Youtube Affiliate Marketing: How to Use Affiliate Marketing to Monetize Your Videos

Video marketing is rapidly growing in popularity and is beginning to dominate consumer traffic on the internet. It’s no surprise, considering the impact video content has on brand awareness and conversion rates.

Studies show that 64-85% of buyers will more likely buy something if they see a video about it. Video marketing establishes a personal relationship between a brand and its prospective customers. Therefore, it is essential for businesses with an online presence. 

A video communicates a service or product more clearly. Watching a product video is more convenient for buyers than reading about it. For this reason, videos are an extremely effective marketing tool. About 75% of professionals regularly watch promotional videos for relevant services and products. Almost half of all videos watched online are on YouTube. Approximately half of all viewers will then visit the website selling the product shown in the video.

We’ve covered the reach, engagement, and size of the platform alone. Now let’s talk about affiliate marketing.

How Does YouTube Affiliate Marketing Work?

The affiliate marketing process involves including links to products you use and review in your videos and tracking purchases made by viewers who click those links. When a viewer purchases a product through the affiliate link in your video, you earn a commission on the sale. 

Affiliate marketing on YouTube is as easy as posting on Instagram. This is the quickest way to monetize a video. 

To appreciate its importance, some relevant YouTube statistics that reinstate that:

• There are more than 2 billion monthly active users on YouTube
• 5 billion videos are watched each day on the platform
• 500 hours of videos are uploaded each minute 
• 78 % of US man adults and 68 % of  female adults use  the platform
• 62% of all businesses are active YouTube  
• 9 % of small businesses are using YouTube for brand promotion
• 1 billion hours of video content is watched per day
• 95% of internet users are watching YouTube 

How To Find Youtube Affiliates

As far as affiliate programs are concerned, Amazon Associates is by far the most popular and successful. It is probably the easiest way to monetize your video, blog, etc. There are tons of affiliates in the affiliate marketing industry, including search affiliates, influencers, bloggers, review sites, coupon sites, and so much more.

The majority of big brands have some sort of affiliate marketing program, like Target, Walmart, and Big Buy. The list is endless. It’s important to choose the one that truly resonates with your channel and actually sells products you’d purchase. The worst thing you can do is try to sell something you don’t believe in.

How to Start with Affiliate Marketing

There are many YouTube affiliate marketing channels that can assist you in making the first steps towards successful affiliate marketing campaigns. 

Affiliate Marketing Mc

This channel has been involved in affiliate marketing and internet marketing for 16 years. You’ll learn about affiliate marketing and how your blogs and websites can earn money. New posts are usually posted once a week. It has a YouTube following of more than 72,000, more than three million views, and more than 600 videos. 

Deadbeat Super Affiliate 

There are a lot of effective strategies for affiliate and internet marketing on this channel distilled from more than ten years of “deadbeat” experience. These techniques actually work. The channel has a video each week, 180,000 followers, more than 10 million views, and 355 videos. 

Affiliate Marketing Ninjas 

This channel teaches the how’s of affiliate marketing. The channel produces six videos per quarter, has 4,340 followers, 186,979 views, and 91 videos. 

Types of Videos You Can Make to Generate Affiliate Revenue

If you want to generate revenue from your videos, you should first help people. The key to creating engaging content is creating value. This is a long, challenging process, but it is the only way to succeed in affiliate marketing. People won’t subscribe to you or click on your links if you don’t create value. Establish yourself as a trusted source of information that people turn to.

Content could be anything from education to entertainment to life hacks, anything that people can learn from. Determine what your strength is or what your specialization is. What do you excel at? That is how you choose your niche. Among profitable niches are beauty and fashion; online games; cooking and food; health and fitness; product reviews; travel; animals and pets; humor; entertainment; and video blogging.

Product Reviews

All types of products may be reviewed, but start with things you like and use. This is probably one of the most effective Youtube video ideas for getting more views and subscribers. In fact, some people make a living just by reviewing superhero action figures.

How-To Tutorial Videos

There is a great deal of value in this niche. You can make how-to videos on things you are very knowledgeable about. Can you fix watches and clocks? Make videos about that. What about basic carpentry? Sculpting? Playing the guitar? How-to videos are a great way to showcase what you’re good at – and I’m sure you have something to offer.

Best Of Videos

When you have nothing really unique to offer, compile lists of the “best of” anything. Some channels have “Best 5” or “Best 10” lists that encompass all sorts of subjects. For example, you can list “5 Creepiest Things Caught on Video,” “10 Most Unexplained Phenomena,” “5 Fastest Cars on Earth,” or whatever else you can think of.

Broadcasts or Highlights

Suppose you are a more experienced YouTuber with significant influence. In that case, you are invited to international conferences, fashion shows, product launches, or other events so you can tell your audience about them. You probably already post images or short videos to social media, but YouTube will make a huge difference. If you share highlights from an event and show your subscribers how it inspired you, they’ll be excited about what’s hot in your industry.

Integrating affiliate links into a YouTube video naturally

Affiliate links can be placed in the video itself or in your video description box. It is important to strike the right balance when inserting affiliate links. YouTube wants viewers to watch and engage with its videos for as long as possible. This includes showing as many ads as possible. If, for example, you want your videos to rank high on YouTube, having affiliate links might hinder that. 

How? When a viewer clicks on the affiliate link in your description, it is possible that they will not finish watching your video, which is problematic for your rankings. Having a large audience and making as much money as possible are both imperative. 

It would be best if you created a balance between videos that contain affiliate links and videos that drive traffic, boost rankings, engage wider audiences, and ultimately gain your subscribers’ trust. You may have videos with affiliate links for business purposes and videos without links for ranking purposes.

Description Box

The video description is the second most valuable area after the video. The purpose of a video’s description is to describe its content, creator, copyright details, improve search engine optimization, and send traffic to websites. YouTubers often include affiliate links in their descriptions. 

To shorten links, use a URL shortener. If not, links would appear unnecessarily long, unappealing, and spammy. To provide context, it’s also a smart idea to add a few words before your link. A call-to-action (CTA) is a statement that instructs a person to take a specific action. Use CTAs in your descriptions to encourage people to click.

Time to Reap The Benefits: How to Increase Views and Clicks

Now that everything’s said and done, it’s time to boost your YouTube videos’ views, click-through rates, and higher conversion rates. So, how can you make your videos stand out and get the exposure and engagement they deserve? Do the following: 

Fill the video tags with rich keywords

Tagging is one of the most significant ways YouTube uses to rank your video: when users search the site, tags help them find you. Hence, tagging is the first step towards organic ranking on Youtube. 

YouTube does not limit the number of tags you can use. In general, it is recommended to add as many tags as possible, but the focus should still be on smart, researched educated tags:

• Brand-specific tags, channel-specific tags
• Use Youtube autosuggest generated tags
• Use Youtube Tag Generators  

Create a Good Thumbnail 

There is a saying that says you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. But YouTube videos aren’t like books. Engaging thumbnails attract attention. But how do you create an attractive thumbnail? Image quality is the first key to click-worthy thumbnails. Blurred images affect the credibility of your video content, which, in turn, can reduce views. Make your video more enticing with close-up shots. Another tip for making your videos more clickable is to use text with relevant buzz words and bright backgrounds with contrasting text colors. People are naturally drawn to faces, so include your face or the face of your company. Emotions get the greatest reaction from people. 

Remember, the thumbnail is the teaser for your video. Give enough information to interest and engage the viewers so they will want to find out more.

Get People Engaged Immediately

Instead of videos less than five minutes in length, make them watch videos for five to twelve minutes. Stay on a topic, so they don’t get distracted. Show why you are a trustworthy information source, then get straight to the point. Avoid boring and pointless introductions. You should not beg for likes or subscribers – you should ask for them, but do it quickly. 

Also, don’t miss the chance to show your other videos related to the video at the end! Your viewer’s attention is at its peak during this time. So if you link to two or more videos of yours in every video you make, you end up with an ever-growing network of interlinked videos that boost your rankings and traffic.

Monitor Audience Retention

Analyze your data to see what you do right, what you do wrong, and how to improve your numbers. For example, check audience retention and compare videos that work and don’t work. You can use YouTube’s Audience retention report to find out how well your video is performing. This report will give you an idea of the average view time for all videos on your channel, the top videos or channels by watch time, audience retention data for a video for various timeframes, and relative audience retention for a video to the YouTube average for similar videos.

Post Consistently and at the Right Time

Many of the fastest-growing channels post frequently.

With your audience knowing that you post brand-new videos twice a week on Tuesdays, you will have an easier time retaining them. Pick a frequency and time that works for you. Unless you upload regularly, you will eventually lose subscribers and views to the competition, and your share of the pie will shrink. In general, it is most effective to post during the early evening hours where your largest audience is located.

You should be honest about your experiences with the product or service you’re promoting. Don’t forget to inform people about the links in the description. Try to get a special discount voucher or promo code as well – this usually piques people’s interests and gives them an incentive to try out whatever you’re recommending.

We hope that these tips will give you a head start in earning money through affiliate marketing on YouTube. Good luck!