Affiliate marketing is the fastest and easiest way to start making money on YouTube. For example, I’ve made over $14,000 in lifetime commissions promoting the TubeBuddy affiliate program.
In the video below, you’ll learn the top benefits of promoting affiliate products on YouTube, how to choose relevant products, the types of content to create, where to include your affiliate links, and how to optimize and promote your videos.
Top Benefits Of Promoting Affiliate Products On YouTube
It’s easy and cost nothing to get started.
You don’t have to become a YouTube partner. You don’t have to create a product, and you don’t have to create the marketing materials. All you have to do is sign up for an affiliate program for a product that you wish to promote on YouTube, then you get the affiliate link, which you can promote in the description of your video.
Saves time.
As I mentioned earlier, you don’t have to spend hours creating your own product or creating the marketing materials to promote the product. The company that is offering their products to promote by affiliates, will often contain marketing materials such as banners, email swipe files, et cetera. For example, TubeBuddy has banners such as this one to help you promote their product.
Earn Passive Income.
The way affiliate marketing works on YouTube is that you first select the product that you wish to promote. You sign up for the affiliate program, and you place the affiliate link in the description below your video. When a viewer purchases the product through your affiliate link, you receive a 50% or higher commission. For example, if your video continually ranks on the first page of YouTube and Google, you receive Evergreen commissions. If you promote multiple affiliate products on YouTube, you’ll increase your earnings and won’t have to rely on AdSense income.
Massive Audience Reach.
YouTube has over 2 billion active users and attracts a wide range of age groups, demographics and interests that allow you to target specific segments effectively. It also allows you to host all your videos for free and you can actively engage with your viewers. Another huge benefit of YouTube is that it’s the second largest search engine after Google. This means if you optimize your videos with relevant keywords to improve visibility, your video can appear in the YouTube and Google search results. If your video continually ranks on the first page of YouTube and Google, you can receive Evergreen revenue for years to come.
How To Find Relevant Products To Promote
The easiest and fastest way to find a relevant product to promote is to choose a product that you already own. For example, I use TubeBuddy’s keyword research tool to discover topics that people are entering into the YouTube search engines. I also use TubeBuddy every day to manage my channel. Therefore, it makes sense to become an affiliate of TubeBuddy.
Other popular affiliate programs include the Amazon Associates program, ClickBank, and individual brand affiliate programs.
For example, I use the GoPro action camera to capture the stunning landscapes while hiking the trails in Mount Cook National Park, South Island of New Zealand. If I go to my Amazon Associates account and type in GoPro, I can get the affiliate link for the GoPro action camera. At the top, it says “Get Link”, so if I click on text, here’s my Amazon affiliate link to promote the GoPro action camera and receive commissions for every sale.
My recommendation is to look for affiliate programs that offer good commissions and have high quality products. Ideally, choose products that align with your niche and that your audience finds interesting and useful. Avoid products that won’t be helpful to your audience.
Types Of Content To Create
Here are the 4 types of content you can use to promote your affiliate product.
Product reviews.
This could be a product you already own or use, or a product that a company wishes for you to review. When reviewing a product, talk about the pros and cons based upon your personal experience. Here’s a clip of a product review video I did for the best wireless microphone for a laptop or phone.
“You can use these 2 microphones to get high quality audio from your DSLR or mirrorless camera, conduct interviews with 2 people, live stream from your laptop computer, or vlog from your phone.”
Tutorials and how-tos.
Viewers love it when you can show how the product works. When you’re promoting your affiliate product, show how you’re using the product, its benefits and practical applications.
“”Now I’ve got one mic, the smart mic light clipped to my shirt and the Smart mic plus plugged into my Canon M50 camera. So I can be close to the camera or I can even be far away”.
End your video with a strong call to action telling viewers to check out the link in the description.
Unboxing videos.
You can make unboxing videos to show the product’s packaging, initial impressions and setup process. Here’s a video clip of me demonstrating the switch pod. “I’m excited to bring you the SwitchPod. In my opinion, it’s the best travel tripod for 2020.
Comparison videos.
When you compare two different products within the same category, it helps your audience make an informed decision. Here’s a video clip of a product view video I made comparing the toner TRC 777 USB microphone with the blue Snowball USB microphone.
“Here’s what the microphone sounds like when I’m really close to it. Here’s how it sounds. If I’m really close to the mic, let me know in the comments below which mic you prefer the to mic or the blue snowball mic?”
How To Add Affiliate Links On YouTube
There are 3 ways to add affiliate links to YouTube videos. Description box.
- The best place is to include a live affiliate link in the first three lines of your video description. When viewers are watching the video, they’ll easily be able to see the link below the video and be able to click on it to make a purchase.
- Use onscreen adaptations.
During your video or at the end of the video, you can direct viewers to click the link in the description. For example, in this video when I talked about a TubeBuddy keyword research tool, I directed viewers to the link in the video description. - Pinned comments.
YouTube gives you ability to pin a comment to the top of your comments to make your affiliate links more visible to viewers when they scroll through the comments. Just make sure you use the full URL to make a live link so when viewers click on it, they’ll be taken directly to that product page.
“Hey, Herman, does YouTube allow live affiliate links on YouTube Shorts?’
Thanks for asking. YouTube no longer allows live links in the video description of YouTube shorts, however, you can add a related link that links to a long form video.“
Watch this video to learn how to link shorts directly to your long form videos using related links. So you could do a short review of your affiliate product using YouTube shorts, then link to the full review using a related link.
Optimize Your Video To Increase Visibility
If you want to increase the visibility of a video on YouTube and Google so you can get more views and make more sales, it makes sense to optimize it. To do this, include the name of your affiliate product in your title, description, tags, so it’ll rank higher in the search engines.
Create eye-catching thumbnails to increase your click-through rates. If your thumbnail stands out from your competitor’s thumbnails when they first see it in the search engines on the YouTube homepage on suggested videos, there’s more likely they’ll click on it and watch your video. Make sure you use contrasting colors, bold text and add a curiosity factor.
How To Promote Your Videos
Engage with the viewers in the comments.
YouTube is a social media platform, so viewers will often leave comments under your video to start a conversation. Sometimes they’ll even ask follow up questions concerning your product so you can continue the conversation.
Track your video performance.
Use the analytics provided by your affiliate program to track clicks, conversions, and commissions. You can then adjust your strategy based upon the performance data to maximize your earnings. You can also track the performance of your video in YouTube analytics.
For example, if you click on the reach tab in YouTube analytics, you’ll be able to see how viewers find this video, impressions and how they led to watch time, external sites or apps, YouTube search terms and content suggesting this video.
If you click on the engagement tab, you’ll be able to see audience retention such as…
– the key moments for audience retention,
– how many viewers are still watching around the 30 second mark,
– top moments when your viewers watch for longer than usual,
– where spikes occur when more viewers are watching,
– rewatching or sharing moments of a video.
– You’ll also be able to see the dips, which means viewers are abandoning or skipping certain parts of your video.
When you make tweaks to your next video, based upon the data you studied in your previous video in YouTube analytics, you’ll be able to improve your sales.
Promote Your Videos OFF YouTube
If you want to expose your video to a wider audience than just YouTube, share it on other social media sites such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etcetera. You may even generate some extra sales.
If you have a website or blog, embed your video in the blog post to receive additional traffic. For example, here’s a review of TubeBuddy that I posted on my blog. Creating an optimized blog post increases the chances of your video getting discovered in Google search, as well as your blog post.
If you follow all the steps I outlined in this video, you can effectively use affiliate marketing on YouTube to generate a decent income. Just keep in mind that successful affiliate marketing requires constant effort in building a connection with your audience.
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