The standard creator pitch is a PDF full of screenshots and a paragraph asking whether the brand works with streamers. It gets ignored for a reason that has nothing to do with your channel size: it asks the recipient to do all the work of imagining what you would do together, and then to invent a price for it.
Propose, do not enquire
A pitch that can be answered with "yes" or "not this quarter" is a pitch that gets an answer. That means naming the thing: what the activation is, which date, what the brand provides, what you deliver, and what it costs. Five lines. The person reading it either has budget for that or does not, and either way you learn something in a week rather than never.
The instinct to leave the price out — in case you undersell, in case they would have paid more — is what turns a pitch into a thread that dies. Name a number. If it is wrong, they will say so, and that conversation is the one you wanted.
What a small channel is actually selling
Not reach. You will lose that comparison to a channel ten times your size every single time, and pitching on it invites exactly that comparison. What a smaller channel has is a specific audience, a host people trust, and — if you set it up properly — measurement the bigger channel is not offering.
That last one is the lever. A creator who says "I will send you how many people opened the entry page, how many entered, and how many had never entered one of my giveaways before" is offering a brand something it does not usually get at any size. Estimated impressions are what everyone else is selling.
The template
Send it as a plain email. No attachment, nothing to download, nothing that needs a login. Replace the bracketed parts and delete anything that is not true.
Subject: [Product] giveaway on [channel] — [date]
Hi [name],
I run [channel], a [game/topic] stream with about [N] regular
viewers. My audience is mostly [one specific, honest sentence].
I'd like to run a [product] giveaway on [date]. Concretely:
• A [length] segment in the middle of the stream, where I use
and talk about [product] while entry is open
• The prize on screen with the entry code, disclosed as a
[brand] promotion in the on-screen rules
• You provide: [prize, or budget for it]
• Fee: [amount]
Afterwards I'll send a two-page report: how many people opened
the entry page, how many entered, how many had never entered one
of my giveaways before, who won, and a link where you can verify
the draw wasn't arranged.
Happy to move the date if another week suits better.
[name]
[channel link]Why that shape
The first paragraph is the only place your size appears, and it is stated plainly rather than dressed up — a brand can look it up in ten seconds and any inflation is discovered immediately, at the cost of the whole relationship. The specific sentence about your audience is doing more work than the number: "mostly people who play the game on a handheld" is a targeting fact a media kit cannot express.
The bulleted block exists so the deliverable cannot be misremembered later. And the report paragraph is the differentiator, which is why it is a paragraph rather than a bullet — it is the part that says this will be measured, which most creator pitches quietly avoid.
What to do before you send any of them
Run one unsponsored giveaway first and keep the numbers. Not as practice — as evidence. A pitch that says "my last giveaway had 140 entries and 61% of them had never entered one before" is a different document from one that promises a report at some point in the future, and it costs you one stream to have.
It also tells you whether the offer is worth making. If your entry numbers are small, you will find out privately rather than in a report to a brand that has already paid, and you can fix the format — a better slot, a shorter entry window, a prize the audience actually wants — before anyone is watching.
The three sentences that get deleted
Anything about how much you love the product, unless it is true and specific. "I have used [product] every stream since March" is a reason to pick you. "I am a huge fan of your brand" is what everyone writes and reads as nothing.
Anything apologising for your size. It draws attention to the one comparison you do not want made, and a brand that would not work with a channel your size was never going to be talked round by a paragraph of pre-emptive defence.
And anything vague about "content opportunities" or "long-term partnership". Both mean you have not decided what you are proposing, and both cost you the thing that makes the email answerable in one reply.
Pricing it when you have no idea
Most first-time creator pitches are either wildly under or nervously vague. A workable starting point is to price the segment, not the audience: what is an hour of your stream and a week of your attention worth, given what else you could do with it. Then check the number does not embarrass you to say out loud, which is a surprisingly good filter in both directions.
Include the prize separately from the fee. Brands frequently prefer to supply product rather than cash, and a pitch that separates the two makes it easy for them to say yes to the half they can approve quickly. A giveaway where the brand provides the prize and a small fee is a far more common outcome than either alone.
Who to send it to
Not the generic contact address, which is a queue nobody empties. Look for whoever handles influencer, creator or community marketing for that product specifically, and send it to one person. A brand with a Discord for its own community is often the easiest route in, because the person running it is usually the person with the creator budget.
Smaller brands answer, larger ones do not, and the effort is identical. A company with three products and no agency can decide in a day; a company with an agency has a process your email is not in. Follow up once, a week later, then move on — a pitch that needs three chases would have been a difficult client anyway, and the time is better spent on the next five emails.