There’s no question that a good portion of the internet’s attention ends up squarely at YouTube.
There are over 2 billion users according to Google. At least half of those users are consistently active. That means billions of hours of videos watched every single month. If you consider YouTube a search engine, it’s the second largest search engine in the world.
That means it is only right behind Google itself. That’s impressive! That much traffic means plenty of opportunity. YouTube affiliate marketing is one way to harness traffic not only to build brand awareness but to make money through the traffic to your videos.
There are a few options you have when it comes to making money through YouTube via affiliate marketing. You need to learn the right way to go about it to see the most success.
What Is YouTube Affiliate Marketing?
One of the first things to understand is that making affiliate money on YouTube is not the same as YouTube ads. Those are two completely different methods for making money via online videos.
Using affiliate marketing involves the use of special links in the description or even in the video itself to drive sales you make a commission off of. There are many different strategies to make your videos more effective.
Generally, there will be two major strategies that most affiliate marketers use when working to make money from YouTube:
- Push visitors to click on an affiliate link in the description of the video
- Drive traffic to a website where a better affiliate funnel can be created
These are the two major methods for marketing with video content. There are many marketers who will use both methods quite effectively. We’re going to look at both strategies here so you have options on how to get started as a YouTube affiliate marketer.
Using YouTube can be a great way to leverage the power of their platform. They are a potentially massive traffic source that will bring many more opportunities for your affiliate links to actually earn for you.
Monetizing YouTube with Affiliate Marketing
Actually monetizing your videos is pretty easy. The moment you have a YouTube account set up you can upload a video and drop a link in the description. It’s that easy. This doesn’t mean you should spam videos.
Those videos still need to get attention and they need to be good enough to convince a viewer that you are a trustworthy source to buy from. After all, if you don’t convert any of the visits into sales then all the traffic in the world isn’t going to do you much good.
Affiliate marketing on YouTube requires the promotion of a product or service using great video content. If people like what they see, they might just buy. It is easy to get started, but that doesn’t mean it is simple!
