Modding -- how do you get sponsored?

[silent-circuit]

I've been messing around with a jigsaw and Dremel for years, built my share of watercooling systems and sleeved many a cable. I've done some basic metal fabrication (bending custom brackets with hand tools and a vice, for example), had things anodized and powdercoated, and bent / joined Plexiglass and Lexan. I've put together a number of fairly slick, clean systems... but I've never gone looking for a sponsor.

Every now and then I'll go through the worklogs here and I see some fairly good work, some /amazing/ work, but even the mediocre stuff is sponsored. Free waterblocks, free RAM, free motherboards, they just put some logos on the finished machine and presumably bring it to a show or two.

How do you get in to all that? I'd love to build on the side as a hobby, to play around with the latest and greatest without absolutely destroying myself financially. Not looking to get everything free, just lessen the sting. Do I just start writing letters / emails? Are there "proper channels"? If so what are they?

 

[Melon]

Send some emails of your previous work to companies and ask that they sponsor you; Simple as that.

 

[magoo]

It's like design or modeling, you need a portfolio, well photographed.

Then sent out to the sponsors themselves.

 

[HAF72]

I was wondering the same thing too! I better think of something I can do as to modding this summer haha.