Hey everyone, welcome back to another video.
Today is another one of those eagerly awaited videos
that I've been excited to share with you guys.
This video is going to be covering all
of the changes that have happened
in the affiliate marketing space over the last couple
of years since I've posted here on YouTube.
Now, last week we talked about the print
on demand changes that have happened
over the last couple of years.
However, in this video there are a few more changes
so stick around to the end here.
You'll be caught up to speed on everything that has changed
and the things that will actually make a difference
for your affiliate marketing business.
Without further ado, let's go ahead
and just get right into this video.
I've got five major changes to share with you guys.
So, let's jump right into the first one.
The first major change that has happened
in affiliate marketing over the last couple
of years is in regards to your affiliate marketing channels.
Now, essentially what I mean by this is the sources
of where you're putting out content for affiliate marketing.
Now, in the past, I've always recommended
to you guys to create your own affiliate marketing website.
This has been the gold standard
for affiliate marketing because you get your traffic
from Google and it's really the best way to do it.
However, the change that has happened here
is that what I would recommend
to you now is
to build that website out as your core foundation
and then also add in other channels.
The two other channels I would recommend
to do are quora.com.
You can go and answer questions
with your affiliate link in your answer.
And then the second one is creating YouTube videos.
You don't have to plan
on building a very big YouTube channel,
but you can create YouTube videos showing
off a specific product that you are an affiliate for,
and putting your affiliate link in the description.
Just by adding in those two other channels,
you now have three sources
of traffic coming to your affiliate links.
Now, having a website should be your foundation.
That is going to be the biggest growing channel.
However, the downside to that is,
it may take six months to a year
until all the articles that you're writing are ranking
on Google and bringing you in that traffic.
In the meantime, when you're just getting started,
you can go to Quora, answer those questions
and then you have traffic coming
through your affiliate links pretty much from day one.
The same thing on YouTube videos
so you can get that early traffic
and notice some earnings in the first few months
so you're not waiting around forever.
Moving right along.
Let's get into the second change in affiliate marketing.
Now, this is in regards to website hosting.
So, I've always recommended to you guys
to use Blue Host to start your affiliate marketing website
and I still stand behind that today.
However, the change I would add to that is that,
you wanna use Blue Host to start your website
in the beginning.
However, once you start getting serious traffic
to your website,
then I would recommend migrating your website
off of Blue Host onto another host that loads faster
and is going to give you some more advantages.
So, you can compete better on Google.
The reason I always say start off with Blue Host is
because it is absolutely the cheapest hosting you can get
for your website and it gets the job done.
It's somewhere around $3 per month
and when you're just starting out with a new business model,
you want to kind of get your toes wet
and not invest a hundred dollars a month
in the very beginning.
For just those $3 a month that gives you everything
that you need to properly rank
on Google and start seeing if that niche is going to work
out for you and bring some serious traffic.
And then if it turns out that it is working
and it's something you wanna continue to grow,
then you can move to a better host.
Now, assuming you're using a WordPress website,
the website hosting
that I would recommend for you is rocket.net.
That has been my favorite hosting the one
that I prefer to use because they load extremely fast.
When someone clicks on your article on Google,
by using rocket.net, your article is basically
already loaded by the time they get to your website.
That helps you to retain people from Google.
So, they actually read through your article.
Getting into the third major change in affiliate marketing,
this is in regards to the article length on your website.
The problem that people run into is they write
either too short of an article or too long of an article.
So, all the way back when I was making
these tutorials before for you guys,
I was saying to stay around 1000 words
per article as a minimum.
Write at least a thousand words.
If you go up to 1500, that's fine,
but you don't need to go crazy with it.
And that has totally stayed true.
In the past,
I have tried short articles that are 200 to 400 words long
and I have tried long articles that are as long
as 3,500 words long.
And the best bang for your buck
as far as time spent writing an article
and getting content produced
and published is somewhere around 1000 words.
It seems like Google is trying to recommend the posts
to people that have just clear, concise information
and aren't going to waste people's time.
So, no matter what you do in your articles,
try not to keep any fluff in there just to make it longer,
shoot for around a thousand words,
and keep the quality really good.
Moving on to the fourth change in affiliate marketing.
This is the arrival of artificial intelligence writing tools
or AI writing tools.
Essentially, what these tools are,
are you type in a title or a couple words
that you want an article to be about
and you basically click go,
and then these tools will use artificial intelligence
to write you an entire article basically.
Now, I know this sounds
like the perfect tool to write content
for your website and to make the process a lot easier.
However, my really strong recommendation
to you is to avoid these pretty much at all costs.
These tools are not good enough yet to be used on websites.
Maybe in the future if they become really good
and they can pull information that is fact check
and valuable and concise information that's not fluff
or inaccurate, then they may become useful.
But right now Google is struggling
with the problem of people are finding
out about these artificial intelligence writing tools
and they are just pumping out thousands of articles
and basically just flooding Google with these articles.
Now, Google's algorithm has to figure out
if the articles are good or bad.
And they're trying to determine is it written by AI
or is it written by a human
with real experiences and real information.
So, my recommendation to you is don't use these AI tools
because I have a strong feeling
that they are going to basically punish
the websites that have used them
and reward the ones that are written by humans
with real genuine information.
Just like that,
we are on the fifth and last big change for affiliate
marketing over the last couple of years, and this is
leaving money on the table.
Now, once you get people
to your affiliate marketing websites,
it's not just about the affiliate links
that are in your articles.
You have to remember that you have a lot of real estate
on your website.
So, over the last couple of years,
it has become very easy,
basically, in just a couple clicks
to add advertisement space down the sidebar
over in the footer in between paragraphs in your article.
And as long as you're not overdoing it
you can really capitalize on this
and increase your earnings on your affiliate site.
Now, in addition to adding advertisements to your website,
you can also collect information from people to sell leads.
So for instance,
if you have an affiliate website that writes content
about air conditioners,
well people who are reading that may be
in the market to purchase a new air conditioner.
So, you can connect with air conditioning companies.
You kind of have to do a little bit of legwork here,
but you can find companies
out there who are interested in buying leads from you.
So essentially, you would have a section
in your article or over on the sidebar that says,
get a quote for a new air conditioner
or talk to a local air conditioning professional
in your area.
And then, once they click on that, they can fill out a form
with their phone number, their email, and their name
and that goes over to the air conditioning company
and they will pay you on a per lead basis.
So, you may get 20 or $50
for every person that comes through your website
and gets in touch with an air conditioning company.
It's something to keep in mind.
It won't fit for every niche, but I just wanted to make sure
that you guys know not to leave money on the table.
So guys, that is it for this video.
I hope it has been helpful.
If you have any additional questions
or anything you're curious about with affiliate marketing
just let me know down on any comments.
As always, if you guys enjoyed this video,
I really appreciate the thumbs up.
So, thank you for that in advance
and I'll see you all in the next video.