If you are serious about earning a living from YouTube, then you need to treat your channel like a business. Part of this approach is to diversify your revenue streams as you grow your channel. Being an Amazon affiliate could be one of those streams.

Traditionally, there are five revenue models for YouTubers – ads, sponsorship, patronage, directly selling something/merch, and affiliate marketing. Each has their pros and cons. However, most financially savvy creatives use some combination of all of them. 

Affiliate sales can be incredibly lucrative for mid and late-stage channels. But it’s also one revenue model that can be used at the start. Your very first videos can include affiliate links. Having an understanding of how your channel converts, via affiliate marketing, can be incredibly important in negotiating your first sponsorship deals. It also provides a realistic baseline of your channel’s value at a given point in time. 

As your channel grows, your affiliate revenue may ebb and flow but it should continue to be the foundation you build your financial empire.

Stay Focused on Your Goal at the Beginning

It’s also important to note that focus is important in the early stages while diversification is important in the long run. This is relevant in two ways: 

1. From the multiple revenue stream perspective, we encourage you to start with affiliate marketing. But please note that it can be risky to have it be your sole revenue stream at a later stage.

2. But “focus” is also relevant inside the world of affiliate marketing as starting with laser focus is helpful. For this reason, we strongly recommend simply starting with the Amazon.com Associates program to learn the ropes, then expanding from there. 

Learn how the affiliate model works – then it’s time to start scaling.

Don’t let yourself get sucked into creative, or complicated, programs and tools. In the early days, you want to do the bare minimum to build and add affiliate links so you can keep your energies focused on building your most important asset — an engaged audience. 

How Affiliate Marketing works for YouTubers

In super simplified terms, affiliate marketing revolves around you, the YouTuber, recommending a product, either in the video or not. Then use specialized “affiliate” links to send your viewers to whatever it is that you are recommending so they can then purchase it. 

These affiliate links include a tracking parameter that lets the retailer know when you referred a sale. The retailer, in this case, Amazon, will then reward you with a percentage of the products that were sold to the shopper you recommended. 

Most YouTubers will include affiliate links in the descriptions of their videos for products that fall into one of two groups:

1. The specific product(s) or service(s) you recommended in your video. For example, an unboxing or gadget review video is the perfect candidate to include an affiliate link. The viewer to then go buy the product you were talking about.

2. Links to the products and services you use to create the video or regularly use and swear by. A common example here is to see the list of cameras, mics, and other gear used, with affiliate links to buy them (or even a link to the YouTuber’s “kit” of filmmaking gear).