Financial Sponsors

[Tori Applegate]

Anyone have any luck with this? I have one that was recommended by John Mejia. I have another awesome gear sponsorship and the owner is trying to help me get some financial sponsors in the fall. Does anyone have any tips on this?

I'm going to start sending out some emails tonight for more sponsors, but was curious if any of you more experienced competitors have tips or know more than me that you may be willing to share? I know it seems like a really hard thing to lock down, but I have limited practice.

[Chad C.]

BJJ Hacks and Budo Jake both have ebooks available on Amazon for the kindle that touch on sponsorships. I know for a fact the BJJ Hacks book talks about gaining financial sponsorship.

[Ben Eddy]

Get really active on social media.

Sponsors care about exposure more than your medals. People often approach sponsors from the standpoint of "I'm X, under X, and won X, Y, Z". The sponsor doesn't care about this unless they are a BJJ company and if they're a BJJ company, they either know who you are and what you have done or they aren't interested in sponsoring you.

A sponsor just cares about how many eyeballs they are going to get in front of. "I compete at x tournaments per year, travel to x gyms per year. I am active on social media - Facebook X - Instagram X - Youtube X - Twitter X - periscope?." Promoting yourself from this point of view is more in line with what the sponsor cares about.

[Marty McLaren]

Get really active on social media.

Sponsors care about exposure more than your medals. People often approach sponsors from the standpoint of "I'm X, under X, and won X, Y, Z". The sponsor doesn't care about this unless they are a BJJ company and if they're a BJJ company, they either know who you are and what you have done or they aren't interested in sponsoring you.

A sponsor just cares about how many eyeballs they are going to get in front of. "I compete at x tournaments per year, travel to x gyms per year. I am active on social media - Facebook X - Instagram X - Youtube X - Twitter X - periscope?." Promoting yourself from this point of view is more in line with what the sponsor cares about.

I won't claim to be an expert but I think Ben has nailed it. I recently read an article (link below) that talked about how social media is changing the way brands look at promoting themselves and how fashion and lifestyle companies have started partnering with instagram models with large follower numbers. Obviously slightly different context but the principle remains that the more active you are on social media and the more you can boost your followers the more potential exposure a sponsor will get from partnering with you.

http://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/b...05-1mpnru.html

[Tori Applegate]

Yea, I have actually been working this since last fall. I did slack off for a month or so, but I'm back on top of it now. I'm almost to 8000 on Twitter and almost 5000 on Instagram. All Jiu jitsu people. And Facebook is decent, slightly harder to build if you ask me.

I did not think about presenting it that way though, Ben. I usually send recent footage so they know what they'd be investing in. I've also been on podcasts..that could be a good mention.

It just seems anyone I've ever contacted just wants to send me some free shirts..I call it a "one time gear sponsorship". Now, like I said I did land the really good two in my search, but the one financial one I was told about.