YouTube Affiliate Marketing

In this blog post, I’m going to cover the basics of Youtube Affiliate Marketing, and how even total NEWBIES can get started making sales almost immediately!

Now, you may or may not know this, but Youtube is the second most popular website on the planet (2nd to Google, who owns them).

This may be hard to believe, Over One billion hours of content is watched by viewers on Youtube, every single day.

Also, it’s hard to ignore the fact that the web is slowly gravitating towards video.

A decade ago, people actually read content on websites. Today, they prefer information to be delivered in video format – this makes it more entertaining and easier to understand.

Having an Authority Channel

Having a successful channel can help you to become an authority figure in your niche.

Youtube and affiliate marketing can form a potent combination and help you to increase sales exponentially.

Many people depend on just views and/or ad revenue for making money through Youtube.

While this model works for some people – it simply is not the most effective way to leverage the income generation potential of Youtube.

Here’s why:

Ad revenue is unpredictable, and THIS is why many people fail! (Fix below)

On average (this a very rough estimate) a youtuber makes between 500 to 1500 US dollars for every million views.

YouTube keeps over half of the revenue generated by a video. Hence, this method works well for pranksters and other people who go out of their way to produce viral content.

If you’re relying solely on ad revenue, you’re wasting your money making potential.

Say you manage to create a cool video that gets 1 million views in month. You’ll earn something between a thousand to fifteen hundred dollars based on your niche and several other factors.

However, if you add affiliate marketing to the mix – you’ll earn significantly more.

Based on One Million Views:

Even if you’re only making five bucks per sale and even if only 1 percent of the people buy the product or service you recommend, you’ll end up with fifty thousand dollars at the end of the month!

(This is actually more common than you might think!)

These numbers are very doable – even if you reduce the number of conversions by half, you’ll still end up with %25,000 USD! Not bad eh?

Now imagine this – your income will be much higher if you have larger commissions per sale. In that case, you don’t even need to achieve millions of views per video – a few thousand views should do the trick. However, before you begin to count your earnings, you have to apply yourself.

Check out my crash course on Youtube Affiliate Marketing in 5 Easy Steps:

1) Provide Value First, Ask For The Sale Later:

This is not a single step – it’s the attitude that you must have right from the beginning if you want to do well on Youtube and affiliate marketing in general.

Think about this:

Successful businessmen, speakers, mentors, coaches spend several hours delivering life-changing seminars.

At the end, they spend five minutes talking about a paid program or course.

This is not that they are not interested in selling – they definitely care about making sales, although they are never desperate.

They invest a lot of time gaining the trust of their audience. People like what they are saying and become pre-sold. They are very receptive to the sales pitch because the speaker had taken steps to establish value beforehand.

With Youtube too, you cannot just blatantly tell people to buy your product. You first have to provide valuable content – your videos must be entertaining and informative. Also, they have to be unique. You cannot keep repeating the things that other people are already saying – you have to better than them.

Always look to provide value; this way, people will latch on to anything that you have to recommend.

2) Quality of videos:

I am not going to go over the obvious bits in this article. I trust you to sign up for a Youtube account and think of a catchy username. However, I do feel the need to talk about other basics that can make or break the quality of your videos.

Make sure that you record in good lighting and please invest in a good microphone. (Personally, I SWEAR BY my Blue Yeti Microphone, and have been using it for years)

I see many videos shot against a super bright background or in shabby settings. They are off-putting from the very beginning. You don’t have to rent a studio or anything – a quiet room with a neutral background is good enough (depending upon your niche).

A public park or garden also works very well – as long as the surroundings are relatively peaceful.

You don’t need to buy an expensive camera or drone. You can produce top notch quality videos using just your smartphone. One thing that you do need to work on though, is the editing. Get very good at editing or pay somebody to do it for you. It would be great if you took the trouble to learn to edit well. it’s a useful skill that will pay off very well in the long term. Psst…it’s not that hard – really!

Want to know a secret?

You DON’T even have to show your face! (Unless you want to)

3) Traffic:

A successful Youtube affiliate marketer must attract the right kind of traffic and preferably, lots of it. You have to collaborate with other Youtubers with a lot of subscribers. Remember that people with a lot of subscribers are picky about whom they choose to associate with. So you need to offer a compelling proposition.

For example: Say that you have a cooking channel and they have a fitness channel.

You can create a series titled Easy 5-minute Recipes for Fitness Freaks. This way, you can get lots of subs within a matter of days. You get the idea.

4) Learn how to get the click:

Your titles and thumbnails will decide whether or not people click on your videos.

So optimize them and make them irresistible. (Bonus points, create a custom Youtube thumbnail using Canva.com, or any of the other free graphics tools out there)

5) Post consistently:

Some of the fastest growing channels post very often.

You should seriously consider posting at least 3 videos a week during the initial phase.

Sure, you may already have a job and other commitments. Just record a lot of material on weekends and spend some time each day editing and uploading content. Many new people make the mistake of uploading just one or two videos to test the waters.

The problem is that if people like your content and want to watch more, you have none of it available. So upload at least 5 videos initially.

If you fail to upload on a fairly consistent basis, your subs and views will drop and the competition will eat into your portion of the pie.

Share your experiences with the product or service that you are promoting. Don’t forget to tell people about the links in the description.

Also, try to get a special discount voucher or promo code – it piques peoples’ interest and gives them an incentive to try out whatever you’re recommending.

Being a Youtuber can be a very rewarding profession.

Good luck! 🙂

Jeff