If you are serious about earning a living from YouTube, you need to treat your channel like a business. Creators cannot live on ad revenue alone. You need to diversify your revenue streams as you grow your channel. The Amazon affiliate program is one way to diversify.
Broadly speaking, there are five main avenues for YouTube content creators to earn money from their content:
- Ad revenue – Earning a cut of revenue generated by ads that appear in and around your content
- Sponsorship – Brands paying to be in or associated with your content
- Patronage – Viewers paying or donating to fund your content
- Merchandising – Selling anything from branded merch all the way up to Feastables and Joyride
- Affiliate marketing – Sharing products or services and earning a bounty for each viewer that buys
Each of the five has its own pros and cons. The best advice is to use some combination of the five… or all of them.
Affiliate programs can be lucrative for mid-sized and large channels because but the affiliate model is also one that can be used from the very start. Before you’ve even reached the 1000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of YouTube watch time required to join the YouTube Partner Program.
Your very first videos can include affiliate links. By starting early, you’ll also gain an understanding of how your channel and your growing audience converts. This can help a lot when negotiating your first sponsorship deals. Building a successful affiliate program also creates real value for your channel, providing a baseline for your channel’s value at a given point in time.
In this post, we’ll be talking about affiliate sales, and specifically how to succeed as an Amazon affiliate for YouTube.
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Focus: Set Your Goal and Work Toward It
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 out focusing on affiliate marketing.
However, it’s risky to have it (or any of the other five main revenue opportunities we mentioned) as your channel’s sole revenue stream.
2. Focus is also relevant inside the world of affiliate marketing. Start out with laser focus. Don’t join every single affiliate program. Join one, or at most a few, as you start your affiliate marketing journey.
Don’t let yourself get sucked into creative, or complicated, programs and tools. Look for ways to easily and naturally add affiliate links in your content so you can keep your energies focused on building your most important asset. Your audience.
Our Advice: Join the Amazon Affiliate Program for YouTube
The Amazon Associates program is a great way to learn the affiliate marketing ropes. Also, Amazon offers such a massive variety of products that you’re sure to find some that are relevant to your audience.
Once you’re familiar with the Amazon affiliate program for YouTube, you can consider expanding into other, more rewarding affiliate marketing opportunities from there.
How Affiliate Marketing works for YouTubers
In the simplest terms, affiliate marketing is you, the content creator, recommending a product or service and getting a cut if someone in your audience buys it.
Affiliate marketing programs will give you a unique ID or link that identifies anyone who visits as having been influenced by you and your content. The retailer, in this case, Amazon, will reward you with a percentage of the money earned on products that were sold to the shopper you recommended.
As an Amazon affiliate for YouTube, you can share links in your videos and descriptions. You can also use affiliate links in blog posts, in emails, in social posts… pretty much anywhere you’re able to share a link.
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).
Amazon Affiliate Marketing for YouTube: An Overview
While the Amazon affiliate program, known as the “Amazon Associates Program,” isn’t perfect, it’s a great place to start and will grow with you. Some of the biggest YouTubers still swear by it. Besides staying “focused” and starting with just one program, here are some of the things that make the Amazon.com affiliate program a great first step.
The biggest selling point is this: It’s easy.
The Amazon affiliate for YouTube program is run by Amazon, for Amazon. You don’t have to qualify with this affiliate network, or that affiliate network. This removes some of the complexity. All the documentation for the Amazon affiliate program is in one place, in the “Associates Central” dashboard. Everything in Associates Central is focused on just the one, single affiliate program.
Building an Amazon affiliate for YouTube link is simple. This means you can choose any product you want to recommend and quickly convert it into an affiliate link.
There are numerous tools, built and managed by both Amazon as well as third parties, that take a lot of work out of the Associate’s program.
According to Statistia, Amazon snagged 37 cents of every dollar spent in ecommerce in the US in 2023. There are over 200 million Amazon Prime members, each spending more than $1,000 per year with Amazon on average.
In other words, most people today are regular Amazon shoppers. People understand and feel comfortable with Amazon as a retailer. The Amazon affiliate for YouTube program is just an extension of the store and so has some inherent familiarity and thus comfort
Finally, the Amazon affiliate program is mature. The bugs have been worked out. The program has been tested, vetted, and improved over time. So, as long as your affiliate links are built correctly, and you are following the rules, it’s really hard to mess up using the Amazon affiliate program.
Amazon Affiliate for YouTube Unlocks a Massive Product Catalog
Amazon sells a lot of stuff! Amazon has more than 12 million products directly for sale, not including books, media, wine, and services.
In other words, pretty much anything someone could want to buy, they can very likely buy from Amazon. For YouTube creators, this means you can go deep into your niche, be able to find relevant products to recommend, all without needing to join a specialty retailer affiliate program for YouTube.
Amazon Affiliate for YouTube Allows “Halo” Commission
Consider Amazon’s incredible market share and the mind-boggling array of products it offers and one of the biggest advantages of Amazon affiliate program comes into focus.
Halo commissions on “indirect qualifying purchases.”
Halo commissions are affiliate revenue you can earn on products you weren’t even recommending.
For example, you can earn a commissions when someone buys toilet paper, even though they clicked on a link to the TV you were reviewing and recommending. There’s obviously a bit more to it than that, but these halo commissions can make up a significant chunk of the revenue you generate from the Amazon affiliate program.
Amazon is Global
Amazon has incredible brand recognition worldwide, which can be a big benefit for you as you build out the audience on your channel.
The Amazon.com storefront supports both English and Spanish and a large number of products can be shipped internationally. Amazon also has a number of regional storefronts that they’ve spent billions on optimizing for regional markets.
Compliance & Staying On Amazon’s Good Side
While we’ll cover the three most common mistakes, and provide links to additional resources, it’s important that you take the time to review the Amazon Associates Operating Agreement and the accompanying Program Policies. Further, it’s also important to note that we aren’t lawyers and this isn’t legal advice.
Just remember, you can’t win the game if you don’t know the rules!
Stay Away From Cloaking
This is a bit of a misnomer of a term but is often cited as the most common reason YouTubers are banned from the program.
First, it’s important to note Amazon absolutely allows you to use a link shortener, or a third-party tool, with your Amazon affiliate links. However, when doing so, it’s important that you disclose the destination of your link.
There are two simple things all Amazon associates need to do:
Mention Amazon
Shopper trust is Amazon’s North Star, and that relates to its affiliate program as well.
When you post Amazon affiliate links in your video descriptions using a third-party tool it’s really important that you mention “Amazon” in near proximity to the link. It’s essential the shopper knows where they are going when they click on that link (it can also help with conversion rates by helping the shopper better trust the link).
List Your Channel –
When you sign up as an Amazon affiliate for YouTube, you have to tell Amazon about the various sites and social media channels where you plan on using your Amazon affiliate links. You have to keep that list updated too. If not, do it now (and be sure not to just put “youtube.com” but rather the full URL for your channel). There is a best practice, explored below, that simplifies this requirement.
Amazon Affiliate Marketing and Full Disclosure
Being transparent that you are promoting a product and that you can financially benefit is absolutely critical in the world of affiliate marketing, especially with the Amazon affiliate program. There are two “levels” at which you need to publicly state your usage of an affiliate program, Amazon’s or not.
FTC Disclaimer
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), has the mandate to help the average (American) shopper know when they are being advertised to. In the eyes of the FTC, being “advertised” to includes using affiliate links when you recommend products. As a result, to be in compliance with the FTC’s rules you need to make your affiliate disclosure “clear” and “conspicuous.” A few examples include:
“I may earn commissions for purchases made through the links below.”
“If you buy something through our “links” we may get a small share of the sale.”
“Please know, Amazon may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links below.”
Amazon Associates Disclaimer
In addition to the FTC disclaimer, the Amazon Affiliate program also requires you to include a notice about your relationship with Amazon. This is a standardized disclosure and simply reads: “As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.”
Unlike the FTC disclosure, Amazon allows this disclosure to be a bit more buried and is okay in the About Us page on your channel.
Don’t put Amazon Affiliate Links in Your Videos
Simply put, don’t ask for clicks on your affiliate links in your videos! Don’t ask for your audience to support you (via your affiliate links)! Don’t ask that they bookmark your affiliate links! In fact, we encourage you not to include mentioning “support” in your FTC disclosure.
Amazon doesn’t allow any sort of “incentivized” behavior concerning their affiliate links. It’s all too easy to fall into the trap in the name of being honest and authentic with your audience, but something as simple as mentioning your page or channel is “supported” by Amazon’s affiliate program or earning affiliate commissions can be enough to get you in trouble.
The worst part is that if you say one of these things in your video, and it’s what Amazon’s compliance team finds, your only option for staying in the program may be to delete that video and any other video that includes this language. That’s a hard decision you don’t want to have to make.
Amazon Affiliate Best Practices For YouTubers
It’s important to start this section acknowledging that things evolve and we are all learning so any best practice today may not be a best practice tomorrow or may never have been a best practice for you. We strongly encourage you to constantly experiment and learn more about the program to figure out what works best for you. However, here are a handful of things we’ve seen great success with.
Be Authentic
Only recommend products that you’d legitimately buy or have used is important. Especially in the early days. Trust is key andyour audience can still sniff out the BS. While not exclusively a YouTuber, Pat Flynn does an amazing job focusing on authenticity in his explainers of affiliate marketing.
Standardize Descriptions
Since you are reading this article on the TubeBuddy blog, you already know how powerful TubeBuddy can be. Bulk Find & Replace in particular is a godsend for managing and updating your affiliate links across all of your videos.
Go Global
Currently, there are 17 different Amazon stores around the world (eg. Amazon.ca for Canada, and Amazon.in for India, etc.), with each storefront being fully optimized for its audience with the local language, currency, fast and affordable shipping, etc.
What many YouTubers don’t realize is that Amazon’s affiliate program is storefront specific. The Amazon.com affiliate program only rewards you for commissions for sales in the Amazon.com store.
Become an Amazon Affiliate for YouTube
All of this is to say, you should probably join the Amazon affiliate program. With relatively simple setup for affiliates, Amazon’s built-in trust as a retailer, and its deep product offering, there’s nothing to lose.
And once you’re in the Amazon affiliate for YouTube program, follow the best practices we’ve outlined above to maximize your earnings over the long term.
get an unfair advantage on YouTube
Give your YouTube channel the upper hand and easily optimize for more views, more subs, and more of every metric that matters.
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