This is a complete guide to affiliate marketing with youtube in 2023.
So if you want to know how to monetize your youtube videos with affiliate marketing.
You’ll enjoy the actionable tips am about to share below.
Does It Worth Investin Into Affiliate Marketing Using Youtube ?
Let’s find out?
In 2021, youtube is termed the second most popular social media platform on the planet after Facebook.
With an estimation of 2.291 billion active users leveraging it.
Source: dream grow, backlinko
In conclusion, half a portion of the global population online is actually leveraging this app.
As of 2006, it was estimated to have 20 million visitors per month.
And in 2021 it now has 2.2 billion visitors with a total of 1 billion watch hours, a massive increase over time.
So if you ain’t leveraging youtube in a way to get your visual content out there to make money online, then you’re missing a lot of opportunities.
What Is the term YouTube Affiliate Marketing?
Youtube affiliate marketing is typically a fast-income growing model where you earn a commission as an affiliate through a medium of creating helpful videos on the youtube platform.
Unlike other ways of making money through affiliate marketing.
In this aspect, you make helpful videos and recommend helpful resources that you are affiliated too by placing links in the video descriptions, pinned comments, and communities.
The more likely your videos get seen & watched, the higher chance it leads to direct sales.
Why leverage YouTube for Affiliate Marketing?
Let’s also take a look at omnicore statistical data.
Videos are the most profound way of getting detailed info about new products.
This also in terms signify 9 out of 10 marketers were able to attract new customers and 75% of these sets of customers were actually convinced to buy a given product by watching videos.
This is a potential opportunity for you to tap into if you want to make money with affiliate marketing using youtube rather than leveraging other mediums.
Which later we will be discussing in one of the chapters down below.
How does Youtube Affiliate Marketing Work?
Unlike typical blog posts, where you post your affiliate links as hyperlinks in your articles.
For Youtube, it is a different scenario.
In that aspect, you create helpful videos about a particular topic and place your affiliate’s links in your video descriptions, pinned comments, and more.
That way whenever viewers stumbled across your videos, they are likely to visit your video descriptions where they are to find your links.
Check out these full infographics below.
How to start youtube affiliate marketing
To get started, you need to
Pick a niche:
In conclusion from the whole story, It all boils down to choosing the right niche and then you choose products related to that niche and recommending that to your potential audience as an affiliate or plan on promoting in the future.
You wanna make sure you pick a niche you are passionate about so that whenever things didn’t go smoothly in the long run, you won’t get discouraged instead you only enjoy the processes which motivate you to keep going till you start seeing results.
Here is a glance.
If you find interest and are also passionate about generating content in the digital marketing niche space.
Then you should definitely give it a shot.
But you should narrow your area of specialty down to a sub-category.
Here is what I mean, the digital marketing space is a broad niche.
So it is bests to narrow it down to a specific area of specialty.
You may consider choosing one of the following in the digital marketing space.
- Email marketing,
- Social media marketing
- Seo
- Affiliate marketing
- Paid advertising etc.
If for instance, you are in the email marketing category, you definitely going to make video content about email marketing and drop affiliated links to any email marketing software that can be of help to your audiences.
That way you are not just being pushy but also adding value to your marketplace.
Set up Your youtube channel:
I can’t stress this enough.
But if you don’t know how to set up a youtube channel, These video tutorials will walk you through it.
Conducts market research for your video content:
You finally choose a niche and you have your channel set up and running.
But there is one important recipe to scale things up which is content ideas for your channel.
To begin with.
Manual research and your competitor’s analysis.
Head over to the youtube search bar & Pop keywords your audiences are likely to search for and You get a list of suggested ideas to make videos on.
More details will be explained below on how to rank your youtube video.
Competitors analysis is when you sort out your competitor’s most viewed videos in your niche.
So you see where they are getting the most amount of views from and generate a better version of that content around those topics.
The most popular videos are videos with a high amount of views.
Now you know which videos they are getting more eyeballs from.
So it is better if you watch and see what they are lacking and create a better version of that.
Here is a tip, you don’t wanna go for channels with high subscribers, especially when starting out.
So it is bests to narrow down your competitors within the same subscriber range as you or a little bit higher than you by a smaller range.
This photo below did justice to what am actually talking about,
The video was explaining how you can create a landing page for your business.
That can’t be achieved without the use of software.
This software has an affiliated program, So he made a helpful video and recommend the software he used as a tool to get started.
Shown in the photo above is an affiliated link he recommended.
Now you know what am talking about, so let’s proceed to the next section.
Perfect Place to Disclose your Affiliate Links on Youtube?
In as much as making videos is important.
Placing your links where your viewers could locate them easily is what makes marketing easy.
After all our goal is to get people to click our affiliated links and buy or sign up for our offer so we can earn a commission.
These are the all-time sections of your channel you should place your links.
Video description:
This is the most common & recommended way to post links associated with your videos and add a disclaimer to them.
Pinned comments sections:
Your channel community sections:
If you have an existing channel that probably has a reasonable amount of subscribers.
Then it will be a great option to make use of your channel community sections to interact with your audiences and also a great way to drop your affiliate links.
Always remember to add an affiliate disclosure to notify your audiences it is an affiliated link.
The photo shown above contains links that are not affiliated so not a concern to add an affiliate disclosure.
Cards redirections:
Cards are usually notifications that appear if only your videos are being watched.
- They serve as a way to give your brand its awareness.
- Getting additional info about your audiences/donations
- And an additional way to link to websites.
- A minimum of 5 cards per video as recommended by youtube
Unlike the other 3 methods I mentioned earlier enable you to place links within the video scenes, these aspects of placing links are usually done off video scenes.
This means your subscribers or viewers are to watch every aspect of your videos and expect a call to action from you to actually locate your affiliate’s links from those mentioned, before taking necessary actions.
These aspects can be a bit complicated.
Especially where you may only come across viewers who just watched half of your videos and walk away.
Instead, you placed your links in video scenes while the video durations still counting.
This can only be achieved using the Youtube card techniques.
But there are other cons behind this aspect of placing links on the screen which may typically affect your video rankings and algorithm boosts.
Here is what I mean,
Youtube’s goal is to retain as many users on its platforms,
So as long as your videos are able to keep people watching further.
This tells the youtube algorithm that the video is actually engaging and thus, they needed to give it a rankings boost.
More details about this are explained in the youtube ranking factor studies chapter of this guide down below.
To avoid the cons aspects of this method of placing links on video scenes, ensure you place your cards only after 70 or 80% of the total duration of your video.
If your videos are 30 mins long.
Then you definitely do want your cards to appear after 20mins of your video which is 80% in audience retention.
This method can be quite tricky and can get you penalized as you can’t place affiliated links directly on your channel cards as it is against the youtube community guidelines.
To avoid getting a strike, you should only use this feature if you are to redirect your audiences to a sales funnel, blog, or page not your direct affiliates’ links.
Are affiliate links allowed on youtube?
Yes, you can use affiliate links on your youtube videos but there are some precautions to it.
Even though youtube recently made a policy regarding the use of affiliated links.
There are still some ways to keep yourself away from getting slapped by youtube which is why I always encourage you to place an affiliate disclaimer, disclosing it is an affiliated link.
Types of Videos Formats With High Revenue Rates for affiliate marketing on youtube.
80% of business owners have started leveraging video content as a top priority for their business growth.
in fact, according to cobizmag, a large portion of customers who come across products or software locate them through videos.
So video content is increasingly in demand and there is no doubt, there will be more demand in the coming years to go.
So how can you leverage these opportunities and make money for yourself with affiliate marketing?
It all begins with video contents formats that can potentially bring in sales
This chapter will be covering video content formats that fit well into the affiliate marketing space.
So if you have been waiting for the types of videos you can monetize with affiliate marketing?
Then this chapter is a piece of great information for you.
Review videos:
Reviews video formats are basically commercial intents videos.
This way your potential buyers are searching for honest reviews to help them make a well-informed decision on a particular product or software before making a successful purchase.
That way you know this set of audiences is targeted and a chance they are high to make a purchasing decision from you.
E.g Bluehost Webhosting reviews, shown above have affiliated links in video descriptions.
So go make videos on reviews and watch the sales roll in.
Comparison videos (Vs Videos):
These kinds of video formats are usually attracting audiences who are trying to know the comparisons between two software or two products before making a decision.
Making videos around these video formats helps these sets of audiences decide on which options best suit their needs or money.
E.g, Bluehost vs Hostinger: Who Offers The Best CHEAP Web Hosting?
Audiences who search for videos like this are trying to know the pros and cons of these two web hosting,
And also based on some other factors like
- Storage capacity
- Pricing
- Customer support and more.
- If your videos provide all these resources, great sales will drive in.
This time you an affiliate of these two comparison networks.
So your audiences are to choose the one to suites them and purchase from your links
Informational videos (How to):
Your audiences are seeking information and how to learn new things or methods regarding a particular issue and then you recommend affiliate links to resources about the tools used during the making process, etc.
E.g how to do email marketing step by step.
Bests of Videos:
The best videos are also higher targeted and audiences who search for videos around these formats have a buying intent as well.
So making videos around these formats can earn you a lot in commissions.
e.g Top 10 best WordPress themes
Bests web hostings for WordPress websites
How to rank your Youtube videos Fast.
When You search for terms like “how to withdraw money from sproutgigs” my video ranks on page 1.
And that is Youtube SEO in action.
So am going to be showing you how to optimize your video to get found on search which can result in more views, shares, and clicks to your affiliate links.
Optimized your videos around a given keyword:
For a video to rank on search results, it needs to be optimized around a given keyword.
Keywords research is the very first approach to ranking videos on Youtube search engines.
Here is how to find the right keywords for your niche.
Head over to the youtube search bar and type in keywords related to your niche.
A list of keyword suggestions will pop up.
These suggestions are basically what people are searching for on youtube.
So if YouTube suggests them to you,
Then you know it is legit.
So now you definitely know what people are searching for on Youtube.
If you make videos around these keywords, youtube will suggest your videos to them.
But there is one bad side to this approach. it doesn’t show us the number of searches people are sorting for these keywords in a month.
To get these data, sign up to vidIQ and pop these keywords there.
You get the actual data and the competition’s rates around the keywords.
Nice!!
The keyword Video” dog training” is searched 177,473 times on Youtube search.
So when making your videos around these keywords it bests you add the keywords in your video title as it tells the youtube algorithm what the videos are all about.
Now you get what am talking about.
If the keyword is a Video keyword, it can also rank on Google as well.
In fact, these strategies helped me grow my client’s Youtube channel by 150% in 12 weeks.
So if you are not optimizing your Youtube video for SEO, you are definitely missing a lot of traffic.
Optimized video thumbnails & descriptions:
Having a catchy thumbnail boosts your CTR and chances of your videos getting clicked when found on search.
To get the best results.
Check a list of videos on search results and see the one with the highest amount of views, watch their thumbnails, and make a better version of them.
Also, don’t forget to sprinkle in some keywords on your video descriptions as these also part of the ranking process.
Audience retentions:
Back to above mentioned, where youtube’s ultimate goal is to keep people on its platforms.
Here is the truth. If you want your videos to rank successfully your videos need to keep people watching till the very end.
Even if you apply all the necessary SEO measures in places but your videos still do not keep people watching at some point. Youtube won’t recommend them to more people.
Youtube measures how long people stay on a video and it is called audience retention. The longer the better.
So here is how you can keep people watching for a long time.
⦁ visual elements on the screen
⦁ Entertaining contents
⦁ Pattern interrupts
⦁ Music changes.
Engagements rates:
More likes
More comments
More interactions.
If all these are currently done on your videos, It tells the youtube algorithm this video is basically a good one and they need to give it a push.
Also puts in mind your CTR( click-through rate) plays a vital role,
When you optimize your videos around given keywords and find them in search results.
The most clicked videos on search results have a high CTR.
If your video ranking dropped then it could be your CTR of your videos among others.
Youtube pays more attention to CTR.
So make sure your thumbnails and headlines are attractive to boost your CTR.
How to Get Traffic to your YouTube videos
Making videos actually is cool, but what pays better is getting traffic to your videos.
this chapter discusses how you can get traffic to your videos.
so let’s begin.
Organic Search Results:
This video ranks On Youtube.
and Google search results as well…
And it got 7m views in total, that is because the video is SEO optimize and all other factors I mentioned are actually put in place.
Traffic from Social Media Platforms:
What if you perform all the necessary SEO processes and never get found on search or probably end up having no views?
This is the publish and pray approach.
It doesn’t mean the SEO practice isn’t legit, It just happened to be algorithm didn’t rank it due to some factors left to them (maybe the competition was too high) as this usually occurs mostly on new channels…
As it may sound, SEO takes time.
To scale things up, sharing your content on social media is an additional way to get traffic to your videos.
Needless to say,
It gives signals to youtube that these videos are getting views externally and then they need to give it a boost.
Traffic From Q&A Forums:
Let’s face it.
Forum is the most realistic way to get tons of long-term traffic to your youtube videos.
That way you find questions and answers to what people are asking for related to your video.
And then drop your videos and blog posts as helpful resources to that question or answer.
And that is where Quora comes in.
Quora:
Quora is pretty much the most highly visited forum on the internet,
With over 550.8 million visits per month, 38% from the united states.
If you aren’t leveraging this forum, you not doing yourself a favor.
Here is how to get started.
Go to Quora. Head over to the search bar, and Pop in a list of keywords related to your video.
For this case, our instances keywords should be “make money online”.
Filter out by Sorting for answers.
Find answers with good followers from people.
As shown, this answer has a following of 3.7k, meaning for each new answer published a total of 3.7k are to be notified and are going to see your answers.
Answers questions and drop links from your youtube videos and paste them up.
The videos will show as seen in the above image.
But there is one more big advantage of quora.
The quality of content on quora is relatively high and which in turn boosts its authoritativeness.
Here is what it means when I pop up quora’s domain on the ahrefs backlinks checker.
It has a domain rating of 91.
Which is potentially a good website, and Google trusts these websites and then they mostly rank their questions and answers on searches.
Whoever answers these sets of questions found on google is also going to get long-term traffic from quora monthly visits and google searches.
Not all questions rank well on Google, so to find the bests fits already on google.
Head over to the questions explorer sections by H-super tools.
Pop up keywords related to what you want to promote from your youtube videos.
E,g I will be using “is quora search engine” as our keywords for these instances.
It shows us questions in “who”, “where”, “is”, and “their” formats.
Pop each of these keywords on google to see potential questions on quora ranking on google search.
The phrase “is quora search engine” was popped up on google search and let have a look at the results.
As we see below, we found one, great.
That’s how you go about it.
Pros and Cons Of Affiliate Marketing With Youtube Over A Blog
Let’s talk about the Pros and Cons of doing affiliate marketing on Youtube.
Prons
Easily and targeted traffic :
If proper SEO measures are in place, traffic from Google and youtube searches are free and consistent without any paid ads or putting much effort to drive traffic from external sources that may not be passive.
No technical SEO:
Unlike blogging where there are tons of ranking factors to get your article ranked on Google’s first page.
Youtube’s primary goal is to keep people watching and engaging with your videos as long as you stick to that, they provide you with the exposure it deserves.
That is one reason people prefer Youtube over blogging.
Fewer costs of investments:
It costs nothing to set up a youtube channel but you get charged for paying for a domain and hosting to start a blog/website.
So take this as an opportunity and start your serial entrepreneurship journey.
Monetize with Adsense:
Affiliate marketing is great to monetize your videos,
But Google Adsense is also a great way to monetize your channel.
As long as you meet up with their monetization requirements, that way you’re earning from two sources.
Cons
Most niches are saturated:
As much as it sounds easy, a lot of niches have been saturated with a lot more video content creators to rank.
If you’re starting out, focus on sub-niches under your categories and external traffic to boost your rankings among your competitors.
Requires a little knowledge about video editing skills:
If you have no money to source for video editors, then you probably have to learn video editing the hard way.
You don’t need to be an expert but there are some basic editing skills you have to learn which can be time-consuming.
You can use Invideo or canvas for your video editing as they both have an easy-to-use interface.
But if you want more professional video editing software with a lot of features you can use adobe premier pro.
Easily get banned from the platform:
You could get a ban from the platform if you violate any of its policies and then all your videos and channel will be automatically deleted without notice.
All the work you put in place has finally come to an end.
Final Words
Affiliate marketing with youtube is one way to kickstart your make-money-online journey.
It takes time and works to get results.
Which methods from today’s guide did you just come across or try first?
Lemme know by dropping your comments below,
I see you there
Good luck as you take action.
