YouTube Affiliate Marketing: Proven Ways (2024)

How to Make $1,000 Monthly (Step-by-Step)

YouTube affiliate marketing has been out there for years, yet not many people are utilizing the maximum benefits from it.

Making money from YouTube is easy and straightforward. However, it requires work.

As usual, I am writing this post assuming that you have no idea about YouTube affiliate marketing, so please bear with me if I am going into insane details.

To make this post beneficial read this full helpful blog post carefully and slowly. Spending 10-20 minutes on this post could change your life or at least your financial situation.

Worst-case scenario – it’s better than watching your friend’s cat video on Facebook.

Introduction to the Beast

Some facts about YouTube are just unbelievable, crazy, and scary.

If you’re not living on Mars, you must have heard of the Despacito song. The video clip has been viewed 7.7 billion times in a world of only 7.9 billion people.

You can’t see any of the videos like this out of 800 million. It’s just better to stop doing the math and give you facts from YouTube press:

Per day 1 billion+ hours of watch time, people are covering on YouTube.
You can navigate YouTube in 165 different languages
63%+ YouTube users come via Mobile devices
Amongst Mobile devices alone in the USA, YouTube reaches more people than any TV network
2.1 billion users out of 4.66 billion – This is almost half of the internet users

Ok, I will stop now because I started to not believe these figures myself, even though they’re published in the YouTube press!

Why Do I Recommend YouTube to Make Money?

Especially for Beginners

Obviously, I have no stake in YouTube. Just to put things in perspective – I am getting ZERO returns whether you listen to me or not.

However, I would like to believe that I am making a difference, so if you have any questions, please comment below.

For the last couple of years, I have seen people who have no idea about affiliate marketing making $50-100 a day from YouTube.

Some facts about YouTube making money that you should keep in mind:

2 Million YouTubers are making 6 figures.
YouTube earnings are growing by $4 billion every year.
In 2020 Creators made #19.7 billion and this amount is increasing by 30.4% every year.
YouTube has paid over $2 Billion for people/companies like you in the last 5 years.

In short, it is working right now, and pretty much anyone can replicate it if they put the required work into it.

I will guide you now through the steps you need to take to start making $100 per day from YouTube.

I can tell you from my experience that YouTube affiliate marketing works, mainly because of the following reasons:

People are lazy as fuck now with getting information – watching a video is easier than reading a blog. Hello, Millennials!
It’s way easier to get YouTube traffic than Google.
YouTube is gaining popularity day by day and this is the reason this is the second search engine just after Google.

However, before I do that, you must understand the fundamentals of affiliate marketing.

Introduction

You have probably read or heard about 100s of different definitions of affiliate marketing.

You are helping someone, and the product owner is paying you a commission. John has a product, you promote this product for him; if you succeed, you get a cut. PERIOD.

No fancy or scientific definition needs to be said here because this is the reason that affiliate marketing always comes down.

There are too many versions of it.

The product can be a service, a call-to-action, a sale, or whatever. It does not matter as long as it is marketable:)

You will usually be given a unique link so that when people buy through your link, John will know it was you and then will give you your commission.

Affiliates are spending hundreds of millions every month promoting other people’s products and services. It’s a serious business.

If you have not done any affiliate marketing in your life, I recommend 2 quick things to get you on track:

What is YouTube Affiliate Marketing?

A Primer

It is simply the act of creating videos about the products you want to promote, and then adding your unique affiliate link in the description.

All the circled links above are affiliate links related to the YouTube channel owner. I am sure this guy is making thousands of dollars every month from just one video.

Do not dream about the Ferrari yet. This is just to show you that it is possible, but you have to stick around and take action.

So you can see that if you make a video and succeed in having it rank on YouTube in a good position, you will make good money.

Ok, how on earth can you do that?

Let me tell you the steps. Do not rush it!

Listen! There is no shortcut here. You have to follow the steps.

Identify Your Goals

This is the first thing you should do before starting a YouTube Channel and making videos.

Remove confusion from your brain and make a goal for what you want to do on YouTube.

Common goals could be as follows:

Make a blog without making amateur blogging mistakes
Driving traffic to your blog or website
Driving traffic to affiliate links
Building an email list or any other database
Getting reviews on Amazon or eBay

As you can see, the sky’s the limit. However, it is all about driving traffic somewhere.

If you choose to drive traffic to affiliate links, I would recommend capturing emails too. You should build your database while promoting other people’s products.

Research & Find a Profitable Niche

Be clear, research and finding a profitable niche is your main priority when choosing a topic. Spend more time doing your research here, and you can thank me later.

Do not rush it and jump right in to start a channel. Planning is the foundation for success.

I cannot stress this enough! SPEND AS MUCH TIME AS YOU NEED HERE.

You might have heard this before, but you really need to choose a niche that you enjoy. It is a journey, not a time-off job.

If you don’t like cricket, you can’t make a video of cricket playing regularly.

Research

Here are 9 steps that you need to follow:

Write down 10 broad niches that you enjoy – i.e., football, cooking, parenting, SEO, music, etc.
Google the word for each niche + “blog” or “forum” – for instance, “football blogs”.
Read at least 2 blogs about every niche of those 10.
Create an Excel or Google sheet with the following columns: Broad Niche Name, Enjoyment Rank, Sub-niche 1, Rank 1, Sub-niche 2, and Rank 2.
In the Enjoyment Rank, put a number from 1 to 10, where 10 indicates a topic you enjoy the most.
Take the top 3 niches, which should score 10, 9 & 8, and find 2 sub-niches for each. Now you should have 6 sub-niches to choose from.
Record a quick 30-second video from your phone for each one of them.
Rank every one of these videos from 1 to 6, with 6 as the highest score. Your rank should not reflect how good you were in the video. It should, again, be based on how much you enjoyed making a video about that topic.
Choose the highest score sub-niche (6) to be your final niche.

Keep the other niches. We may need them later on.

Download an Excel sheet with examples of niches and sub-niches.

Now you should have a solid sub-niche that you enjoy and hopefully will have fun creating content about.

I want you to have a sub-niche because that will make you look like an expert in your area and also way easier to rank on Google and YouTube.

Finding a Profitable Niche

This is mainly about keywords. It is very important to find keywords in your niches that are easy to rank.

No one sees a topic, and you will not make a video on it! Usually, this is what happens to new YouTubers, who then judge that YouTube sucks or they suck and just give up!

Having said that, it is a lot easier to rank on YouTube than on Google.

Don’t worry – I will show you how to find profitable keywords step by step.

The first thing you need to do is download the VidIQ Chrome extension. You will need it later. There is a free version.

Obviously, you are starting out and have no subscribers and no authority channel yet.

So you need to find low-competition keywords, yet have decent traffic.

A long-tail keyword will be your first choice. Note: the number of word counts will be at least four. Otherwise, you have to face a hard time ranking on Search engines.

If you are asking me for keyword advice; then I will suggest you work on it (especially when you are a beginner):

how to XXX
Best/Top XXX
Tutorial XXX
XXX Review

Your best bet will be “How to XXX”, it is by far the easiest to rank and make videos about too.

And literally every person in the world, including you, has googled “how to” keywords before!

For instance, if your niche is vegan dinner, you just go to the YouTube search bar and type in “how to cook vegan”.

Or simply just type “vegan dinner” to brainstorm ideas.

Like, To see more information, you will see VidlQ’s valuable insights on the right side:

…from how many people are searching for those keywords (Search Volume) to how easy it is to rank for it. (Competition Score).

Make sure you find at least 5 keywords that meet the following criteria:

Min of 15 Search Volume in VidIQ

Max of 30 Competition Scores in VidIQ

If you are stuck and cannot find or think of any keywords, don’t worry.

I have a solution for you! I don’t want to say this, probably because this tool will be beneficial for YouTube affiliate marketing.

Go to https://answerthepublic.com and type your niche.

Hit Get Questions and you will see a lot of keyword ideas.

This will definitely help you brainstorm a lot of keywords for your YouTube channel.

Finding Affiliate Offers to Promote on YouTube

You probably have googled it already! You may have wondered where to find affiliate offers to promote.

Although it is important to spend some time to find a decent offer, there are hundreds and perhaps thousands of places where you can find affiliate offers.

There is no point in me listing more than just a few for you, otherwise, you will get distracted. It is important to get started and get your hands dirty to learn faster.

So I will share with you the names that I personally believe anyone can start with and make money a lot easier than other affiliate networks.

1. Amazon Associates

This is probably the most famous one. I don’t need to say people are already making tons of money using the Amazon associates program. And it’s true.

I don’t need to tell you this, but I’m sure you know that you can probably find any product in the world on Amazon.

You can see a list of all categories and special bounties here: Amazon Associates Commission Rate.

It is very easy for people to buy via your Amazon affiliate link because the brand is so trusted.

Customers do not have to Google prices and reviews for such a website!

2. eBay Partner Network

This is another giant platform that everyone knows. The pleasure part of eBay is you don’t need to work hard to convince people to buy through your link.

The best thing about this program is that the commission rate can reach up to 70%. It’s an enjoyable and crazy time (not yet, you haven’t made any sales.) how much money you will make!

3. Commission Junction (CJ)

It is a huge affiliate marketing company that has been in good shape for years. It claims to pay over $1.8B annually to affiliates.

I had a few transaction problems with them when first starting out, but they successfully fixed them. So, don’t forget to call them when you have a problem.

The downside of this company is that if the advertiser (the offer owner) does not pay CJ for your conversion, CJ does not pay you.

It is a downside that annoys me a lot as a concept; however, I have not yet faced any issue with an advertiser not paying.

If you are planning to promote services like web hosting, it is probably the best network for you. There are endless numbers of hosting providers you can choose from here.

The commission varies greatly, from 10 to 200%. Yes, you read that right! Some hosting providers pay affiliates to double what they earn.

Because here is the secret of marketing, in the long term they will earn more.

Note: Do not promote iPage. They are useless as f***.

4. ClickBank

ClickBank is probably one of the most famous platforms for affiliate offers. It has pretty much all kinds of offers, especially for services and digital marketing.

You will find a huge number of online courses about pretty much everything. It is working well with YouTube affiliate marketing as most of the offers contain videos too.

Alternatively, if you like any websites that sell specific services and products, just search for their affiliate program.

For this, you will get your desired link in the footer section. Don’t forget to scroll down to the footer.

For instance, in addition to my main video creation software Camtasia, I use InVideo to create some creative videos every now and then.

I liked that app so much that I wanted to promote it to my subscribers by email.

I checked their website, and here you go!

There are also tons of other affiliate networks that provide offers from Blackhat, dating to clean and whitehat lead generation.

Making Videos for YouTube Affiliate Marketing

I get asked this question a lot! What tools do you use to make videos?

However, I have my favorite tool when it comes to YouTube affiliate marketing videos. Nothing comes even close.

It is Camtasia.

PERIOD.

I have not seen any other software that’s so easy to use for non-technical people like me.

At the same time, you can record yourself and your screen easily. I know what you are thinking; the main problem is that you don’t want to show your face in front of your audience. That’s ok! Neither do I.

There are millions of videos on YouTube without faces, and they perform very well.

The truth is people are looking for information, not for a beautiful face! You have delivered the message to your audience, so you don’t need to worry about them; they are happy.

Again – No Faces!

So, do not worry about your face, you don’t have to do this. Also, don’t try to make it perfect, like you’re in a production studio. YouTube affiliate marketing is about the content, not the design.

Again, people don’t care. They are looking for answers and information.

You will probably need a PowerPoint or Keynote if you are going to do a presentation video style.

Camtasia now is integrated with PowerPoint, so you can easily convert your presentation to a video.

Having hesitation is expected when you are shooting your first video. But you have to clear your mind that you are uncertain; your video will be bad. It’s as easy as reading this post.?

Creating a YouTube Channel The Right Way

Ok! I know what you are thinking! Uploading videos on YouTube is not rocket science because this is very easy.

Yes!

But creating a good channel that is the foundation of your business might be a different thing!

You are reading this post which means I don’t need to tell you that the YouTube channel requires a Gmail account.

1- Create a YouTube/Google account

Here is a quick video just to make sure you have this basic foundation before we move forward.

2- Create a Brand Account for your YouTube channel

You will need to create a business channel, aka a Brand Account. This will allow you in the future to have people manage or help you manage your channel.

Follow the steps below to create a brand name:

Sign in to your YouTube account
Go to your channel list
Create a new channel
Enter your Brand Account name (think of a good one)

That’s it! Now you have a Brand Account channel.

Let’s make it pretty now, shall we?

Go to the Customize Channel.

You need to design a channel art and channel icon.

YouTube Channel Art

The recommendation of the YouTube channel is your cover photo will be 2560 x 1440px, and the file size will be 6MB (maximum).

My advice is to just go to Fiverr and hire someone for $5-10 to do it for you.

Do not spend much time or money here. You are willing to change; you can do it easily later on.

YouTube Channel Icon

Your channel icon and your Google account icon are the same; YouTube likes this.

Go to Google About Me to change your profile photo, which will be reflected also as a channel icon.

It’s easy, but you can take help from someone who knows all these steps better than you.

Go to the About section and fill in the information to complete the next step.

Once your account complies with the following requirements, you will need to have a custom URL for your channel.

Something like youtube.com/ChannelName

Have 100 or more subscribers
Be at least 30 days old
Have an uploaded photo as a channel icon
Have uploaded the channel’s art
To see the full steps, visit the Google Support Page.

Upload & Optimize Videos to YouTube Channel

To make sure your efforts pay off, you have to do something that sounds like a pro. We don’t want to just upload videos and get buried like millions of others.

So let’s do this the right way.

Upload videos

To upload a video to your channel, just visit any YouTube page and click on the Upload video icon on the top right.

Then, upload or drag your video here.

Title, description, and tags are mandatory before hitting the publish button.

YouTube algorithm uses so many factors to rank your video. When starting out, your focus must be the following in order:

Title;
Description;
Thumbnail – Click-Through-Rate (CTR); and
Tags

The title and description are limited to 100 (optimal length is 70 characters) and 5000 characters.

Therefore, I recommend using the free service WordCounter to know exactly how many words you are writing before adding them to YouTube.

Title

You have already seen up to 100 characters are allowed in the YouTube video title. However, I recommend having something between 40-70 Max.

Otherwise, for a mobile user, these are giant characters.

Let’s say you are uploading a video about making a vegan dinner.

The best way to get a good title is by going to the Tags section and typing in your keywords “vegan dinner” or how to + your keyword. Then, VidIQ will recommend good keywords for you.

or…

It will be better to pick a title from the suggestion when facing confusion. For instance, How to cook a vegan burger.

Pro tip: add (step by step) to your YouTube affiliate marketing video will increase your CTR drastically, also the year is a Pro+ tip!

So your end title can be something like How to cook a vegan burger (step by step) in 2024.

Description

You got the title right. Good job! Now you need to work on the description. You have up to 5,000 characters, and I advise using all of them.

This is money. This is where you will include your affiliate links.

If you’re not much of a writer, again just throw in $5-10 on Fiverr to hire someone to write it for you.

Keywords will give the fuel for your engine, but what should you do when you don’t know the right one. You should use a different one from VidlQ in the description too.

For example, put the keywords of your title “vegan burger” in the tags again and see whatever comes up.

Use 2-3 of the suggested keywords in your description. Just send these keywords to your Fiverr gig, and they’ll include them in your description.

Pro tip: Using the keywords in the first couple of lines of the description will boost your rank.

You see that YouTube already shows a couple of lines of the video description in the search result, so it is crucial to have good keywords in these lines!

Thumbnail (CTR)

The more people who click on your video, the higher the YouTube algorithm pushes you to the top of the search results.

Usually, YouTube suggests having 3 automatic thumbnails from any uploaded video.

Here is my recommendation: Do not follow this suggestion – it is usually useless.

You need to design one!

Don’t just use a screenshot from the video!

As repeatedly suggested, if you don’t know how to do that, just buy a $5 Fiverr gig.

You need something catchy and must-have text.

Understanding & Getting Traffic To Your YouTube Videos

If you have done all the previous steps as suggested, you should see some traffic already. You are on the right track for YouTube affiliate marketing.

There are various ways of getting YouTube traffic; however, the major ones are:

Browse feature
YouTube Search
Suggested Videos
Channel Page
External

1. Browse the feature

You will get this traffic from the homepage/home, subscription feed, and other browsing features. No matter if someone is currently signed in or signed out.

If you are just starting out, you probably won’t get any traffic from this section.

Once you reach 1,000 subscribers or more, YouTube will automatically encourage users to browse your channel and land them on different sections of your channel to help you get traffic.

So I would not worry about this now as I am assuming you are just starting your channel.

2. YouTube Search

This is traffic from search results on YouTube. You can also see the search terms used by viewers if provided by the user’s browser/player.

Shortly, this is SEO for your video.

3. Suggested Videos

This will probably be your biggest traffic source when you are starting out.

All of this traffic will come from YouTube’s suggestions. The more YT suggests your video to a new user, the more you will get views.

On the different devices, you will see them in another place. If you are using a desktop/laptop, you will see it on the right side, and for mobile, you will see it below the comments.

4. Channel Page

The video is finished, and you will see a new video open up, most of the time, people click on it; this is the traffic you will get as a Channel page.

This includes traffic you may receive from another creator sharing a video from your channel on their Community tab.

5. External

This is the traffic from outside Youtube, probably other social networks, or Google searches. Hence, the name!

You can read more about this YouTube traffic source on Google. But never go for sudden overall YouTube growth.

Conclusion

I tried to make this post as comprehensive as possible yet easy to follow. If you think I missed an important step about YouTube affiliate marketing, please let me know in the comment below ??

If you like the post, let me know what topic you would like me to cover.

Finally, put your email address here so that I can let you know when I publish my new piece.

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