Maximizing Your Profits with YouTube Affiliate Marketing

12 min read

Businesses that stay on top of their game spend a good amount on affiliate marketing with the help of various social media platforms, especially YouTube. The platform has more than 2.5 billion users who spend a total of over 1 billion hours every day.

YouTube: Time Spent in the Mobile App

However, in order to maximize profit and make the best of this social media giant, it’s necessary to understand the right way to affiliate marketing. If done right, your sales can skyrocket within a few days!

In this guide, we’ll be going over the basics of how to start affiliate marketing with YouTube and examples to guide you along the way. Let’s get going!

What is YouTube Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a business strategy that allows individuals or other companies to promote their products or services with an affiliate link or code for a small commission. The commission often depends on a business’s affiliate program policies and the number of sales.

How to Start Affiliate Marketing on YouTube?

Whether you have been on YouTube for a while or just starting new, you can sign up for an affiliate program for different businesses. Now, some businesses have certain follower/views requirements so do look out for those.

Here is a basic idea of how you can enroll in an affiliate program.

Sign up for the affiliate marketing program.
Post the link or code you have been assigned on your profile and/or the video description that you created for the product/service.
Encourage your audience to use the link or code.
You will receive a small commission for every sale the business makes!

It is all that simple!!

When to Start Affiliate Marketing on YouTube?

There is no perfect time!! You can start whenever and even now as soon as you finish reading this blog. Once you decide to take the plunge, It’s always best to research which businesses align with the content you create.

Most businesses these days have affiliate programs. However, if the business you are interested to work with does not, you can reach out to them via cold pitching. There is a good chance they will get back to you with a positive response! Even if they don’t, there is no saying they won’t reach out to you themselves in the future! That is kind of the magic behind affiliate marketing.

How to Make Money on YouTube With Affiliate Marketing?

Making money on YouTube with affiliate marketing, especially if you have developed a niche, is quite easy. Once you have built a community with your YouTube channel, it is time to start earning through various affiliate programs.

You start by looking into affiliate programs on different businesses that align with your niche. Reach out to them and sign up for the programs. Don’t forget different businesses require different expectations and demands. Once you’ve partnered with a business, you can then add your affiliate link to your video description and talk about it in your videos.

Affiliate Marketing Video Ideas for YouTube

The hardest part about creating affiliate content is to present the sponsored recommendations in a way that the audience organically engages with. It is important that the audience trusts your word for it!

Oftentimes, followers stop trusting the creator and unfollow if all they do is try to get them to buy different products. It’s essential to create a community that has full trust in you before you encourage them to buy products through your recommendations. Once you have purposely achieved this, make sure you find creative ways to communicate your products and keep them interested.

Also, don’t forget to add a promo code for your audience whenever you decide to mention your affiliate products. Remember, people love sales and discounts! You can never go wrong with this!

Unboxing videos

What’s a better way to promote your content than to post an unboxing video? Here is an example of an unboxing video of a small phone.

Now, you could do an ASMR, a voice-over, or simply a regular video of you speaking to the camera!

Round-up videos

A great example of an affiliate marketing video is a round-up video. It can include various products of one brand or various brands!

Product review videos

You can never go wrong with a classic product review! Knowing your audience, you can create a promotional product review video targeted to them and their interests!

Tutorial videos

Do you want to promote a product? Great! Create tutorial videos for it. You can easily educate others on a specific product or even teach them how to use or build them. You’d be surprised how many buyers look for video tutorials before buying a product, and if they happen to come across your video and discount code, the chances are high they’ll choose to buy it through your affiliate link.

Product comparisons

This is an excellent idea to use in your affiliate marketing strategy. People often use YouTube to compare products. You can create a video comparing the product you are promoting vs the rival. You can creatively convince people to opt for the product you are affiliated with.

You can get as creative as you want. The goal is to encourage your customers to buy your affiliate products in a way that feels natural and not forced.

Affiliate Marketing with YouTube Ads

Creating YouTube Ads is a great idea to promote affiliate content. It is important to understand the basics of creating a YouTube Ad. There are many options to create DIY Youtube video ads even if you do not have a big budget or professional equipment. Remember, creating content is all about reaching the hearts of people, many times it doesn’t require a lot of money but a creative mind.

Affiliate Marketing With YouTube Shorts

YouTube shorts have taken over the internet. They are fast and people spend more than 50% of their YouTube time watching YouTube shorts. All you need are the products you want to promote, a tripod, and your phone! You can create content from the comfort of your home. In fact, a lot of creators use the Amazon Influencer Program to receive commissions on the products their followers buy using the links given to them.

Is It Possible to Try Affiliate Marketing on YouTube Without Making Videos

Unfortunately, the only way to do this involves relying on a third-party side to do the videos for you or paying someone else. You could also simply create text-only videos or Shorts which are very easy to make, and add your affiliate links to the description and even your channel’s banner, but this may not be the best idea to generate money from affiliate marketing on YouTube.

Viewers love and trust organic content. Therefore, it is best to create personalized videos to market your affiliate products. The more personalized the videos, the more the affiliated content will sell! You can use a beginner-friendly guide to help you get started!

How to Use affiliate Marketing With a YouTube Channel

You can find hundreds of great affiliate marketing YouTube channels that can help you grow your own YouTube channel.

Here are the five best affiliate marketing YouTube channels to help you better understand.

Authority Hacker: You will find tutorials, vlogs, podcasts, and overall honest content to build a profitable YouTube Channel with affiliate marketing.
MoneyLab: This channel has great content to help you grow your income with affiliated marketing.
Matt Diggity: This channel will help you reach your audience with SEO to turn viewers into customers!
Create & Go: It’s in the name! This channel helps you create eye-catchy content for your YouTube channel so you can profit from the affiliated programs you have joined.
Miles Becker: Visit this channel only if you aim to learn more about content marketing, SEO, keyword research, and sale funnels to send your affiliated marketing sales through the roof!

Key Takeaways When Doing Affiliate Marketing on Youtube

It doesn’t matter what type of content you plan to promote through your affiliate links, the rules and strategies to apply often remain the same.

Make sure to figure out the best keywords to add to your videos to increase your audience and chances of making a sale.
Appeal to different niches and audiences and find what works best for you
Make your videos short and as straight to the point as possible. This is especially useful when it comes to your intro, Long intros imply higher bounce rates.
Use eye-catching thumbnails and be transparent with your content and the products you promote.

It’s also a good idea to encourage comments and likes so the algorithm notices your content and recommends it to more viewers. The key remains in choosing the right products to promote, doing your research, knowing your competition, and being transparent and intentional with your content.

The rest is easy; people love discounts and often feel encouraged to purchase a product if based on an honest review.

Wrapping up YouTube Affiliate Marketing

Affiliated Marketing is here to stay. As a content creator, you can earn a great deal using the affiliated programs available for those with a community and the drive to generate sales.

Youtube is the perfect platform to build credibility organically and incorporate affiliate marketing as a way to increase your overall income. If you haven’t already, you can check out some of our past posts on affiliate marketing on our blog and start earning extra money today!

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Oct 9, 2022

About the author

Max has been working in the ecommerce industry for the last six years helping brands to establish and level-up content marketing and SEO. Despite that, he has experience with entrepreneurship. He is a fiction writer in his free time.