How to do Affiliate Marketing with Youtube – A 2021 Guide

If you are wondering how to do affiliate marketing with Youtube, then this post will give you a complete step-by-step guide to starting and building a real online affiliate marketing business with Youtube.

Videos are one of the best and easiest ways of driving FREE traffic. Do you agree?

I started off with videos and videos have been my first love when it comes to content generation. In fact, my first affiliate marketing strategy had video at its center point.

I used the launch-jacking strategy (more about this strategy in my next post), and combined it with Youtube videos to make money.

It wasn’t difficult to rank these videos on Youtube and consequently on Google and this would drive a lot of traffic to these videos.

The system worked and works even until today though not as effective as it used to be. I haven’t made a video in some time now. Still, some of those old videos make me a passive income even today.

This is in spite of the fact that they are no more ranking on Google or, on Youtube’s first page. Traffic still trickles into those videos and I also see purchases happening on those product recommendations.

So the question is – is this strategy effective today?

It still works. At least a quick search on Youtube proves that it indeed works.

Here are the results from Youtube’s 1st page for a search for a newly launched product – “7-day digital landlord”.

Out of those search results at least 3 of them belong to people that I know are making good money with affiliate marketing.

Though the number of views isn’t great, this is absolutely free traffic being generated to your video. Even if 10% of them click through and buy the product, that’s passive income.

And considering that these established affiliate marketers are continuing to make these kinds of videos, it proves that the strategy still works.

So in this post, I am going to tell you more about this strategy of doing affiliate marketing with Youtube and a nifty tweak to this strategy that can make it more effective. I will also show you 3 other strategies that can help you make money with affiliate marketing using Youtube.

How to do affiliate marketing with Youtube?

One of the biggest problems people face with affiliate marketing is, generating traffic. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) can take a lot of time and paid Ads are something that you might not prefer when you are just starting up.

In such a situation, how do you generate traffic to your content and generate sales?

The answer is “Youtube”.

Affiliate marketing with Youtube isn’t very difficult (note that I used the term “very”, meaning there is some amount of difficulty for sure, even with Youtube).

While there are no shortcuts to success even on Youtube, there are some very simple, tried and tested strategies that can help you get started very fast on Youtube.

The 3 strategies that I explain below are all personally tested by me. But before I get onto those strategies, I would like to put across a few disclaimers –

• In affiliate marketing, you have 2 options of linking to the product using your affiliate link – direct linking and indirect linking using a bridge page (I will explain this in detail). The 2nd option is a long term strategy and a sustainable model but requires expenses like an autoresponder etc.
• Youtube and all other types of content marketing requires being consistent. If you do not post regularly, your blog/channel will not grow as required. So, be ready to create content and that too regularly if you are in it for the long term.
• You will need to spend some time setting up your channel, adding a channel art etc. I will not be covering these aspects in this post. There are a lot of videos on Youtube that can help you do this.

Linking and Promoting Your Affiliate products

I spoke about 2 different methods of linking to the product using your affiliate link. Let us look at how these 2 methods work.

Direct linking –

Direct linking as the term suggests, is directly linking to the merchant’s webpage using your affiliate link. This is the easiest method of promoting an affiliate product.

You get your affiliate link for the product you are promoting and link to it from the content you are promoting. It’s that simple.

What direct linking does is, that the visitors coming to your Youtube video or, blog post clicks on the links and is directly taken to the merchant’s page (product page). There they may decide to buy the product or, browse away depending upon how they respond to the pitch on the sales page.

There are a few disadvantages to this method –

• Once the visitor clicks on the link and browses away from your content to the product page, you have lost them forever. You will never be able to contact that visitor. In fact you wouldn’t even know what happened to his journey.
• This is a wastage of the efforts that you have put in to generate traffic and bring those visitors to your content. Once they click over they are gone forever.
• Since you are asking the visitor to directly click over to the affiliate product page, there is nothing that is really differentiating you from the other affiliate marketers. So there is no solid reason for the prospect to buy the product from your link.

Nifty Trick – I have used this method a lot but with a slight twist. In the Youtube video or, the blog post I would offer a few bonuses to people who would purchase from my link.

I would then, tell them that in order to claim their bonuses, they will have to go to a specific page and submit their claim.

This trick helped me build a list of all the buyers. The only disadvantage was that I still lost a lot of traffic – of the people who clicked over to the product page but never bought the product.

Linking using a Bridge Page –

This is a far better and a more effecting way of linking to your affiliate product.

In this method you put together a simple bridge page. This page could be a simple landing page with an optin form offering a freebie to the visitor. Once they optin to the offer, they are redirected to the product page.

This method takes care of all the disadvantages in the direct linking method. You capture the visitors’ email address which you can then use to market using emails.

But this needs an autoresponder, a website/blog and a landing page builder (I recommend Thrive Architect). If you think you don’t really want to spend on a domain name, hosting, landing page builder etc., then the solution I recommend is Aweber.

Aweber is the best autoresponder service that I have used. It also saves you the money you would otherwise be spending on a website, landing page builder etc. because you can build beautiful landing pages using Aweber itself.

But the choice is entirely yours.

A couple of things about the bridge page –

• The bridge page could be a simple optin page asking people to optin to get more details about the product, which then redirects to the product page.
• Another method is to put together a freebie that complements the product you are promoting. It would work wonders if you can create a short ebook or, guide that is an addendum to the product. You then ask your visitors to opt in to get this freebie.

With that out of the way, let us get into the 3 strategies for affiliate marketing with Youtube.

Launch Jacking Strategy

This has been my favorite strategy for a long time. In fact, I built my entire business on this model which I later refined when I learned more about marketing, especially relationship marketing.

Launch jacking works even today and there are a lot of people who are still making a decent amount of money from this strategy.

So what exactly is launch jacking and how does this strategy work?

How does this strategy work

Launch jacking works only if you are updated about the latest launches at least 2 weeks before the actual product launch happens.

It basically involves finding a product that is about to be launched and then creating an entire marketing plan around it. There are two resources that I recommend in order to stay updated with these launches –

• Muncheye
• JVNotifyPro

You can also find a lot of Facebook groups and pages where marketers promote their launches. You can join them and get details about these launches. You can also join their affiliate program there.

Marketers would usually start putting together their promotional pages and other assets much before they actually launch. So you can request for affiliate access to these products early.

Once you have affiliate access, you will need to get access to the product in order to do a quick demo and walkthrough.

In order for this, you will have to reach out to the product creator and check if they have a test login that you can use. Most marketers do provide test logins. But in the rare case that they don’t, you will have to buy the product which is what I recommend. Don’t worry about that expenditure because you will soon recoup that.

Now comes the main part of the strategy.

You can pick any of your favorite screen recording software. I would recommend either Veed or, Wondershare Filmora both of which are user-friendly tools that I have used a lot.

Then record your screen as you do a demo of the product. You can walk through every aspect of the product, what it does and how it works etc. You can also record the walk-through of the sales page and show the price of the product, the OTOs, etc.

Once you have done producing the video, upload the video to Youtube. Follow the basic Youtube SEO guidelines with your main keyword being “Product Name + review” or, “Product name + demo”.

Do not forget to link to the product page using your affiliate link, in the description box.

Now, wait as your video ranks on Youtube and traffic starts to trickle in.

This is the simplest method to do affiliate marketing with Youtube. We will discuss some tweaks to this strategy in order to make it even more effective, in a little while.

But before that, there are a few things you might want to keep in mind when implementing this strategy.

Clickbait headlines

People tend to use Clickbait headlines when creating these kinds of videos. They will use headlines like, “Watch before you buy”, “Do not buy XXXX product before watching this video” etc.

These kinds of headlines will generate clicks but will not convert because of the simple reason that people lose trust when you get to know that they were cheated into clicking on a video.

This isn’t something I recommend.

Don’t look for shortcuts. Use basic headline writing techniques that can hook Youtube users into clicking over to your videos.

Call to action

One of the biggest mistakes that most affiliate marketers do is in not including a call to action. We assume that our readers/viewers/listeners will take action by default and click on that link we have put out there.

But the sad fact is that it doesn’t happen that way.

We aren’t programmed to take action without being asked to take action.

So, include a call to action just before your link. Say it aloud in your video. Ask people to go and click the link in the description box.

Bonuses

Using bonuses is a strategy that a lot of affiliate marketers use, in order to be different from their competitors. Affiliate marketers have been using it for years which shows that it works.

In fact, bonuses are something that is used by the product creators too.

In order for this strategy to be effective, you need to ensure that the bonuses that you are offering is valuable.

I have often, seen marketers putting out 30-40 different bonuses out there and all of them are PLR products that they get from PLR sites and provide no real value to the buyer.

Imagine giving a bonus on “Meditation and Yoga” to a buyer who just bought a product on “how to create youtube videos that convert”.

My recommendation is to create something unique. Something that complements the product you are promoting. You could create and audio file, a short eguide or, a checklist etc. that is some way enhances the value of the purchase.

Why did I stop using this strategy?

I stopped using this strategy for affiliate marketing with youtube, a few years back.

Why?

Because, in spite of the strategy being effective it didn’t really help me build an audience that was engaged. Though this strategy was making money for me, it wasn’t really providing any value to my audience.

When online marketing changed from “mass marketing” to “relationship marketing”, I too tweaked my strategies.

These days, I use a modified version of this strategy that involves an element of relationship marketing. This is what I am going to cover in the next sections.

Launch Jacking + Relationship Marketing Strategy

This is a tweaked version of the launch jacking method that we spoke about earlier.

This is something that I learnt from some of the affiliate marketers that I used to follow on Youtube. Experimenting with this method proved that I was able to build a loyal following and an engaged audience.

In this strategy you follow everything that we spoke about in the core launch jacking method with the only tweak that your videos offer value to your audience.

How?

By not always talking positive about products and recommending them.

In other words, by “calling a spade a spade”.

Often times, it happens that in spite of a product not being that great we recommend it to our audience just because we are an affiliate of the product and that we can earn money when somebody buys it from our link.

This is one of the primary reasons why “Product reviews” have lost credibility over the last few years.

Instead of doing this, we could create genuine videos talking in detail about the products, their pros and cons and finally giving a genuine recommendation, if it is a buy or, not.

This way, your audience will learn that you are an honest reviewer who is not reviewing products for money.

As they experience it, they will find value in what you are offering and build a relationship with you.

But does this impact the money I am making?

In the short term, you will. But as you build your fan base, you will experience higher click-through-rates and consequently better conversions.

A nifty little trick is to subtly push another good product in these videos where you have a negative review for some specific product.

Relationship Marketing Strategy

Over the last few years marketing has changed. The noise filled, mass marketing strategies have given way to relationship marketing.

Marketers like Seth Godin, Andre Chaperon and many others have been advocating this for long. Though there still are a lot of people who are doing the conventional method of marketing, a lot many others have switched and changed their approach.

Pat Flynn, for example have been a marketer who has been using relationship marketing in his affiliate marketing. And probably that is why he has been so successful for this long and continues to be successful.

I too am gradually moving over and implementing relationship building in my business.

And this has given me a lot more than just money and success. It is the peace of mind that I am doing the right thing.

So, back to our discussion.

How do you implement this in your plan to do affiliate marketing with Youtube?

It’s simple.

You start and build a Youtube channel where you give a lot of value. Create videos which gives out a lot of information and help your audience solve problems that they might be facing.

The channel should be more of information than just product reviews.

As you do this, promote products that are contextual to the conversation. You can also do review videos in between where you implement the previous strategy of even reviewing products aren’t that great and being open to your audience about why you wouldn’t recommend them.

This strategy takes a slightly longer period of time than the others, but will give you much better results in the long term.

You can use the tips mentioned in the video from Pat Flynn below, to grow you channel fast and get results faster.

Why this is the best strategy?

This is the most effective of all the methods that we discussed in the post. And this in fact, is the best strategy to do affiliate marketing with Youtube.

Why?

Because you build an element of trust with you audience, when you provide value to them and also are truthful in your reviews.

And when your audience trusts you, they will come back you again and again. They will be regular visitors to your channel, to your blogs and also subscribe to your email list thus giving you an even better chance of marketing to them again and again.

Unlike most other strategies that give you results faster but aren’t sustainable in the long term, this method is sustainable and long term. You don’t have to worry about algorithm changes or, policy changes impacting your videos and your income.

Over to You – Which Method do you Prefer?

Whatever form of marketing you do, ensure you are building trust with your audience.

Building a relationship requires time. But once you have build that relationship and trust, your audience will come back to you again and again.

It isn’t different with Youtube as well. Most successful channels out there have been their audience base on the foundation of trust.

So if you are in it for the long term, build a channel that provides value.

But if you want to make some quick money with affiliate marketing with Youtube, then follow the simple launch jacking method.

Comment below and let me know which out of these is your preferred method of affiliate marketing.

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Frequently Asked Questions about Affiliate Marketing with Youtube