- In this video we're talking about how you can maximize
the amount of money that you're bringing in
through passive income here on YouTube.
Now this video is going into affiliate marketing,
but I'm not just gonna give you like a general overview
of what affiliate marketing is, this is a strategy.
It's not just saying,
"Hey, throw links in your description."
It doesn't work like that.
But there is things that you can do
so that you can earn more,
and once you have all of this set up,
it's super easy to change out links, fix broken links,
and also just see what's working and what's not.
All right guys, let's get into it.
(intense music)
So this video actually jumps off from another couple videos
that I've done here on my channel,
and I'm gonna include links down in the description,
but one of 'em is just about
what is affiliate marketing in general.
So if you are new to the affiliate game,
then I highly suggest checking out that video
'cause it breaks down everything that you need to know
about just what affiliate marketing is in general.
Now the second video is using Geniuslink and kit.com.
These are two tools that I'm gonna
be talkin' about throughout this video.
And if you haven't heard about these tools,
then I highly suggest checking out that video,
which breaks down how those work and how you use them.
So I've been doing affiliate marketing
for a while on my channel.
It's a great source of revenue stream,
and once you set it up,
it definitely is a passive income source.
So here on this channel I promote all different sorts
of products that are geared towards creators.
And consistently over the last couple years,
I'm bringin' in three, four, five, $6,000 a month
off of these affiliate links.
And once they're set up, you really don't have to do much
and they keep generating more income.
And that's kind of the best part about affiliate marketing.
And there's obviously things that you can do moving forward
that's gonna just boost this revenue stream even more.
So when it comes to affiliate marketing, the world is huge.
There are so many different things
that you can promote on your channel
that's gonna bring in income.
The issue is there's a lot of things that people do wrong
when it comes to affiliate marketing.
So one of the biggest mistakes that I think creators make
starting out in affiliate marketing is
getting associated with like one affiliate program.
The big one that everyone goes towards is Amazon Affiliates.
And there's good reason for this.
When you're part of a Amazon Associates, basically,
if somebody clicks on your link to an Amazon product,
you're gonna get a commission for everything they buy
on Amazon within the 24-hour cookie window.
The issue is if you're tied to one affiliate program,
if they change that program in any way, then you're screwed.
And this is actually what just happened on Amazon.
They dropped their commission rates for a ton of products
and so people are now making a fraction
of what they used to off of their affiliate links.
So the biggest thing that you need to think about
when you get into affiliate marketing is
find all of the companies that are associated
with the products that you use
and get affiliated with all of them.
So I have a massive list of all the companies
I work with and I've been doing
this for the last couple of years.
So Amazon obviously is great.
B & H is a great one for camera people as well,
same with Adorama.
These are big kind of like box retailers, I would say.
They're the ones that have tons of products on their sites,
so if you send them there,
there's a good chance that someone's gonna go look around
and maybe buy something else.
Now for people that are in this camera space,
there is a new option on the market, it's Moment.
You think they just did like the iPhone gear,
but actually they've become a retailer for tons of products
and their percentages are much higher
than these other companies.
So I'm actually starting to switch a lot of my links now
over to Moment because of the percentage increase,
and this is something I'm gonna discuss
as we get deeper into this video.
You need to be able to change out your links.
But beyond these companies that sell a ton of products,
you also have to think about the little guys,
the individual companies.
So for example, this slider that I'm using right now
is from Rhino, it's the Rhino Arc II.
And I'm signed up with their specific
affiliate program for their company.
So if you go down to my description,
you'll find a link for this product
and it goes to their website.
And the reason that you'd wanna use
these individual companies is you might get
a better commission if you go directly
to the company versus going to a retailer.
So there's three things that you should look at
when you're looking at affiliate programs.
So how much of the sale are you getting
when somebody makes a purchase on that product?
Number two is the cookie window.
So there's a period of time that if someone
uses your affiliate link and goes to the website
and makes a purchase, that you will get
a commission from that sale.
A lot of times they're 24 hours, that's pretty standard.
But there are programs out there
that sometimes open that window up even more.
And if an individual company has
a longer period for a cookie window,
then I might suggest you go use that company
versus the big retailer because people
don't make purchases immediately.
Sometimes it takes two, three days before they're like,
"Oh yeah, I actually do wanna make
"that purchase of that product."
And the third thing you wanna think about is
individual sales versus reoccurring sales.
So some affiliate programs will offer you commission
every month that someone is a member of their site
or a member of using their service.
TubeBuddy is one of these,
and this is a product that I use all the time,
but it's great for an affiliate because
you are consistently getting commission
every month that someone is a member
and they signed up through your affiliate link.
Reoccurring revenue in these affiliate programs is huge
'cause as soon as someone signs up,
you're now making money every month
and you don't have to get a new sale.
It's that same sale just happening again and again.
So finding these reoccurring affiliate programs,
if they fit within what you're doing
is really going to help you bring more passive income in
because it's less work as soon as you make the sale.
That person just needs to stay a member
and you're gonna be continuing to make money.
So let's talk about some tools that's really gonna
help you with affiliate links.
The first is Geniuslink.
So with Geniuslink, what I'm able to do
is track the health of all of my links.
So yes, you can do things like choice pages
and you can swap out links,
but finding the health of your links is huge.
I actually just did a big audit of my channel.
I went through all 600ish videos on my channel
and looked at every link in the description.
I painstakingly did this for like three days straight
because I really wanted to look and find broken links
and then switch everything out for a Geniuslink.
When you go into your Geniuslink dashboard,
if a link stopped working, it pops up.
It's a notification so you can see immediately,
"Oh, this link stopped working
"and it was on this video that I shot two years ago."
I'll just go into Geniuslink, swap out this link,
and then all of a sudden it's working.
I don't even have to touch my YouTube video.
And because all of my links are housed within Geniuslink,
I can just search there for everything
and do all my maintenance on Geniuslink specifically,
rather than going back into YouTube
and going description by description.
Now the second tool that I use is TubeBuddy.
TubeBuddy has this feature where you can
mass change things in your descriptions.
So if you need to completely swap out a link,
or you just wanna completely take out an affiliate program,
you can use TubeBuddy and click one button
and it goes through and finds that link,
finds whatever text in all of your descriptions,
and then swaps it out, deletes it, or you can add stuff.
So if you have a new affiliate program
and you wanna add it to your entire library of 600 videos,
you can do that using TubeBuddy.
Now there's a few things you have to do
to set up TubeBuddy to make this work properly.
And this is one of the reasons
why I went through my entire library of videos.
You need to come up with a standardized description,
and yes, there's gonna be portions
that are unique for every video,
but you wanna come up with a standard set of links
that go under that so that when you use TubeBuddy,
you can go down to that templated section,
the section that's the same on every video,
and make a change that affects everything
rather than like having different descriptions per video.
So let me just give you a quick rundown
of how I optimized my descriptions.
Number one is I put a description of what the video is,
two to three sentences, this has my keywords in it.
It helps me get these videos seen more
because it ties into the title, it ties into the tags.
It's just a good practice to be able to put two to three
sentences that describes what your video is about.
Now underneath that, I put links to other videos
on my channel because the number one thing you wanna do
on your YouTube channel is get people
to watch other videos on your channel, that's huge.
We're talking about YouTube optimization here.
You don't want people going off of the platform.
However, to be able to do affiliate marketing,
you do need people to jump off.
So I always put the option to check out other videos first
because I'd rather have people go video to video
and help grow the channel in that way.
However, I'm not gonna just eliminate all my affiliate links
because that's a huge revenue stream.
That's where I get a lot of passive income.
So underneath where I have links to other videos,
I'll put the affiliate links that directly relate
to anything I'm talking about in this video.
So for example, if I was doing a review of this slider,
then I would put the affiliate link specifically
for this slider right there before all the other stuff.
And then underneath anything that ties directly
to this video is my templated set of affiliate links,
these are products that I use, services that I subscribe to,
things that I actually use, and that's the key.
It has to be things that you use.
You have to be talking about products
that you actually care about that you actually use,
otherwise, why would someone purchase it?
If you don't actually use the product,
don't put it in your links.
So the templated section is perfect to be able
to just have a bunch of affiliate links.
So if someone's like, "Hey, what kind of cameras
"do you shoot on to make your videos?"
It's there, you can go check 'em out.
You can either go to my kit or you can go check my link
and I have all the products that I use.
And this is huge having this down there
because you'd be surprised at how many
purchases that you make.
When I went through and changed out all my descriptions,
I added a few affiliate links of products that I'm using now
and instantly I saw a huge boost
in sales on all my old videos.
Those videos aren't talking about these products,
but they are products that I'm using consistently now
and just having the links in my description,
I'm getting sales.
And that's why affiliate marketing is
so powerful to bring in passive income.
So analyzing is super important
because if you don't know what's happening,
then you can't make data driven decisions.
And data driven decisions is how you're gonna
make more money off of your affiliate links.
So what I do is once a month, I do this on the first,
I sit down and I look at all of my affiliate programs
and I track how much money I've made from each one.
Now I use Google Sheets for this
'cause it's super easy software to use.
I just create a spreadsheet and I track month after month
where my money is coming in from.
Now this allows me to make decisions moving forward.
So I, if I track over six months,
I can look and see, okay, this affiliate program
is makin' me money and this one's not.
So if something's not making me money over time
and I've been actively trying to promote it,
I'm gonna drop it and move on to something else
because it's obviously not resonating with my audience.
And I've been able to find some pretty awesome affiliate
programs that bring in a lot of revenue for my channel,
and that resonate well with the people
who are watching, you guys.
And so this is not something that's gonna happen overnight.
You need to really watch your affiliate programs,
have a ton of 'em and start pinpointing
which ones really work for your channel.
And then doubling down on those affiliate programs,
and really making videos around those products
because that's how you're gonna bring in
more revenue to your channel.
So there's one more thing that we have to talk about
and that is legal issues.
Now, I'm not any sort of lawyer,
legal counsel, or anything like that,
but there are issues when it comes
to affiliate links in your descriptions.
You could potentially get dropped out of affiliate programs
based on the language that you use in your description.
So I have a standard disclaimer
in the bottom of my description.
It says that I have affiliate links.
There's no additional cost for you if you make
a purchase through those affiliate links.
And I also added a little something about Amazon Associates
because they are a little bit more strict.
Now I've seen different creators use words like support,
like, "Hey, if you purchase through my links,
"you're helping fund my channel."
You can't really use terminology like that
because you can't incentivize someone to make a purchase
through your affiliate links to support you.
So you really wanna make sure that you're
not setting yourself up for failure.
So I highly suggest going through each affiliate program
that you're associated with and make sure that the language
that you use in your description fits the affiliate program.
And all programs have terms and conditions
and I highly suggest reading that legal document.
I'm not telling you how to do it on here
because every program's a little bit different
and you need to make sure that you go check the terms
of how the affiliate program works,
and that you are abiding by the rules
of that affiliate program.
Now next, head over to this video right here
where I dive into Geniuslink and kit.com
so that you can really optimize these two tools
to be able to bring in more income on your channel.
I'll see you over there.