I’ve tried a whole bunch of different free traffic sources over the last 2 years of my affiliate marketing journey including : YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, WonderHowTo, Forums, Quora, Google+, StumbleUpon and probably a few others I can’t of at the moment. I’ve had some level of success with almost all of these, but there a few clear winners that will get you the best results for you time.
Personally I’ve had the best success on YouTube, especially when it comes to converting the traffic. I have one gadget based channel that gets me thousands of views per video, another channel that pulls in a couple hundred views per video, and I just started a third YouTube channel this week (that’s how much I love YouTube). This may not seem like a lot of traffic, but just between the two channels that are already established I make anywhere between $1,000 and $3,000 per month.
Some tips that have helped me get the best results on YouTube are uploading consistently, having good channel branding, and putting a lot of effort into SEO.
Personally I’ve had the best success on YouTube, especially when it comes to converting the traffic. I have one gadget based channel that gets me thousands of views per video, another channel that pulls in a couple hundred views per video, and I just started a third YouTube channel this week (that’s how much I love YouTube). This may not seem like a lot of traffic, but just between the two channels that are already established I make anywhere between $1,000 and $3,000 per month.
Some tips that have helped me get the best results on YouTube are uploading consistently, having good channel branding, and putting a lot of effort into SEO.
- Upload Frequency I recommend uploading as frequently as possible without sacrificing quality, for me that’s once per day on the gadget channel and 3 times per week on my other channel. If you aren’t uploading quality content you can’t expect to get traffic. If you wouldn’t even watch your own video you sure as hell can’t expect some random people on the internet too!
- Channel Branding The goal with using youtube for affiliate marketing is to become the go to authority figure for all the questions in your niche, and that starts with branding. Branding makes it easy for people to recognize your videos, know exactly what your channel is about, and ultimately helps you make more affiliate marketing sales. So how do you create good channel branding? It's all about consistency and following a theme. You want to make sure your thumbnails include the same logos, colors and even the same text, you want to make sure that you have a good Channel Banner that lets newcomers know exactly what your channel is about and how often you upload, you want to have a good intro and outro for every video, and lastly you want to make sure you have a good Channel trailer that tells everyone exactly what to expect out of your Channel.
- SEO When you're just starting out on YouTube most of your traffic is going to come from searches, so you need to make sure your SEO game is on point. This means doing keyword research using free tools like keywords everywhere and to tubebuddy, and then including those keywords in a good description, in your title, and of course in your tags as well. I try to make sure my video descriptions are 200–500 words long, and I make sure to transcribe my videos (every little bit helps)
- Tip #1 Post links to your landing pages and websites within your stories. Now before you get all like, but I need to have like 10,000 followers to be able do that. Let me give you a simple strategy to get there asap.
- The strategy I use is one I found from Gary Vee and that’s the $1.80 strategy. This strategy may take a little bit longer than follow unfollow method, the fan page method etc, but it gets high-quality active followers that will convert. Basically with this strategy you search up 10 hashtags in your niche and and leave your 2 cents, AKA a comment on the top 9 posts for each hashtag.
- Tip #2 Use a tool to put multiple links in your bio. This is especially helpful for the people who haven’t unlocked the ability to put links in their stories. I use the tool elink.io(Its Free). It lets you share links to multiple different landing pages and offers which is great for split testing, while you simultaneously share links to your other social media, and even your website. So now you don’t have to choose between a link to your landing or a link to your YouTube channel, you can have both
- Tip #3 is to consistently post valuable content to your followers. Now valuable content will be different in each niche, but a good rule of thumb is to post inspiring, helpful, informative or motivational pictures and videos at least once a day. If you’re struggling to come with ideas on what to post just go look at what other influencers in your niche are posting, and post similar content. Of course you’ll want to make it unique, but looking at other accounts is a good way to figure out what type of posts the people in your niche respond to the most. An important thing for to mention here is to avoid making your account a pitch fest. Of course your goal is to get people to click the links in your bio, but if you make every other post about an offer or a link all your going to do is piss people off, and ultimately lose followers. I’ve found that one promotional post per week is the sweet spot to not piss off your followers, but make sure they know you have an offer out there.
