How it works
The number is the bait. A cold email offers a flat fee that sits well above what your channel normally earns, sometimes several times your usual rate, sometimes a round five-figure sum for a single video. Big, recognizable sponsors get borrowed for this because a large budget sounds believable coming from them. A fake NordVPN, VPN, or software deal can wave a number that a smaller unknown brand never could. The oversized offer does one job: it switches off the part of your brain that asks questions. Once you are excited, the rest of the scam has room to work, whether that is an advance fee, a crypto payout, a request for login details to set up tracking, or a contract that quietly signs away your channel. The real NordVPN partnerships team, working from nordvpn.com or nordsecurity.com, sizes deals to actual reach and starts with a call and a rate discussion, not a shock number in a first email.
The tell-tale signals
- The flat fee is far past what a media buyer would pay for your view count. If the math does not line up with your average views, the number is there to flatter, not to pay.
- A four or five figure offer arrives cold, with no prior calls, no media kit request, and no discussion of your rate.
- The email skips the things a real buyer specifies: deliverables, usage rights, run dates, exclusivity, and how payment works.
- The generous number comes paired with a rush to confirm, or a sender domain that is not the brand's real one.
What to do
Anchor on your own rate. If an offer is wildly above it, treat the gap as a risk signal rather than a windfall. Reply asking for the specifics a genuine buyer always has ready: exact deliverables, usage rights, run dates, and payment on net terms by invoice. Look up the brand's partnerships contact on its official website and confirm the person and the offer through that channel, not through the email address that wrote to you. Real money survives these questions, and bait does not.