As an affiliate marketer, your goal is to influence people to buy products, and you get some money in return. YouTube is a good platform for that. Currently, YouTube is the second most popular social media site in the world, and by 2025 it is estimated to have around one billion users worldwide. The social media platform isn’t just for entertainment, either—viewers go to their favorite YouTube channels to learn skills, review articles, and make purchasing decisions.
What Is YouTube Affiliate Marketing?
YouTube affiliate marketing is a marketing strategy where you use YouTube videos to engage with your target audience, sell products or services, and earn commissions. Like any other affiliate marketing program, the goal is to make sales so you can make money from those sales. As an affiliate marketing partner, you create videos that showcase content on your YouTube channel, and then tag them. Branded products can be affiliate links, with commission rates varying between brand and seller. YouTube affiliate links to featured content often appear in the video description.
Benefits of using YouTube for affiliate marketing
There are many advantages for affiliates when participating in YouTube affiliate marketing:
- As the most shared form of content, video can create a highly engaged audience.
- Using videos to monetize your channel through affiliate marketing is one way to generate passive income.
- SEO optimization of your videos can increase your visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) and increase your traffic.
- Engaging YouTube product videos offer the potential to drive higher conversion rates in affiliate links compared to traditional content.
- It can help create lucrative markets. About 68% of users watched a YouTube video when making a purchase decision. Affiliate links help YouTube users interact with content featured in articles such as how-to videos.
How to start an affiliate marketing business on YouTube?
To get started as an affiliate marketer on YouTube, all you need to do is join affiliate programs through your favorite brands and you can add affiliate links to your YouTube video descriptions and get paid when your audiences have been inspired to buy from your video. As you grow your business, you can unlock new sources of income through the YouTube Shopping affiliate program. To be invited to participate in this YouTube affiliate marketing program, you need to take a few basic steps, including the following:
- Reach at least 20,000 customers.
- Have you joined the YouTube Partner Program (YPP) which includes a lower subscriber limit than the affiliate program?
- You confirm that you are in the United States.
- Review and adhere to YouTube’s Community Guidelines, which outline the platform’s content rules.
- Perform channel analysis to ensure compliance with YouTube’s monetization policies.
Affiliate video ideas to try on YouTube
For many creators, the hardest part about starting affiliate content is packaging sponsored recommendations in a way that their audience engages in. Finally, nearly 29% of users say they won’t be an influencer after they get bored with their shared content. Another 14% would if the creator posted more sponsored content. Here are five popular types of content to try when promoting affiliate content on YouTube:
1. Viral videos
YouTube communities create their own trends, such as “What’s in my bag?” The craze that dominated the early 2010s, and which resurfaces from time to time among content creators. See what’s happening on the platform and create your own spin offs—with related recommended content.
2. Unboxed videos
This type of video is popular on YouTube, as viewers can be part of the unboxing experience. For example, Estella from Study to Success unboxes tech stuff on her YouTube channel. The video description includes affiliate links that will allow viewers to buy those products and others featured in the content. More than 90,000 people search for unboxing videos on YouTube every month—and it’s a great way to start YouTube affiliate marketing.
3. Tutorials
People watching a tutorial have more in the sales process than a casual viewer of a live video. Recruit them—and commit to their purchase—by going over how they’ll use the product. For example, if you are connected with an ergonomic desk chair, record yourself changing the height, slope, symmetry and legroom of the chair.
4. Aggregate videos
The more conversions you have in your YouTube content, the more you’ll impact sales—especially if the viewer isn’t actively looking for something to buy. In fact, 89% of people say they were convinced they would make a purchase after watching the video. Encourage quick purchases with rounded videos like “Monthly Favorites” that include links to related products.
5. Product videos
About nine out of 10 consumers read reviews before buying. Use that knowledge to create empirical videos and engage students visually. Explain the positives (and negatives) of the product you are encouraged to promote. Make it believable and earn commission when viewers are ready to buy.
Read Also: Best Make Up Affiliate Programs | Best Education Affiliate Programs
7 Best Marketing Tips for YouTube Affiliate Marketing
Ready to take advantage of the millions of dollars consumers spend on YouTube every year? Here are seven pro YouTube tips to help you generate more affiliate sales:
1. Use attractive thumbnails
If no one sees them, it may be difficult to make money from affiliate commissions for your YouTube videos. The thumbnail—the image shown before the video plays—is critical to keeping viewers engaged. Do some research and watch short films (both long and short videos) vying for your audience’s attention. Tools like Canva and Fotor have high-quality YouTube thumbnail templates for creating your own images, though some affiliate marketers find investing in an artist worthwhile.
2. Add head marks
Ever click on a YouTube video to figure out how to solve a problem, only to spend 15 minutes playing something from the manufacturer and talking about something you don’t like? People come to your YouTube videos looking for short answers. Help them use chapter markers, which are timestamps that mark parts of your video content.
3. Optimize for YouTube Search
YouTube is one of the biggest search engines. People use the site to learn something new, have fun, or research products they are concerned about buying. That could be great news for affiliate marketers. Find out what keywords your target audience is searching for and create YouTube videos that meet their needs.
4. Create affiliate playlists
As an affiliate marketer, the more people watch your video, the more likely you are to earn affiliate commissions. YouTube’s playlist feature helps you catch up by bundling similar videos into a never-ending video reel.
5. Create YouTube Shorts
YouTube Shorts is a feature that allows developers to upload short TikTok-like videos to their channel. The video must be still, recorded on a mobile device, and under 60 seconds.
6. Incorporate YouTube videos into blog content
Starting a YouTube channel and blog are powerful ways to market your brand and spread the word about your affiliate links—even more so when used in conjunction, The advantages of these tools include:
(a) Appeal to different audiences
Your target market may have different learning styles. Some enjoy reading blog posts; others are more interested in videos. Combine the two to avoid alienating people who buy your recommendation.
(b) Increase video views
Show your affiliate videos to people looking for recommendations outside of the YouTube realm. For certain keywords, Google’s algorithm pulls YouTube videos to appear in Google search results.
(c) Improve SEO
Time on page, bounce rate and other e-commerce analytics are all metrics that search engine algorithms consider when determining where a page should rank. Increase results by embedding relevant videos on your website.
7. Be transparent about affiliate links
It doesn’t matter what types of content you share with affiliate links—any product you encourage sharing should be clearly labeled. Failure to do so may cause your audience to lose confidence in your promotion.
YouTube Partner Services vs. YouTube Affiliate Services
Can you do both affiliate marketing and YouTube Partner Program at the same time? Exactly! However, these are two different ways to make money, and let’s look at their differences. The YouTube Partner Program (YPP) allows you to monetize your content and earn rewards directly through YouTube. With YouTube making millions of dollars daily, high-end content creators can get discounts on advertising and generate revenue for subscribers through their video program. We are not going to lie; unless you have an established channel, it’s very difficult to get accepted into YPP. Here are the high YPPs required:
• 1,000 customers with at least 4,000 hours of qualifying public viewing in the last 12 months.
• 1,000 subscribers who have viewed at least 10 million eligible public short films in the last 90 days.
But affiliate marketing programs are an easy way to get started! Each program has its own requirements, though unlike YPP, most affiliate programs have no client or hourly minimums, making them extremely flexible for content creators. Start affiliate marketing on YouTube, and once you meet YPP’s requirements, you can join and earn more money from your videos every month.
Engaging affiliate content is trustworthy for Youtube
Maintaining transparency, authenticity and integrity is essential to a successful YouTube social marketing strategy. As an affiliate marketer, you have a responsibility to be honest with your audience in order to earn their trust. Anything out of sight can erode that trust and hurt your reputation and the publicity of your association. Here are some ways to be transparent and credible in your YouTube affiliate marketing:
1. Full Disclosure Policy
Not only is it OK to be open about your affiliate marketing, it’s also the law. Always reveal your social relationship to viewers. Failing to do this can also damage trust and could get you in trouble with the FTC (Federal Trade Commission). Just mention that you can earn a commission if they make a purchase through your links in your YouTube description. Honesty is always the best policy.
2. Be Objective & Unbiased
When evaluating related products or services, especially in the context of video reviews, you always want to try to be as unbiased, objective and unbiased as possible. Saying “this is the best product” or “this product is really flawless” isn’t going to help you get more business if it’s not as great as you say it is. Being overtly biased in your videos can actually turn people off of the product or service altogether. When you are clear about any potential limitations, your audience appreciates it.
Read Also: Affiliate Marketing Courses | Best Finance Affiliate Programs
Choosing the right Youtube affiliate programs
So how do you find the best companies to work with for your YouTube affiliate marketing journey? Let’s take a look at the top factors to consider when choosing the right YouTube affiliate programs:
1. Audience Relevance
Know your audience, double their interests! Match your YouTube affiliate marketing with brands and products that really resonate with your followers.
2. Reputation & trustworthiness
You don’t want to fall back on a scam. Do your research first and treat employees with admirable missions well and respect your customers.
3. Commission Structure
Affiliate marketing can take a lot of time and effort. Of course, you don’t just want corn in return for all your hard work. Check the program’s commission rate and find a competitive salary that makes your efforts worthwhile.
4. Cookie Duration
Affiliate links use “cookies” (information that websites send to browsers) to track your referrals. Each affiliate program gets to set their own cookie duration, and they’re usually based on how long people have to think about it before buying. Expensive, long-term sales cycle items will last longer, and there are usually fewer easy quick purchases, although even some quick do-it-yourself items will yield a tall cookie excellent kindness for YouTube affiliate marketing though!
5. Creative Promotion
Optimizing your affiliate links can be difficult without any help. But affiliate brands want you to win, so most have a lot of promotions available from partners to create awesome content. This can include promotions, widgets, interaction guides, brand assets, and more.
6. Payment Methods
Finally, remember that many affiliate programs use different payment methods. Some offer affiliate options (PayPal, wire transfers, checks in the mail), while others are more limited. Be sure to choose affiliate programs with payment methods that best suit you — after all; you don’t want to leave money on the table because you can’t get paid!
Read Also: Best Health Affiliate Programs | Best Electronics Affiliate Programs
How to create engaging affiliate content for YouTube?
Creating content that not only attracts your viewers, but also converts them into customers is the ultimate success metric for affiliate marketing on YouTube. Here are some tips for creating the most engaging affiliate content for YouTube:
1. Be an Expert
Become an expert in the product or service you are promoting! That means gaining a deeper understanding of how the product works, the pain points it fixes, and the benefits of using it. In order for them to trust your proposal, they really need to believe that you know what you’re talking about.
2. Take an Educational Approach
Effective YouTube affiliate content is educational – your viewers should walk away learning something new. Tutorials, how-to guides, and in-depth research are good plans for this.
3. Include a Call to Action (CTA)
A CTA is an inspiration to generate action, and you need to include CTAs in your video layout, story, and YouTube video description. Finish each video with a strong CTA about what you need to do at the end – start a trial, buy this system, contact sales, or any action that will get you into your revenue-generating conversion activity.
4. Visual appeal
Quality content can increase the perceived value of your affiliates and make your content more appealing. This Halo effect influences how people feel about a product – the more attractive, the better. Be sure to use plenty of light, identify which editing software works best, and strive for clean audio.
5. Prove it
Be honest and truthful in your information. People are too crowded with ads to see them a mile away. It’s more important than ever to be authentic about your progress – why are you interested in this product, what’s your personal experience, and what are the pros and cons?
6. Show benefits
Highlight the benefits and unique selling points of the product or service you are promoting. Explain how it can improve the caregiver’s life or solve their problems.
7. Use social proof
Share user testimonials, case studies, or personal success stories about an inclusive product. Social proof can have a huge impact on your viewers’ purchasing decisions, especially if they’re on the fence. If other people find a product/service useful, viewers will be less suspicious about their purchase.
8. Connect with the audience
You don’t want to be just another talking head. Being truly interactive and accessible to your audience is important – chatting with customers, answering questions in comments, making them feel part of a fun and supportive community. Let them know you are a real person who knows them.
