How to Monetize Your YouTube Videos Through Affiliate Marketing

In this complete guide, you will learn how to monetize your Youtube channel through affiliate marketing. Also, you’ll discover how to use your YouTube channel to make more money from affiliate marketing.

Some YouTubers generate over $20000 monthly by promoting the products from Amazon.com through the Amazon Associates affiliate program on Youtube videos. Sounds unbelievable?  Check the video below to see the actual figures:

Want to replicate Tom’s success? Well, it’s time to start learning. Let’s start with the fundamentals on how to monetize your Youtube channel and then transition to various types of videos to create more sales.

#1. Youtube Stats You Should Know

Whether you know it or not, YouTube is the second biggest search engine after Google.

According to VeedYou, over 2 billion people use YouTube. That’s about 1/3rd of the internet.

Video is the future of the Internet. By 2021, video traffic will make up 82% of all traffic.

Even now, it influences everyone’s lives, from baby boomers to Gen Z.

Those are staggering stats, right?

That’s why a video marketing platform like YouTube is essential to growing your affiliate sales.

So let’s get into the details.

Are you starting a new YouTube channel? Want to make more affiliate sales from your YouTube channel?

Here are some of the essential things you need to know on how to monetize your Youtube channel.

#2. Focus on a niche only

Narrow down your YouTube channel’s focus on ONE niche – ideally one that isn’t too crowded!

I’m sure that you’re good at many things. Maybe you know how to sell online or outsource work or do affiliate marketing, and SEO, or perhaps you are passionate about mobile phones or cars.

However, you should not create a YouTube channel sharing all of the skills. Instead, create a channel for your blog by focusing on just one topic. In our case is SEO.

Although I run interviews with other bloggers and talk about building a profitable blog, my YouTube channel’s primary focus is SEO.

That’s what I’m good at!

Make sure to find your strengths and research a lot to create a YouTube channel in one niche (with less competition).  That being said, here are some quick yet practical tips for finding your niche on YouTube.

Choose a general topic and find an area within that category for you to focus on (focus on ONE niche). For example, “WordPress” is a general topic, and “WordPress hosting deals” can be a niche.

You should be able to describe your channel in one sentence. For example, “Your one-stop channel for WordPress hosting deals.”

Decide one thing you’ll do differently than other channels. For example, offering 10% exclusive discounts on any hosting deal you promote.

Always be consistent with your content. Consistency is the key.

Finally, you should let others know why you’re unique and why they should subscribe to your YouTube channel.

#3. Network with small content creators on YouTube

You can grow your YouTube subscribers tenfold if you’re featured on an authority YouTube channel that has a considerable following.

But when you’re launching a new channel, it’s almost impossible to get featured on more prominent YouTube channels in your niche (unless you have prior connections with the channel creators).

But here’s good news: you don’t always need help from the big players. You can network with other small content creators on YouTube to grow your subscribers, views, and following on YouTube.

Who are small content creators?

You can use Facebook groups or blogging forums to find small content creators on YouTube so you can help each other out.

#4. How to Monetize your Youtube channel with Affiliate marketing

Content marketing is the WAY to go. If you want to generate more sales from platforms like YouTube, you need to create highly informative content.  You’re on the right track if you are already making great videos on your YouTube channel.

But what if you do NOT see any results, such as an increase in traffic or sales from your video marketing efforts?

It can be frustrating, right?  If you’re already putting so much time and money into content creation, why aren’t you getting any affiliate sales?

4.1 What can be the issue?

I can tell you that you don’t have a proper content strategy for YouTube.  If you’re creating videos randomly without having any goal or focus, you won’t see any sales (you may be getting more views, subscribers, and comments, though).

Make sure to create the RIGHT type of videos for your audience to grow your affiliate product sales.

Here are some of the content types that help you generate more affiliate sales from YouTube.

4.2 In-Depth Product Video Reviews

Video product reviews always work like a charm. If you want to increase your conversions, you should consider creating in-depth and highly informative video reviews around the products you love.

For instance, when you search for “Bluehost review” on YouTube, you’ll see there are plenty of long-duration videos ranking on top of YouTube search results.

Have a look;

Almost every single video review tutorial you see above includes affiliate links (either within the video or in the description or call to action). 

So yes, if you can create detailed video product reviews and rank for those keyword terms on YouTube search, you’re guaranteed to generate some decent sales for your affiliate products.

4.3 How-to-Use Video Tutorials

As you can see, I promoted SEMrush by creating informative content around keyword research. So I’m not creating a video just to promote an affiliate product. I’m creating informative How-to use video tutorials.

You should create such videos, too, if you want to boost your affiliate product sales. Just make sure they are highly informative.

4.4 Similar Product Comparison Videos

There are always a ton of similar products in every niche. You should find and compare similar products in your industry and make videos explaining the benefits, pros, cons, pricing, etc.

Let your audience decide which product is right for them. People usually search A LOT for product comparisons. The best part is, that you can include affiliate links to all the products you’re going to compare within your videos. Just be honest while doing such product comparison videos.

Here’s an example.

Have a look at the YouTube search results when we search for a product comparison keyword phrase like “Mailchimp vs. Convertkit.”

Again, you see there are plenty of video results that include the main search term in their headlines and also are detailed videos showing up on top of YouTube search results (typically above 5 minutes and more)

4.5 Where Can you Get Affiliate Links?

Yeah. And it’s not just Amazon. Almost every brand or company has some affiliate program, so Walmart, Target, and Best Buy. The list goes on and on and on, and they all have affiliate programs. So you can make money when your viewers click on your link.

4.6 How Do You Find Those Opportunities?

Amazon is a massive one. Check our complete guide on how to monetize your website using Amazon Associates.  It’s an easy one that a lot of people like to use. So I would start with Amazon if you’re new to affiliate links.

The other places I would check would be CJ.com, LinkShare.com, ShareASale.com, and ImpactRadius.com. They’re like the affiliate networks or the houses that house all the different brands inside.

Once you get approved for their service, you can just start applying to all those different ones.

4.7 How Do You Integrate Affiliates Naturally into a YouTube Video?

If you’re reviewing a specific product, I will link to that product so your viewers can purchase that product as well, especially if it’s something you love.

That’s probably the easiest way to integrate affiliate links. And it’s also a great way to monetize any video that’s not sponsored.

So any time you have favorite things or your favorite products or reviews, you can throw in an affiliate link to help people know where to find the product you’re talking about.

4.8 What about Legal Disclaimers and Those Types of Things?

Have you had to do that? How does that work?

Yes. Well, it’s a smart idea to put somewhere in your description that you might be using affiliate links, kind of like your FDC disclosure, but it’s kind of like an affiliate link disclosure.

Even though YouTube hasn’t come out saying you need to do that. You should just be super, super safe.

And it builds trust with your viewers.

#5. Outsource as much as you can!

When it comes to building a successful YouTube channel from scratch, there’s ONE frustrating thing: there are so many pieces to connect.

As you can see, there are way too many tasks involved in creating ONE video on YouTube.  So if you are doing it alone, it will take forever. My best advice is to outsource as much as you can.

Take my case; for example, I just create content for my YouTube channel (be it interviewing other bloggers or creating tutorials around my favorite tools).

I outsource everything else, including video editing to uploading, adding music, annotations, etc. It saves so much time, so I can focus my energy on creating more good videos for my YouTube subscribers.

So find someone to manage all those time-consuming tasks, and it’s worth every penny.

#6. Video Content Creation Strategies to Sell More

You need a video content creation strategy to sell more products, get more subscribers, and increase your YouTube traffic.

Here are some intelligent yet straightforward ways to do that:

• It doesn’t matter what niche you are in; make sure to create an intro video for your YouTube channel.
• It should ideally be about 3 minutes or less where you can summarise things like;

6.1 Create an intro video

It doesn’t matter what niche you are in; make sure to create an intro video for your YouTube channel.

It should ideally be about 3 minutes or less where you can summarise things like:

• What your YouTube channel is all about
• Why people should subscribe to your channel
• How often you’ll be posting and so on

6.2 Create informational videos

Instead of pitching random affiliate products to your audience on YouTube, pick a product that fits your target audience’s needs.  Then, create lots of informative videos around that one particular product.

Most people don’t do this thing. They often create one or two videos around a product, wait for the results, and start producing new videos on some other products if they don’t get any sales.

You’re doing it wrong. Focus on promoting one video at a time on YouTube. Create highly educational content around it. Talk about how one can use the product, features, benefits, pricing, similar alternatives, etc.

That’s how your audience will know what your product is all about. That’s when you should start pitching that product to your audience (if possible, with special deals or discounts).

Now you know how you can grow your affiliate sales from YouTube.

6.3 Optimize your videos for higher conversions

Set at least one goal for each video. No matter what type of videos you create, you should have one goal to achieve with each video.

Ask yourself:

• Do I need more subscribers to this video?
• Am I looking to get more traffic to my blog from this video?
• Do I need to generate some sales using this video?

Then, depending on your goals, you need to include a clear call to action on your videos (at the beginning or end or anywhere you want).

Here’s how a call to action looks like;

As you can see, Backlinko uses several calls to action at the end of their videos, which mostly include;

• Subscribe button overlay
• Their recent or similar videos to watch next

Similarly, you can either send people to your product landing pages or website or simply provide links to freebies (such as eBooks) to generate more conversions.

6.4 Track your video performance

Last but not least, you should track the performance of every single video on your channel.  Only then, you’ll know what type of videos are going viral or getting attention (so you can create more of such videos in the future).

So how can you track your video performance?

You can simply use YouTube Analytics and Google Analytics to track your video performance and analyze your total video views, traffic sources, total watch time, etc.

#7. How to Rank Your Videos On Google And YouTube?

It doesn’t matter how informative your videos are; if they are not ranking on top of YouTube search results, you’ll not get any views.

So you should learn SEO basics to rank higher. Here is an excellent video by Backlinko (Brian Dean) on starting and growing a Youtube Channel this year.

Here are some essential yet powerful strategies to rank your videos on both YouTube and Google.

7.1 How to do Keyword Research for Youtube

Keyword research is the #1 factor that decides where your videos rank. If you ignore this one thing, you’ll find it extremely difficult to rank your videos and get more views on your YouTube videos.

The key to YouTube keyword research is just like in SEO: find low competitive keywords.  You can use keyword research tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, KWFinder, etc. You can also use the YouTube search for keyword ideas.

For instance, when you start typing “affiliate marketing” on the YouTube search box, it will instantly begin showing you related keyword ideas.

Have a look:

As you can see, these are the EXACT keyword phrases that people type into YouTube.  So yes, it’s always a smart idea to start optimizing your videos around those keyword terms.

You can repeat the process until you come up with a list of 10 to 20 keyword ideas for your YouTube channel. Once you have the list, you can use any keyword research tool to find low-competition keywords.  Just make sure to pick those keyword ideas with fewer searches (1000 searches or below).

Here is how you can use Ahrefs Keyword Explorer to do keyword research using Youtube as a keyword source.

That being said, here’s how you can use a free keyword research tool like KeywordTool.io to begin your YouTube keyword research.

7.2 How to do Keyword Research using KeywordTool.io

Step 1: Visit the KeywordTool.io YouTube keyword tool and enter any keyword of your choice.

As you can see, we’re taking an example keyword “learn SEO”, and you can choose the database of your choice where your target audience is (we picked the US database).

Step 2: Once you hit enter, it will instantly show you a massive list of keyword suggestions.

As you can see, with the free version of the tool, you’ll only get keyword suggestions.  But for most beginners, their free version is enough as you need more keyword ideas to optimize your videos on YouTube to get more views.

Step 3: Dig into more keyword ideas.

The best part about using KeywordTool.io is that it helps you with so many keyword suggestions as you can use their “Questions” tab to find “Question-based keywords.”

Question-based keywords can be beneficial as beginners across all industries mostly use them to get “informative content” on YouTube search results.

You can also click on the “Hashtags” tab to find a ton of useful tags that you can insert within your YouTube videos for better search visibility.

So there you go! That’s how you can use free tools like KeywordTool.io to easily come up with a ton of keyword suggestions and topic ideas to increase your YouTube views.

7.3 Identify and use your competitors to your advantage

Do you know who your competitors are?

If not yet, you should create a list of 10 to 20 competitors along with their YouTube channels. Make sure all your competitors belong to the same niche you are in.

Once you have the list, visit each YouTube channel.

Here’s what to do next:

• Visit any of your competitors’ YouTube channels. For instance, let’s take the example of Ahrefs YouTube channel (which has many great resources around SEO).
• Go to their “Videos” section and filter the “Most Popular.” As you can see, you’ll instantly discover all their most popular videos on their channel (based on the video views).
• Now that you have a list of many popular video ideas that you can consider creating content around!
• Find out how they optimized their popular videos.

Let’s take an example of one of the popular Ahrefs videos on YouTube to see how they optimized their video.

Let’s click on the “SEO for Beginners” video.

As you can see, on YouTube search results, Ahrefs is ranking #1 for the keyword term “SEO for beginners,” which is fantastic.

If you visit that video, you’ll also find that they’ve correctly optimized that video by including it in their description, pinned comment, and title.

There you go!

That’s how you can use your competitors’ to your advantage: find their popular videos, create video tutorials around those topics, and adequately optimize.

#8. Learn how to optimize your videos properly

Video optimization is the key to ranking on top of YouTube search results.

But here’s the thing: don’t just optimize for YouTube.

8.1 Don’t optimize just for Youtube

Find those keywords that you can use to optimize your videos, which already have video results in Google.

Let me help you understand it by giving you an example.

Let’s search for a keyword term like “video editing tips” on Google. Here’s what we get;

As you can see, Google is showing us video recommendations from YouTube. That means those video recommendations are getting more views from Google search (apart from YouTube).

That’s awesome, right?

You’re getting more video views from BOTH YouTube and Google search results.  That’s why you should focus on optimizing videos around keyword terms that already have video results in Google.

That’s how you generate more video views on YouTube.

So how do you find those incredible keywords?

The key here is to find keywords around:

• Tutorials (example, “SEO tutorial for beginners”)
• Reviews (example, “Top SEO tools compared”)
• How-to’s (example, “How to use SEMrush for keyword research”)

Are you getting me? Google tends to show video results for the above type of keywords.

Apart from the above technique, make sure to learn the basic optimization of your YouTube videos.

8.2 Improve your user engagement

Like most other popular social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, etc., the more users who engage with your content, the more YouTube prioritizes it.

That means user engagement is the key to reaching more people with your videos.

8.3 Audience retention

Audience retention is another critical metric to rank your videos higher. Audience Retention is simply the amount of your video that people watch.

If your video keeps people on YouTube, YouTube will rank your video higher in the search results. If they don’t, your video rankings will go down. It’s as simple as that.

8.4 Video length

One can’t say video length matters or not in improving your YouTube video rankings, but there are several metrics YouTube algorithms take into consideration, which include;

• Number of seconds viewed
• Comments
• Likes
• Social shares

You can tick all the above boxes by creating highly USEFUL, entertaining, or longer videos on YouTube.

Although YouTube doesn’t give any guidelines as to what an optimal video length is.

But from my experience, I suggest you make your videos at least 3 minutes long, for two main reasons:

• The more minutes you can keep a user on your video, the higher it will rank (that’s how Audience Retention works).
• People who are looking for informative videos prefer watching longer videos over shorter videos (1 minute or less)

Conclusion on How To Monetize your Youtube channel

So, that‘s all, folks. This is all that you need to know to create a successful YouTube channel and monetize your Youtube channel using affiliate marketing.  Create many videos and build that loyal audience, which will help you pay your bills for years to come if you treat it well and succeed.

Also, it would help if you did not stop only affiliate marketing for Youtube monetization. Several monetization methods for your blog work great for Youtube as well: creating an online course, asking for sponsorships, selling ebooks, and offering paid consultations. Just try which one works best for you.

Questions? Let me know in the comments form below.