You’ve heard that people are doing affiliate marketing and are making money on YouTube and you’ll like to know how it’s done, right? If so, I want you to know that you are in the right place. In this article, you will discover how to make money with affiliate marketing on YouTube.
This post will show you all you need to know to make your first affiliate commissions on YouTube. YouTube affiliate marketing is a search based type of marketing, and since YouTube is a very popular search engine, it is the best place to get started if you love making videos.
What is search-based marketing?
This type of marketing is dependent on search engines. This is where you create a piece of content with the purpose of using it to sell and you wait for it to rank in the search engines. Later in this article, I will show you how you can rank your YouTube videos easily.
After you have optimized your videos for the search engines, you wait for it to rank and whenever people search for the keyword you are ranking for, they will click on your videos and if you play your cards right, you will begin to make sales.
4 reasons why you should use YouTube for affiliate marketing
If you are just starting out, I want to show you 4 reasons why you should start a YouTube channel for affiliate marketing.
Free to start
Aside from your email address and name, nothing is required of you when you want to start a YouTube channel. You will only spend money to advance the look and feel of your YouTube channel.
Your money might be spent on buying a good webcam or editing software, though this is not compulsory.
YouTube is the largest search engine for video content
Since Google is the largest search engine in the world and YouTube is owned by Google. YouTube became the largest search engine for video content in the world.
Videos on YouTube sometimes rank on google for specific keywords, so this contributes greatly to the massive reach of YouTube.
Less competition
Not everyone can/wants to face the camera and create a video, so the competition on YouTube is not as fierce as that for blogs. Creating YouTube videos will give you an unfair advantage when you begin to target keywords that you normally would not rank for when using your blog.
More reach
With a wide audience of people on YouTube, your reach is limitless. You can basically reach anyone anywhere in the world with your content. Also, YouTube tends to recommend your videos as suggested videos alongside other videos on YouTube. So, your reach is very wide.
Passive income
With a YouTube video that is properly optimized for search engines and affiliate marketing, you can generate passive income online. You just shoot the video once and it can continue to make sales for you every single day.
Watch this video that I did on my YouTube channel where I explained the simple formula for passive income online.
Requirements to become an affiliate marketer on YouTube
- An email address
If you don’t have an email address yet, just go to Gmail or yahoo mail to create your own email address. This will be used to create your account on youtube.
- A free YouTube channel
Once you’ve created your account on youtube, you can easily create your youtube channel by clicking on your profile and navigating to the section that says “channel”
Click on “create new channel”
It will bring you to a new page where you will be able to write your channel name, once that is done, click on create and your channel will be created immediately. No other registration needed
- Willingness to be consistent
If you want to succeed in this business, you will have to be willing to stay consistent while doing it. Be consistent for 6-12 months and focus on building your business. When you finally become successful, you will look back at when you were still struggling and you will thank yourself for choosing to do this.
Pros and cons of affiliate marketing on YouTube
Pros
Requires no monetary investment to get started
To start a YouTube channel is free, you don’t have to pay any registration fee to start.
Make time to invest in your videos to make them better, but at first, you have to start, video image quality is not what’s important at this stage, rather, you need to start with whatever you have and be consistent. But continue improving your videos along the way
Lots of free traffic
YouTube helps content creators to promote their content online by using videos. This is because, YouTube gets their revenue from the ads shown on your videos. So if your videos doesn’t get views, don’t get discouraged, just pick up from where you left and optimize the videos for SEO.
You can make sales on autopilot
Yes, you can easily make sales on autopilot on YouTube. Basically the more of your views you get, the more sales you can make on autopilot.
Cons
Require being on camera
If you are someone who is camera shy, you might find it hard to create a YouTube channel if you want to be the face of that channel. Luckily you can use softwares like invideo to create videos that can then be uploaded to YouTube.
More time needed to edit your videos
After creating your videos, the next logical thing to do is to edit them. This takes a lot of time and energy to do if you want to create a very engaging YouTube video.
Results can be slow at first
Most people don’t see results from their efforts on YouTube until a long time. YouTube requires consistent efforts. You can’t just create one video and expect it to go viral overnight. With consistent action, you will see consistent results. Just don’t give up.
Your account can get a strike and be deleted without your permission
Part of the cons of YouTube is that you can easily get a strike on YouTube if you don’t do things the right way. If you want to avoid getting a strike on YouTube, you have to:
- Create your own videos (don’t copy other peoples videos)
- Don’t use copyrighted content on your YouTube channel
- Read this wonderful blog post by Ian Corzine to learn other tips that will help you avoid getting a strike on YouTube
Interesting: How to start affiliate marketing in Nigeria
How to use YouTube for affiliate marketing
This is the part you’ve been waiting for, this section will show you exactly how you can use your YouTube channel for affiliate marketing. Get your writing material and take notes as I explain how to do it.
Step 1. Create quality videos that solves a problem or answers a question
If you truly want to make money on YouTube with affiliate marketing, then, you have to keep a positive mindset. The first step is to create quality videos that people are currently searching for, while creating the video, draw the attention of your viewers to your affiliate link which will be in the description of your video.
You can create any type of video. A review, comparison, how-to or tutorial videos are good enough to get you started. When you make a video teaching people how to do something with the product you are promoting, you can easily make a sale this way. They will watch your video and if they weren’t using the tool you mentioned, they might try it out using your affiliate link.
But there are two paths you can follow if you want to create YouTube videos, let me share them with you.
Two paths to creating videos
- Use invideo
If you don’t like being on camera, you can easily use invideo to create your videos. Invideo is a wonderful software that will help you convert content to videos.
- Shoot videos yourself
The second option is to shoot the videos yourself. This is a very good option if you want to brand your YouTube channel. There is one little disadvantage to using this option, and that is, you cannot stop creating the videos yourself. Once people recognize your face, they will tie it to your channel. But this doesn’t mean anything.
Step 2. Optimize your YouTube videos for affiliate marketing
After creating your YouTube video, you need to optimize them to rank properly in search. When people search for that topic, you will be found easily, and you will make sales when you optimize your youtube videos the right way. So how do you optimize your videos to rank in search and make sales, read on
- Write a proper description with your chosen keyword
- Add the keyword in your tags
- Use the keyword in your title
- Use a custom thumbnail
- Add your affiliate links in the description
- Add a verbal cta in your video
- Don’t fill your description with affiliate links
3 types of videos that will help you make more affiliate sales on YouTube
These three types of videos will help you make sales as an affiliate marketer:
- Review videos
- Tutorials
- Unboxing videos
How to promote your YouTube videos
Below are some sites that can help you promote your YouTube videos to get even more views. They are really wonderful websites with lots of visitors per month. Some of these sites get over a million monthly views, so, sharing your videos on these sites will help you to get access to a lot of viewers. Check them out
- Medium
- Tumblr
- Mix
How long before you start seeing results on your YouTube channel
If you want to succeed at anything in this life, you have to stick with it for a dedicated period of time. For YouTube, just give it 6-12 months to learn how things work. And another 12 months to start seeing results.
Wouldn’t it be nice if you dedicated two years to learning and implementing and after 2 years you start seeing results on your channel? Wouldn’t it be wonderful? To me, it will. Don’t expect quick results in anything because we are doing this for the long term. And stop listening to people that are teaching you how to get $1,000,000 in 30 days. This thing requires time.
7 success tips for new affiliate marketers on YouTube
I want to share 7 tips that will help you succeed as an affiliate marketer on youtube. Read carefully and take notes.
Be transparent with your business
Don’t lie about anything to anyone. If you are just getting started, tell people. Let them know. Don’t pretend to be what you are not. It will make people trust you and they will be more likely to buy from you when you make them an irresistible offer.
Provide massive value
Give, give, and give. Yes, I intentionally said give 3X. That’s how much you need to give value to people. Especially when you are just getting started. Teach people and make them know you care about them and their problems.
Value is not defined only by the quality of your camera
Just start with what you have on YouTube. If you want to share something with people, just do it. There’s a steep learning curve on YouTube. You have to learn a lot of things to succeed. You can always upgrade your camera and improve your studio. If you are contemplating starting your own YouTube channel then I want you to start immediately with what you have and upgrade when you start getting some results.
Patience is needed to succeed
This is the most important tip here. You need to be patient and consistent. Upload videos at the same time on your YouTube channel and do that every week. One thing I do is, instead of looking at my YouTube stats to see the number of views on my videos. I prefer to track the number of videos I’ve created on my YouTube channel. Remember to stay consistent. Read this article to learn how to create content consistently
Use verbal cta inside your videos
If you have affiliate links in the description of your videos, make sure you verbally mention it while shooting your YouTube video. You can say something like “don’t forget to check the description for the links to join X” or “the link is in the description of this video”
If you do this, you can drastically increase the number of clicks on your affiliate links.
Use other distribution channels
What do I mean by other distribution channels? Simply, it means that you should build your audience on other platforms too, not just your YouTube channel. You can build a telegram channel where your audience can hang out and ask questions. Also, you can create a Facebook group where you can build an audience and get more views from.
Build an email list
An email list is an asset to digital marketers and affiliate marketers. If you can build a targeted email list, this will help you a lot to get instant traffic. Normally, what happens is that you pay to get instant traffic, but if you can convert that traffic into your email list, you don’t need to pay for traffic again. You’ll be able to generate instant traffic.
If you want to build an email list, read this email marketing article. It’s going to help you.
FAQ
Can one really earn money from affiliate marketing on YouTube?
Yes, you can earn money from YouTube using affiliate marketing, but this can only be possible if you follow all the tips I shared with you in this article. Apply everything you learnt from this article and you will definitely see results.
Conclusion
If you apply everything you learned from this article, and stick to it for at least 6-12 months straight, I can guarantee you that you will make money with affiliate marketing on YouTube.
You have now reached the end of this article, I know you learned a lot. Don’t be like 99% of people that will just read and take no action. Become an action taker and achieve your dreams. It might not come easily but if you remain consistent, it will definitely come.
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Also, tell me your biggest takeaway from this article.