step one on this idea would be to spend time coming up with a visual series, preferrably a video, that delivers value to a specific group of people. You”ve got to figure out who you’re providing content to and what that content is going to provide consistantly.
Begin by creating 3-5 example videos (pilots) for the series so that you can present the examples to potential sponsoring brands. Shoot these videos on your phone if you don’t have more professional equipment yet.
There are free video editing software apps too such as InShot, iMovie, and even TikTok at this point can help. There’s a fair chance you’ll get deleted for posting cannabis content actually on TikTok but you can still create content in the platform and save it for other places. There’s also some strategies that can be utilized to be cannabis-centric on their platform without actually showing any weed.
When it comes to connecting with companies, we encourage you to be persistant, respectful, attentive, and ready to provide value. It is perfectly okay to call, email, DM, tag, and shout out companies in the videos you make. Reach out to them and build a relationship. Show love to the brands you want to work with. Offer to do small and very specific things for free, like make an Instagram Reel or story posts supporting a product you purchase yourself.
Wait until you build up a following, say 500-1,000 subscribers on YouTube, 1-5k on Instagram, figure out (use Google) how much a micro-influencer costs and then hire one to start supporting you consistently.
When it comes time for you to confidently feel like you’re delivering value that should be paid for, a good place to start when it comes to asking for payment is to do your research. Ask other creators for their rate sheets or reach out to companies and try to get someone from marketing on the phone who can help shed some light on questions you might have. These days there are plenty of people who are willing to help.
Step 6: Gear Up & Level Up
Invest in your operation. Buy better video capture technology, lighting, camera, editing software, cables, microphones, audio editing software, and a studio environment to shoot your videos. You can definitely get quality content created using the likes of an iPhone or really nice Android phone.
If you’re not willing to write blogs yourself, consider hiring copywriters and editors, establishing media partners, or working with influencers that are in your lane. Fiverr is a good place to look for affordable skilled people or consider hiring a college student. Indeed is a great place to locate talent if you put in the time to find people.
We also recommend you physically and digitally go out of your way to support hardworking members of the cannabis industry. Media, influencers, cultivators, meme accounts, dispensaries, deliveries, smoke shops, seed banks, growers, and photographers. Anyone that’s involved, you should be reaching out to, supporting, and trying to build with to some degree. It really can be as simple as reposting and tagging them in your story.
The Marathon Continues
Ultimately, there’s no proven way to go about it, but with enough consistency and tenacity, you never know who will say yes. The goal, whether you make any money or not, is to build community and foster authentic engagement through education, discovery, and entertainment.
If you really want to be someone who reviews weed and gets paid for it, you need to review products, a variety of them, over, and over, and over again just to create the appearance that you’re learning and providing value to a community. Eventually people will come to accept you as an authentic voice in the community. It may take time, but consistency breeds opportunity.
If you’re an influencer or person who is looking to review weed and get paid for it, feel free to reach out directly to Joey via Instagram or add him on LinkedIn at ‘Joey Brabo’.
