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Youtube Affiliate Marketing: How Much Money Can You Really Make?

By: Joel & Josiah

Creating video content is in pretty high demand these days.

Have you ever thought about creating your own videos and trying to make money on Youtube?

It’s certainly possible.

In fact, thanks to Youtube, content creators are walking away from their 9-5 and making a killing as a YouTube Affiliate Marketer.

Now, don’t get me wrong…

Youtube Affiliate Marketing is nothing news. In fact one of the most famous YouTubers (Pewdiepie) has had his videos online for nearly 15 years now and has a net worth of about $40 Million.

So, needless to say, there’s some good money out there for you if your willing to put in the time and effort.

So why are we here today?

We’re going to review Youtube Affiliate Marketing to decide if it really is the best Affiliate Marketing route to go.

We’ll talk about whether Youtube Affiliate Marketing is the right online business model for you.

And at the end, I’ll answer some of the most frequently asked questions regarding Youtube Affiliate Marketing and Affiliate Marketing in general.

Most importantly, I’ll show you the exact system I used to build my own internet marketing business to over $40,000 a month in mostly passive income.

This system made me swear off Affiliate Marketing for good, because it uses some of the same skills in a much more powerful and profitable way!

Why Listen To Us?

My name is Josiah, and this is my Dad, Joel.

Together, we make up the team here at Scamrisk.

If you’ll let me bother you for two minutes, I’d like to quickly explain why I’m even here writing this review.

In early 2020, I had just graduated from college & had no real career prospects.

I knew I was destined for something more, but I had no clue how I was going to make it happen.

I had this sinking feeling in my gut all the time… like the “big man upstairs” had accidentally given me the version of life where I’d be mediocre forever, instead of the one where I was, ya know – happy & fulfilled.

Anyway…

I had fiddled around with some different online businesses in college:

Some random MLMs, a bit of affiliate marketing, a (failed) dropshipping store or two, all the usual suspects.

Even my dad had been involved in MLMs back in the day… selling knives & other random nonsense people (probably) didn’t need.

All I really wanted was to find something that was going to actually work for me.

Maybe those things had worked for others, but for me it all turned up a fat “0” in the bank account department.

So I searched! And searched… and searched… and searched…

And eventually, I somehow stumbled upon a program that promised to help me build an income online (read about it here if you’re curious).

I didn’t really want to be “rich”.

The thought of making a reliable $5K per month & not having to worry about clocking in to a 9-to-5 ever again was all I needed.

Sure, there were people in the program doing high-6 and low-7 figures per year… but that wasn’t what I was out for.

I just wanted to provide freedom for myself, and if I was lucky, take my family along for the ride.

Fast forward a few days and a few phone calls & I was enrolled!

Here’s the first “money making website” I put up:

I built that site in 2020, and it still makes me $1,500 per month. It’s a basic 5 page website I built based on a template the program provides.

The best part to me? My dad and I get to do it all together!

So between the:

  1. Ease of reaching $5-$10K per month in income online
  2. Straightforward-ness of the system to do it
  3. Fact that I get to do it w/ my family

Is why I recommend local lead generation as my #1 business model for making money online.

Sure, it takes some work and dedication – but anyone that tells you that there’s a business out there that requires no work is selling you a lemon.

I’m not saying you need to sign up for the same program I did, but I would definitely recommend giving the business model a peek!

Contents

What Is A YouTube Affiliate?

youtube affiliate program

Now I’m guessing you’re probably thinking to yourself, “Exactly what is a Youtube Affiliate and do I need to have a Youtube channel in order to be one?”

For the most part, having a Youtube Channel allows you to have advertisements on your videos. But the main goal of a Youtube Affiliate is to get you to buy products that they feature in their videos. So every time someone buys a product (let’s say from Amazon) using your affiliate link, you get paid a commission of around 2-7% based on the type of product.

Now, your video doesn’t have to be an elaborate production. It can be a simple review video, a demonstration video, or any kind of video that people will want to watch.

To get started is really pretty simple. Just find an affiliate program that you would like to join, create a video about a product that you like, throw in your youtube affiliate links in the video description of your video (or in your video call-outs) and you’re ready to go.

Now, doing affiliate marketing isn’t restricted to just doing videos. There are plenty of Amazon Affiliate who have websites that sell all kinds of products.

But here’s the deal…

Nobody is just gonna click on your affiliate link. To get people to watch your videos, you have to drive traffic to them. This is what website affiliates, which is the most time-consuming part of affiliate marketing. But once you get people watching your content and click your links, making money will be a cinch.

How to use YouTube for Affiliate Marketing

affiliate programs

Honestly, it’s not all that difficult to get a Youtube channel up and running. In fact, if you put your head down, you could create some videos and get them uploaded to Youtube in just a couple of hours.

Now, you may need certain type of equipment based on the videos you wanna make. If you’re just doing some simple point and shoot, then you’re phone is all you’ll need to get started. I went ahead and made a checklist for you to take a look at:

A YouTube Account:

Creating an account is really pretty simple and it doesn’t cost anything to join. After you sign up, you’ll be able to upload your videos and plug in all the details about your video content in the description.

An Amazon Associates account:

Of course, there’s tons of affiliate networks out there that you can join, but if you want to create an Amazon account, all you have to do is sign up. It is free to join, but to promote their products your videos there is an approval process (as it is with most affiliate networks) so that can take just a few minutes to a few days. Don’t worry about that though, it’ll take at least a couple days to get your video content ready anyway.

Video Editing Software:

Needless to say that their are plenty of video editing software that you can use to create your videos. They can range in price anywhere from FREE to a couple hundred dollars to as much as $21 a month. Here’s a short list…

A Good Computer:

Chances are, the computer that you have will be just fine for the videos that you’ll be creating. But depending on how long your videos are, how much time it will take to render them, and the type of video editing software you’ll be using, you may consider upgrading. But for now, try to create a video or two to see if everything works well. If it’s slow, you many just need to replace some RAM, which is relatively cheap compared to buy a whole new computer.

A Good-sized Hard Drive:

Of course, you’ll need a place to store your videos in addition to having them saved on Youtube. You can either keep them saved on your PC or Laptop (which will eat up your hard drive space), or you could buy a 1-3 TB (Terabyte) external HD for around $100. You can store your video footage there with no additional stress on your computer.

WebCam and Microphone:

The more engaging you are with your viewers, the more interested they will be with your content. So with that in mind, even though it’s not needed for your videos, it would be a good idea to get a webcam and microphone to use when creating your videos.

Digital Video Camera:

Now, you don’t have to go all hog-wild when it comes to getting a digital camera for creating your live action videos, but if you’re looking into doing higher-end video production, then a digital video Camera might be a good idea. However, this isn’t a necessity since an iPhone can do a pretty good job then one might think.

Video Capture Software:

This is ideal if you’re going to be creating videos for gaming. Video capture software is pretty easy to use, it’s pretty much just plug-and-play, and the free versions out there are just fine for the content you’ll be putting on Youtube.

Tips for making great YouTube Content

videos

Let’s face, if you have never created video content or published videos before, well just count on your first video being an utter flop.

But don’t let that bother you… we’ve all been there.

First things first… just get your content our there. It doesn’t have to be pretty, you just need to get the feel of things. Heck, if your content is engaging enough, the quality of your video won’t really matter much. You just need the practice and you’ll be fine.

Below are some tips on how to make really good content for your Youtube videos:

  • Relevancy: You always want to keep your video in line with the products or services that you’ll be promoting to people. After all, it would be silly if you’re video content is about smartphone cases but you’re trying to sell lawnmower parts. Just be natural and relevant in your videos and you’ll do great.
  • K.I.S.S.: If you don’t have a whole lot to talk about in your videos, that’s OK. Just say what needs to be said. There’s no need to drone on and on for the sake of creating a longer video. Keep. It. Simple. Stupid.
  • Quality Is King: More and more nowadays the quality of your videos matter. So, at very least you should shoot the in 720 HD. But 1080 or even 4k would be even better.
  • Sound Quality: Nothing says amateur more than when the audio in your videos is choppy, too hard to hear, or has too much static. Make sure you have a good microphone so that your viewers will love to listen to you. You don’t want them to sound like you’re using dial-up.
  • Stay connected to your audience: The great thing about the people who watch your video is that they can be a good source for your content. Whenever they leave you a message, be sure to respond back to them. If they send you an email, be sure to reply.
  • Free Software: Running a channel on a shoestring budget can often be challenging. There’s nothing more frustrating than creating a Youtube video when you have just the basic and less robust software. So make it a point to use Free Trials. For example, I used a free version of Camtasia to create one of my videos. When I started making money, I went ahead and purchased it.
  • Be Honest, Not Salesy: We all know that we’re trying to make money with our videos, but we don’t want to over do it. When you display your affiliate links, you want to show them in a way that subtle to people and is not turned off by them. You can mention the links in your videos. Just make sure that you come across to your viewer as honest in your video and not pushy.
  • Be Excited: Nobody likes a boring video, right? So make sure that your audience can’t wait to hear what you have to say in your video. If you don’t speak with clear enthusiasm in your voice, or talk as though your reading the phone book, then how can you expect anyone in your audience to be influenced by you and purchase anything. Affiliate Youtuber who can master this can literally write a blank check.
  • Have A Plan For Your Video: Everyone remembers that one teacher in High School that would go on and on about stuff that was totally unrelated to the topic at hand. Well, you don’t want to bore your viewers and have people click away to the next video. It doesn’t hurt to follow a script. Also, if you believe your content is irrelevant, then don’t be afraid to cut it out. No one wants to listen to you talking about what you’re going to have for dinner when you’re doing unboxing videos of the latest smartphone.
  • What Is Your Video About?: Are you going to teach someone how to bake your favorite cookie? Are you doing a review of your favorite product? Are you a basketball coach that’s demonstrating advanced shooting tips? There’s certainly no shortage of topics for which you can create videos and upload to Youtube.
  • Be A Product Expert: When creating a Youtube video, make sure that you know all the ins and outs about the product that you’re promoting. The best videos are the ones in which the content and thorough and well explained to the audience. If you don’t come across to people like you know what you’re talking about, then you can expect that your bounce rate (when people exit from your video and even close the browser) will skyrocket.

How To Increase Viewership To Your YouTube Videos

viewers

Have you ever heard the phrase, “Conent is King”? Well, when it comes to your Youtube videos, great content does about 90% of the heavy lifting. But there are a few tips and tricks to get your videos seen by more viewers…

Social Media Presence

youtube affiliate marketing program

Make it a practice that, once you’ve uploaded your videos to Youtube, you share videos to all your social media accounts (Google, Twitter, Facebook, Tik Tok, Reddit, etc). This is a great way to get more eyes on your content.

Ranking high in YouTube search rankings

youtube affiliate marketing

Getting ranked high in the Youtube search rankings is relatively easy. Just make sure that your videos get as many views as possible (higher views = higher search rankings), and make sure that your description is targeting specific keyword that you want to be found for.

Ranking high in Google search rankings

youtube affiliate programs

You also want to get your videos listed high in the search engines. What’s great about Youtube is that it’s owned by Google. So the more views your video gets, the higher Google will rank them in the search listings.

Find products that no one else is ranking for. Ranking for a the latest perfume will be a lot easier than ranking for the latest digital camera.

Create a companion website

youtube affiliate marketing training

Obviously one of the best ways to get more views to your video is to post links to your video on your website. But why stop at one website? What if you created multiple website that ranks high in the search engines and gets a lot of traffic? That mean more views to your video.

Share your content on related sites

content

Nobody likes a spammer, so don’t go posting links to your videos all over God’s creating. However, if you can provide people with answers to question they have, then they will be more than willing to view your video content, and they will likely love it. Also, the more views your videos get, Youtube will see it as being extremely relevant and boost your rankings thus giving you more traffic, and so on and so on.

Consistently upload

video

Have you ever heard other Youtube video creators mention their schedule? The simple fact of the matter is that when viewers subscribe to your channel it’s because they love your video content and they’re probably sitting in pins and needles for your next video to come out. So get into a habit of uploading videos to your channel on a regular basis so your viewers can help you share them.

Make sure your videos are titled appropriately

video descriptions

Have you ever had a hard time finding a video about a relatively obscure topic? You’ve probably glossed over them and didn’t even realize it because they weren’t titled correctly. So make sure that when you upload your videos, you need to make sure your video content is absolutely relevant and that the title of your video is correctly referencing that your video is about.

Eye-catching thumbnails

affiliate network

When people come across your videos, the one thing that stands out the most among other videos (apart from the title) is the thumbnail. You’ve heard that a picture is worth 1,000 words, right. Well, if your thumbnail can relay EXACTLY what it is that someone is looking for, then they will have no choice but to click on your video.

Create Playlists and Annotations

website

Another great way to more traffic to your videos is to create playlists. When you have multiple videos that are related around the same general topic, then that is the perfect way to cross-promote from one video to the next. You can also create annotations which is a way to create links inside the video. Creating a link from a video with a bunch of views to another video is the perfect promotional tool especially if that one video is killing it.

Frequently Asked Questions

browser

How much money can I make from being a YouTube Affiliate?

There’s really no secret to making money as a Youtube Affiliate. It’s really just a matter of getting as many viewers to your Youtube videos as possible. The more traffic you get, the more money you will make.

Now, you can evaluate an Affiliate Network to see how much you can make from them.

If you’re thinking about joining Amazon Affiliates, the commission is usually around 3-5% for ever product you sell. Of course, you also want to look are your conversion rate. The conversion rate is the number of people who have watched your videos that have gone on to purchase the product that you’re promoting. This rate can fluctuate from product to product.

So, if you’re promoting a product that costs $100 and the commission rate is 5%.

Now, let’s say your Youtube video gets 70,000 views with a conservative 2% conversion rate.

2% of 70,000 = 1400.

1400 x $100 = $140,000

$140,000 x 5% = $7,000

From this one video, you would have made $7,000.

So, you can certainly make money with Youtube Affiliate Marketing, but if you’re gonna put in the amount of grueling work to become a Youtube Affiliate Marketer (which, trust me, isn’t easy), you might as well bring in some REAL money.

The program that helped skyrocket my online business to $40,000+ per month teaches some of the same Youtube Affiliate Marketing skills, but shows you how to monetize them in a much, MUCH more profitable way.

Can I Make Money as a Small YouTube Channel?

content creators

It’s certainly possible, but it’s so much easier if your have a lot of views to your channel. When you start worrying about how much money you’re making (or not making), but you’re only getting maybe 50-100 views a day, then you’re gonna drive yourself crazy trying to figure out what’s going wrong with your channel.

When you’re first starting out, the best way to evaluate your channels progress is not by how much money you’re making, but my how many views your channel is getting on a regular basis and if those views are growing. The better your video content is, the more the audience will grow.

So, obviously the more time you put into your channel, the more traffic to your videos you’ll start to see coming in. I wouldn’t worry about putting up affiliate links in your videos when you first create them. Like with new websites, viewers are more concerned with your content than with your promotions at this point.

How Do Affiliate Marketers Make Money?

commission rate

The main way people make money with affiliate marketing is by promoting items on their sites in the form of reviews. The idea is that by writing a good review about a product and leaving your link, while using some SEO best practices…people will come across it and buy the product through your link.

In most cases you will earn a small percentage of that sale.

The thing is that to become one of these high grossing sites, your site has to come across as an authority site…and to do that, you have to be good at building your own traffic towards it!

What are some Pros and Cons of Affiliate Marketing?

guys

Pros:

  • You don’t have to stock an inventory of products
  • Your overhead is virtually zero
  • Your ability to scale is unlimited

Cons:

  • You’re at the mercy of your Affiliate Network
  • You’re competing with thousands of other affiliate marketers
  • The products and services you’re promoting can be discontinued without notice

What Are The Highest Paying Affiliate Marketers Programs?

unboxing videos

Here are just a few affiliate programs that have made many different people a financially successful affiliate marketer:

  • amoCRM
  • Leadpages
  • Teachable
  • GetResponse
  • SEMRush
  • Aweber
  • ConvertKit
  • PromoRepublic

If you wanted a make money online niche to get into with Youtube affiliate marketing…it’d definitely be worth a look!

Just remember…these are some high ticket programs…that means you will need a real strong authority sites to compete.

Can You Make A Living Off Affiliate Marketing?

amazon associates

Yes, you can make money off of affiliate marketing…but truth be told most people in affiliate marketing make a lot of their money by promoting different affiliate programs.

In fact, if you look at most of the affiliate reviews, most of them make money by dropping their link in the video descriptions!

So what’s the bottom line here?

Most affiliate marketers make the lions share of their money by promoting other affiliate programs.

How Can I Succeed In Affiliate Marketing?

no one

Yes you can succeed in affiliate marketing!

It is just important that are surrounded with the right people and have access to some decent market research tools.

Affiliate marketers everywhere know that your network is your net worth and if you start hanging around the right people long enough…odds are you’ll get the jump on the next hot money making niche alongside them before it gets saturated!

The key to affiliate marketing is definitely research, you should always be striving to be ahead of the trend or better yet, a trend setter!

See that’s the thing…

A big mistake that people make in affiliate marketing is hopping on the train too late and before you know it, the market is too saturated for you to make your entry.

Does Affiliate Marketing Still Work?

sound quality

This is a tricky one to answer for sure.

The obvious answer is yes, affiliate marketing does still work here in 2022, people are still making bank off of it to this day.

However, most of that is being done in the high ticket arenas that most affiliate marketers aren’t even aware of.

And those high ticket guys like to keep it that way.

The thing with affiliate marketing is that it is extremely saturated.

Couple that with a low barrier of entry and boom…

You have a lot of competition.

That’s why this question get’s asked all the time and why the average affiliate marketer only makes a couple hundred bucks a month with this online business.

But if you’re still looking to get started with an online business, especially post covid, we think we might have something right up your alley!

Scam Risk’s #1 Recommended Way To Make Money Online

thanks

Are you looking for an online business that you can run where you won’t run into competition left and right?

What about something that can lead to passive income down the road…

Does that interest you at all?

Great!

Our Scam Risk team has done some digging into an online business model that has just recently popped up.

With the looming housing crisis that will make 2008 look like a toddler, many real estate investors and online entrepreneurs having begun building digital assets!

Digital Leasing

guy

Or local lead generation as some people call it, is the process of building out websites and generating leads for small service based businesses.

It’s actually pretty similar to affiliate marketing except for a couple key differences:

  • You can make more money off of less traffic
  • Competition is practically non existent at the local level
  • Much easier to rank!

Before you start calling it scam…keep this in mind, we are Scam Risk…

We report scams. We don’t promote them.

Now that that’s out of the way let’s dive deeper into that comparison.

With affiliate marketing, you have rank for national keywords, which is really hard to do because of how much competition there is.

You are having to compete with like 1 million other people to sell the same product…it’s crazy hard!

But now let’s flip the script…

How many people do you think are competing to cut down trees in Bossier City Louisiana?

Exactly…not much.

So now that we’ve established that competition for local lead generation is much less than for affiliate marketing…let’s talk about the money. It’s always about the money right?

The Money?

channel

Most affiliate products you would sell are likely $50-$100 and on top of that you’re lucky if you’re making a 5% commission from Amazon because of it.

That means you’ll have to sell 1,000-2,000 of products just to reach a decent income of 5k per month. You definitely have your work cut out for you on that end…

Now let’s take a look back at that tree service example again…

The average tree service job is worth anywhere from $500-$2,000 and most contractors are generous with their referral fees, being known to pay out roughly 10-20% of the final ticket.

So now it’s time for some math…

Let’s say you build and rank one of these sites in a local area with very little competition and after 3 months, your site is at the top of page one locally.

And let’s say that worst cases scenario you only end of with just 10 calls.

On top of that, let’s say covid hit the tree service guy and his family extra hard this year and he can only pay you 10%.

Going off the lowest numbers possible here…that means that just one of these sites could bring you in $500 a month. Now let’s say you build 10 of these things…you’re looking at 5k a month and you’re generating literally 1/10th of the traffic you would need to make that much with affiliate marketing!

Sound too good too be true…?

It isn’t.

Where To Learn

affiliate link

We know that you’re not going to be able to just go off on your own and start killing the Digital Leasing game from the little we talked about it…

And you might be thinking to yourself…”Dang I don’t even know where to begin…”.

So our team at Scam Risk has taken the time to go out and find a program that we could recommend and give our Scam Risk seal of approval to.

We don’t take it lightly either.

After months of searching far and wide, we finally found one!

Go ahead and check it out here for more details!

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