Four Secrets for Beating Your Affiliate Competition and Generating Bigger Commission Checks

Look around your niche – you’ve got a boatload of affiliate competition, don’t you? Depending on your niche and what you’re selling, you may be competing with dozens, hundreds or even thousands of other people who are selling the exact same thing as you. And that doesn’t even count all the others who’re selling similar but different competing products.

But hold up for a second…

The vast majority of these “competitors” aren’t really competitors at all. Many of these marketers (and I use that term loosely) put up a website, paste ads all over the place, and consider that a good job.

You know what? You can beat that, easily.

And what about those affiliates in your niche who are good at what they do? You can beat them too. You just need to develop a strategy for attracting your prospects’ attention, building good relationships with them, and then promoting desirable offers.

Check out these keys for implementing this strategy…

Become a Trusted Advisor

You may be thinking of yourself as an affiliate marketer – if so, it’s time for a bit of a mindset tweak. Instead of thinking of yourself as a marketer, you want to start thinking of yourself as a trusted advisor.

If you think of yourself primarily as a marketer, then you’re going to do things that primarily benefit you. If you start thinking of yourself as an advisor, then you’re going to have your prospects’ best interests at heart. Not surprisingly, when your primary goal is to help others, you end up benefiting greatly too. And I’m not just talking about feeling good because you’re helping others. I’m talking about benefiting by pulling down huge commission checks.

Look around, and you’ll see that many of the affiliates in your niche are using the “churn and burn” strategy of platform building. They promote every new product that comes down the pike, often using copy-and-paste ads, and often without even properly reviewing the product. Their promos just become white noise in a market full of other people pushing the same products using the same ads.

This is the first point where you differentiate yourself from your competitors. Instead of pushing every new thing that comes down the pike, you’ll want to honestly assess these products. Are they good solutions for your audience? If not, don’t promote them. If so, let your audience know.

Your audience is going to catch on very quickly that you’re not the type of affiliate who blindly promotes everything. They’re going to see that you only promote the BEST products, and you always do so honestly. You tell the truth about products, whether you’re getting a commission for them or not. Sometimes you even promote free products because they are the very best solution for your audience.

If you’re having troubles making the mindset change from “marketer” to “advisor,” there is a trick to make it simple. Before you send out a single piece of content or recommend any product, ask yourself if you would send this content or make this recommendation to your best friend. If the answer is “yes,” then send it to your audience. If the answer is “no,” then you need to create high-quality content and make recommendations that you’d be proud to pass along to a friend.

On a related topic…

Build Your Own Platforms

As you can see, one of the big keys to this strategy is to build trusting relationships with your audience. But you can’t do this if your audience only sees your content and recommendations sporadically. That’s why you need to build a platform of prospects and customers.

Yes, you can and should build up your social media platforms, as that’s a good component of your overall marketing strategy. But when it comes to your primary platform, it needs to be something you own and control. Namely, you need to build your own mailing list.

So yes, get on Twitter. Start a Facebook group. Do blog marketing. But when it comes to building a platform, you want to put 100% of your resources into building your own list. It’s the best platform for relationship building, as you can use your autoresponder and a set of evergreen emails to do a lot of the relationship building for you. Just be sure you’re sending out high-quality content and product recommendations in every email you send.

In addition to relationship-building, you also want to use your platforms to establish your expertise. Give your audience tips, strategies, ideas and more that they’re not getting anywhere else. Pick a topic in your niche, and become THE expert on that particular topic. And prove every day that you’re the expert, by sharing unique solutions and ideas. If people get ideas from you that they’re not getting anywhere else, you can bet they’re going to very quickly become loyal customers.

Which brings us to the next point…

Add Value to Every Offer

Developing trusting relationships with your audience and establishing your expertise are going to go a long ways towards helping you generate bigger commission checks. Nonetheless, when you promote an affiliate offer, you’ll want to further differentiate yourself from your competitors by offering a valuable bonus.

The key to this strategy is to offer a bonus that’s not just related to the main product, but ideally it should be something that people can use to make the main product better, faster or easier.
For example, if the affiliate product you’re promoting is a course on video marketing, then you might offer an app that makes it quick and easy for people to create and edit videos.

If you’d like to ramp up this strategy even more, then put a limit on your bonus. E.G., “This offer is good for the next 48 hours only.” You’ll find that adding a countdown timer alongside this offer further boosts urgency and conversions. You can even add a dynamic countdown timer to your emails if you use EmailDyno.

Engage Your Prospects

Your goal first and foremost in everything you do is to work on engaging your prospects’ attention. Your prospect only has a limited amount of time and attention, so these are scarce and valuable resources. Everyone else in your niche is competing for your prospects’ time and attention as well. The person who engages the prospect is the one who wins – and the winner get the attention, the clicks and the sales.

This means every piece of content you send out needs to speak directly to your prospect in order to grab attention. In particular, you want to focus on:

• Email subject lines.
• Email openers.
• Blog article titles.
• Titles of your bonus products.
• Headlines on lead pages and sales pages.
• Primary benefits on lead pages and sales pages.

Items like email subject lines should seek to share benefits and arouse curiosity too, if possible.

Any content you share should further engage attention by being unique, solving a specific problem, and created in a way that holds the audience’s attention.

One way to help you get attention in your emails is by personalizing your content. In other words, you want to use the recipient’s name in the email – but don’t overuse it, as your prospect will tune you out if you do that.

Most marketers use the recipient’s name in the salutation of the email (e.g., “Hi [first name]”). That’s okay, but it’s not ideal for two reasons:

1) You’re using up valuable “email preview” content greeting the recipient, when you could be using that space with clever sales copy to catch the recipient’s attention. This tends to drive up clicks, opens and reads.

2) Many recipients will simply ignore the salutation of the email since it’s so common for their name to appear in that place.

So, when SHOULD you use your recipient’s name? The key is to use it at a moment when it could have the greatest impact.

For example, you can use the recipient’s name in the call to action. E.G.. “Bill, click here now to claim your free trial.”

Another impactful way to personalize emails is by including the recipient’s name on an image. Think of it – when was the last time you saw your name on an image inside an email? Probably the 12th of never?

Same with your prospect – they’ve rarely if ever received an email with a personalized image. As such, this sort of novelty really captures attention.

If you’d like to see an example of how to do this, along with the tool you can use to make this happen, click here…

Now a few parting thoughts…

Conclusion

If your plan is to be a mediocre affiliate pulling in mediocre commission checks, then by all means do what everyone else is doing. However, if you’re looking to become a super affiliate, then you’re definitely going to want to put the above tips and ideas to work in your affiliate business.

Remember, the one who holds the prospect’s attention is the one who’s going to get the sale.

That’s why job #1 for you is to capture attention through engaging, high-quality content across all your platforms. In particular, be sure every email you send seeks to build relationships, establish your expertise, and engage the prospect.

If you’d like to up your engagement game (which automatically ups your affiliate game as a whole), then you’re definitely going to want to check out EmailDyno.

This amazing little tool lets you drop dynamic, engaging content into every email you send. This dynamic content includes:

• Countdown timers.
• Video image overlays.
• Personalized images.
• Surveys.
• Ratings.
• And more.

To see the full list of what all EmailDyno can do, and to see examples of it in action, you’ll want to check out this page here…

The tool works with your existing autoresponder, and using it is as easy as copying and pasting a line of code into your emails.

It’s the best way I know to get your subscribers’ attention in really unique and surprising ways, so be sure to click the link above to check it out now!

In this article we are talking about Authority Marketing and how to sell more of anything as an expert in your niche.

One of the best things you can do to position yourself at the top of your market is to learn as much as possible about your competition, as well as what's selling in your niche and what your customer base wants most from you.

How do you do this? Read & research, of course!

Start by reading the top three to five best-selling books within your market.

Top selling books are one of the easiest ways to not only see how someone is presenting information to your audience, but what might be missing that you could include in your own products or services.

Analyze every component of their campaigns, launches and how they've positioned their product.

In addition, focus on studying the following:

• What style of writing (as well as writing voice) are they using? This will help you determine what resonates with that particular audience.
• What formats are they offering? (books, video, etc.)
• How are they marketing this book so well that it’s a best-seller?
• How are they connecting with their audience? What social media platforms are they on?
• What solution are they offering?
• What is their USP? How are they standing out from the crowd?
• How could you expand on, or improve with your own product?

Also, when using Amazon as a platform for researching potential niches, make sure that you keep a look out for the actual best-sellers ranking as this will help you quickly identify the most popular books in any given genre or niche.

You'll find this by scrolling down until you see the Product Details section. This is where you typically find things like the book size, page count, etc.

In that section, you'll find a section indicating Best Sellers Rank (BSR) which will help you pinpoint just how well the product is ranking.

Go to the Best Selling Products page and click on the broad category you’d like to check (in this case, Books).

Then, just start searching sub-genres until you get to the specific category you’re interested in. It will take a bit of work, but you’ll be able to create a snapshot of the top-selling books written by authorities in your market, which will ultimately help you figure out what is selling and what your next move should be. 🙂

You can also do a Google search for “best-selling books X” where X is the specific niche you’re after.

You do want to be very specific here. After all, there are likely literally thousands of books that have been written on your chosen topic or niche. You want to narrow down so you can focus only on the bestsellers.

You don’t have to limit yourself to just three to five books either, but if you're short on time you should at least try to review the top 3-4 in your market.

Once you’ve finished reading, look up those experts and start networking. Follow their posts and social media platforms.

Start commenting and linking back to their material. If you work towards getting on their radar, you'll open yourself up to many networking opportunities, so begin by building your presence and always keep a look out for ways to get their attention.

Next we’ll talk about narrowing your topic down until you’ve got the best one for your area of expertise.

Narrowing Your Focus

During your book search, you likely noticed that there are literally millions of books out there in your field.

Daunting, isn’t it?

It would be – if you were planning on choosing that broad a topic to build your authority in.

The fact is, you should never aim for a broad niche. When it comes to positioning yourself as an authority in your market, you want to become the go-to person for a specific topic, or section of the market.

Then later, you can expand.

That way you're not only able to locate your customer base, you'll have a clear focus and a solid action plan. Instead of trying to be everywhere at once, you'll also be able to narrow down the places that you can best connect to your audience.

Let’s go with some examples so you can see how this process works.

First, pick a fairly broad topic. Let’s say “podcasting.”

Now, you want to start narrowing that topic down, whittling away at it bit by bit until you hit something specific enough to work with.

“Podcasting” will get you those millions of hits, so let’s narrow down to “What do you need to get started in podcasting?”

That’s still going to get a ton of hits, so let’s try “What equipment do you need to get started in podcasting?”

Wow … still quite a few out there. Let’s get really specific and go with “What is the best microphone for podcasting?”

That’s something really specific – and you can create a series of pillar content based on different components of starting a successful podcast such as different brands, prices, components and picture quality. Then expand your content or course to include how to launch a podcast, marketing strategies and so on.

You could also interview experts and other podcasters to see what they recommend (which will also put you on the radar of authorities in the podcasting niche!).

You can see we’ve gotten really specific with our niche topic.

That’s a pretty extensive and popular topic, and that’s the sort of thing you need to aim for. You want to find a niche that is evergreen and also a niche that you can go deeper into. So, instead of cornering yourself in a market or niche where there are limited topics to discuss, venture into markets where there is a need for constant content that covers a wider variety of topics.

Make sense?

Next we’ll talk about seminars and how they can help you stand out from the crowd and position yourself as an authority quickly.

Easy Positioning Strategy

Creating webinars is a great way to introduce your brand and connect with your target audience. Everyone loves watching videos that help them solve a problem or better understand a topic.

Just the same, online seminars (or podcasts, live events, etc) will help attract people who are looking for quick and easy information.

Regardless of the format and platform you choose, when you're first starting out you'll want the majority of your webinar and other video content to be available at no cost.

This is the beginning of your funnel, where you'll be able to grow your list, connect with your audience and introduce your brand so the more people coming through that funnel, the better.

Later on, once you've established a foothold in your niche, you'll be able to create content that sits behind a paywall, or you can repurpose existing webinar content to sell a paid course, training, coaching or other product or service.

Every video, podcast, webinar or seminar you create is money in the bank. The content will become valuable, will help you build a content backlist that you can later extend and leverage in order to turn viewers into paid customers.

And they'll begin to recognize your brand as you offer more content that highlights what you bring to the table and how you can help them solve a specific problem in your market.

In addition, professional and civic associations are always looking for keynote speakers, and if you’re willing to work for little or nothing, they may jump at the chance to invite you into their community which could easily maximize your exposure and help you grow your business even faster.

Try to target your content to a specific audience. If you’re speaking on “The best microphone for podcasting,” for example, you might tailor that for a business audience into “The best microphone for dictation” or “The best microphone for virtual meetings.”

And don’t forget about other businesses or community groups who may not be so obvious (they could be incredible sources for free exposure!) such as: churches, senior centers, men’s and women’s clubs, garden clubs, single parents’ groups, and sports organizations.

Many of those would be happy to welcome you on board in order to provide their community with new information and helpful content.

If you’ve written a book in your market, you can add writing groups and book clubs to those potential networking groups. In addition, you could network with other authors in your niche by promoting one another's backlist of books or content.

Now start thinking about what video content, seminars, webinars or even live videos that you could easily create in order to maximize exposure and reach deeper into your market.

Using LinkedIn to Establish Credibility

LinkedIn is an easy, low-cost platform you can use not only to build credibility, but to attract your ideal clients.

Most people think of this platform as a job-seeking one, and that’s true, but it also gives you the chance to validate your skills and expertise within your ideal client base.

In order words, your LinkedIn profile provides valuable social proof: your resume, history and skills, all in one place.

First of all, you need a profile that stands out of the crowd.

Keep in mind that LinkedIn is a search engine. This means it provides you a great opportunity to be located and validated by new clients.

The key to this is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). You’ll need to research the keywords that are trending in your market so you can incorporate them into your profile.

Think about who you want to be found by, and determine which keywords they’ll likely use when searching for people in your market. Then build your content around those keywords.

Make sure you include a link to your website and mention guest posts and podcasts in your profile.

If you’ve written a book, provide training, courses or other valuable tools, certainly link to that.

List every “employment” opportunity you’ve had that applies to your existing niche, market or business – i.e. seminars, guest blogging or podcasting, videos, etc.

And be sure to include your skills and accomplishments. Fill out your profile as completely as possible and make sure it includes all those keywords.

Once you have a solid, well-rounded profile, start joining some groups on LinkedIn. Comment exactly like you do in other social media platforms to network with others and build that expert reputation.

Post some SEO articles and pillar content.

Curate information that your audience will consider valuable.

Share and promote any upcoming business and industry events.

Edit your summary and headline so they reflect your current plan and target audience. Share any awards and achievements you've received.

And always make sure to include examples of your work. Link to other online media where your audience can find you. Display any industry associations or certifications.

Everything you can think of to back up your claim to be an expert will go the distance in solidifying your position.

Once you’ve gotten yourself set up on LinkedIn, make sure it’s really easy for people to connect with you. Include a link to your profile on any social network or community you're active in.

Remember that you can also use LinkedIn to do some research on your potential clients as well. Do a bit of research and see what they’re looking for so you can tailor your information specifically for them.

Next we’ll talk about the importance of utilizing email campaigns and autoresponders within your marketing strategies in order to keep yourself in a solid position.

Email Your Way to Authority

Now let's talk email – specifically, growing an email list that helps you quickly maximize your exposure while keeping you connected to your core audience.

Adobe reports that email has a Return On Investment (ROI) of $40 for every $1 spent.

That beats every other type of ad you can purchase, along with organic search.

First of all, you need to define your audience. Hopefully, you’ve done some work in this area and you know what your target market is looking for and most interested in.

You need a clear purpose, so think about your overall goals and the end result.

What is the objective of your email campaigns?

Ultimately, it's to make the sale, yes, but initially your email campaigns should work towards introducing your company, highlighting your brand and USP and conditioning your readers to open your emails and respond to the content.

Your email campaigns shouldn't be structured to hard-sell early on. The point of a newsletter, whether it be weekly, monthly or just set up to occasionally broadcast, all need to focus on positioning yourself as an authority in your market.

This means that the more free, valuable content you provide, the easier it will be to persuade readers that you are the go-to person in your market: the person they need to help them solve their problems.

Regularly emailing your list and providing them with frequent updates and free content is one of the easiest ways to become a recognized leader in your market. You'll be able to connect with your audience in a more personal way. You'll have the opportunity to survey your audience in order to see what they are most interested in, what they need help with.

All of this goes the distance in helping you creating effective marketing campaigns as well as products and service launches that are guaranteed to be successful – because they are based on what your market has already indicated they are interested in.

Your next step is to choose a mailing list service. This account will house your email campaigns and your subscriber lists.

There are dozens of email service providers to choose from, including Active Campaign, CovertKit, GetResponse and aWeber.

Just research which service is best for you, sign up and create your first automated email. Set it up so that it goes out instantly whenever someone subscribes to your list.

Remember that the first email is an introductory one. It's designed to welcome your subscriber to your inner circle and give them a clear vision as to what's to come (why they should stay subscribed to your list and open your future emails).

Present your USP up front and centre. Kick off your email campaigns with a clear promise of what you have to offer and what your goals are.

You'll also want to create an incentive gift. This is featured on your squeeze or landing pages and helps to encourage visitors to subscribe to your mailing list in order to receive the free offer.

Make this the very best it can be! It should be original, useful and very targeted. If you plan to use private label content to create your incentive, make sure to edit and revise it enough to where it includes additional information. Put your own spin on it and make sure it highlights your brand identity.

Try to follow the 80/20 rule – 80 percent high-quality content and 20 percent advertising. That way, you won’t lose followers who get tired of being hit with offer after offer.

The goal is to keep them glued to your emails because they know how valuable they are. So offer as much useful content as possible upfront and you'll easily sell them on the backend. 🙂

Next, we’ll talk about trade organizations.

Networking Your Way To The Top

Remember your LinkedIn account? Use that to locate other experts in your field you can connect with!

You can follow them on various social media platforms or on their website/blog. Be sure you’re commenting with pertinent information and retweeting/sharing appropriately.

Also be sure you’re crediting them when you quote or paraphrase their work. Link back to their website or social media account and email them to let them know you’ve included them in any material that you're distributing to your audience.

Most of the time, they’ll reciprocate and retweet or share something you’ve posted as well.

Remember those best-selling books you may have researched in order to determine what your own content should be about?

You can easily network with other authors by joining their groups, sharing valuable content throughout reader-based communities. Search Facebook for relevant groups. It's a great way to stand out from the crowd because it allows you to share information to a very targeted audience.

If you are able to land a guest spot on an expert's blog or podcast, even better. Be sure to link back to your own website, blog, social media accounts, and video content. Create a bio that represents your brand and highlights your websites and use it everywhere you can.

Join two or three related trade organizations. These organizations offer you opportunities to network, take educational classes, and get up-to-date information in your area of expertise.

You can also check out the local scene by looking in a website like MeetUp to see if there are any live get-togethers planned in the near future.

You may be pleasantly surprised at how active some of these organizations are.

Attend national trade shows and conferences. These meetings give you the ultimate networking opportunity. You’re almost guaranteed to run into some of the top thinkers and leaders in your market at these events!

You can participate in training sessions and seminars – learn new things and get the chance to see how other experts are expanding their outreach and growing their audience.

Don’t overbook yourself with all this networking, though. The idea is to set yourself up as an expert, not to burn out trying to do everything at once.

Authority Mindset

We’ve been talking about ways to position yourself as an authority, but one of the most important things is maintaining a mindset of an expert.

What does that mean?

Changing the way you may think. Never second-guessing yourself.

Think:

You're worthy of a captive audience. You're capable of growing a successful business, and you have something valuable to share.

The key is to have faith in yourself and to understand that while it will take work to establish yourself as an authority in your market, it is worth the effort.

It's a long-game. Don't expect overnight results. At the same time, the goal is to keep consistent. Work at building your audience, take small steps every day to work on something that will ultimately move the needle.

It likely won't happen quickly and you'll need to invest the time and effort upfront in order to create a solid platform for your brand, but if you remain focused, you will be successful.

The authority mindset is all about seeing the bigger picture.

You'll spend time creating a plan of action and then break down those elements into smaller, manageable steps. You'll spend time identifying where your audience is and more importantly, who your audience is. That way you'll be able to create content, products or services that they desperately need.

You'll be a problem-solver. Your brand will become known as the go-to person in your niche because you can produce results.

You'll stay on track, only expanding and venturing into new territory once you've gained a strong foothold in your existing market.

And above all else, you won't give up.

Becoming an authority in ANY niche is possible, regardless of existing competition, but the truth is, behind every successful brand is consistency. They move along that path to success, one step at a time. They focus on always building, always creating and always growing.

Do that and you're golden.

A few years ago, a number of Amazon affiliate marketers were making killer— and I mean KILLER money making simple micro-niche sites and promoting Amazon products. It was so easy to make a killing with this method that you could work just a few hours a week and make a full-time income EASILY.

Unfortunately, those days are gone.

Don’t get me wrong! It’s still VERY possible to make a great income promoting Amazon products as an Amazon affiliate, but it’s not as simple as writing a handful of short articles or reviews and throwing them up on a simple blog with a keyword-rich domain name and getting mass back links. It just doesn’t work that way anymore.

See, Google finally realized that all those sites had very little actual value to visitors. They were created with no purpose other than to rank in Google and send traffic immediately off to Amazon via an affiliate link. This didn’t make for a very good user experience, and Google started penalizing such sites harshly.

These days, Google likes to rank sites that have a lot of high quality content, and by high quality content, they seem to believe the longer the content, the better. Most successful sites seem to have articles that are 1,000 words or longer, and some SEO guides are now suggesting up to 3,000 words! That’s ten times as long as articles used to be, on average!

Additionally, backlinking isn’t nearly as effective as it once was, making it very difficult for a relatively new website to rank.

These days, it requires a much different approach. It takes a bit more effort, but you’ll learn that it really isn’t much more work than the old micro niche method. In fact, you may realize you like this new method better than the old one! (And it’s actually cheaper, too.)

A lot has changed, sure, but the fact is, there’s still plenty of money to be made promoting products on Amazon. You just have to understand the new system, and how to make the most of it.

In this article, you’re going to learn how to use this new method to promote Amazon affiliate products, and how you can still make big, big money with it!

The New Amazon Affiliate Strategy

These days, the strategy is considerably different, and it does take a bit longer than it used to. Instead of building dozens, or even hundreds of tiny niche sites, you must focus on building one larger site, or perhaps a few.

The quality of your content must be much higher. Your articles must be much longer. You have to spend time actively promoting your sites instead of just getting a bunch of backlinks and then counting on Google to send you traffic.

It's really not much more work than the old method. Instead of writing 5 articles per site, spread out over 500 sites, you just write 500 articles per site, spread out over 5 sites. Instead of spending hours getting links to your sites, you spend that time on social media promoting your sites. As you can see, the work is pretty much the same either way, but you have a lot fewer sites to keep track of.

Best of all, you only need to pay for a handful of domain renewals each year instead of hundreds!

The only real difference is that articles need to be a lot longer than they used to be. It’s generally thought that you should aim for a minimum of 1,000-1,500 words per article, and some SEO experts claim 3,000 is a better target. Don’t let it freak you out. Most people can write at least 500 words per hour, and some can write a couple thousand words in that time. It shouldn’t take you more than 2-3 hours to write a long article, or you could outsource each one for a few bucks.

Remember, though, these need to be QUALITY articles. It’s no longer possible to rank well with spun crap, or articles written by non-native English speakers, because Google actually checks things like spelling and grammar. Articles don’t have to be perfect, but they do have to be relatively error free.

Of course, Google isn’t the be-all and end-all of traffic! These days, social media is actually a lot more important for the average website!

Next we’re going to talk about choosing a niche, and why it’s so much different than it used to be. Niche selection may be different, but it’s still absolutely vital!

Choosing A Niche For Amazon Affiliate Marketing

In the old days of Amazon affiliate marketing, one typically chose a very small niche, such as French press coffee makers, or even a very specific brand or model. They bought a domain name that contained an important keyword phrase, put up a small website with 5-10 articles, got some back links, and then just waited for Google to do its thing. A few weeks, or maybe months in some cases, later… money!

It’s unfortunate that it no longer works this way, but some unethical marketers just put up spun PLR that made no sense to visitors and ruined Google’s user experience, and Google had no choice but to react to save the integrity of their search engine.

The result is a much better user experience, but a much harder time ranking.

Choosing a niche these days is much different. These days, it isn’t about getting quick traffic to send straight off to affiliate links. It just doesn’t work that way, anymore.

Now it’s important to choose a broader niche, with wide appeal, so you can use social media to get traffic while you wait for Google to start sending you traffic. And it takes a lot longer to rank well in Google than it used to.

Let’s look at the example of French press coffee makers. This used to be a niche you might choose for a micro niche site. You might have even focused on one particular brand or type of French press. But these days, that niche is just too narrow.

Instead, you’d focus on the broader niche of coffee, or maybe even on cooking and food in general. This gives you a much larger base of potential articles, and will get you a lot more traffic overall.

Remember how we mentioned you’d save money? Well, if you had 500 domain names back in the old days, it would have cost you about $5,000 per year in domain renewals at $10 each. (More if you used one of the more expensive registrars!) Now? Just 1-5 domain names is plenty! You can focus on just 1-5 broad niches and make as much money as you could with 500 of those micro niche sites, perhaps more!

But niche selection is vital. You want to choose something that follows the following formula:

1. The niche must be big enough to have plenty of Amazon affiliate products to promote and plenty of traffic to go around.

2. The products must sell for enough money to make it worth your while to promote them. At least $10 per product, but not so expensive that it will be a hard sell.

3. It must be something that people would be likely to like and share on social media. (Most niches fit this just fine, but there may be occasional niches that just don’t get that much social activity.)

If you’re in doubt about how much social media interest there is in a particular niche, just search Pinterest for some keywords in that niche and see how many re-pins each post is getting, on average. 1-10 is not very good. 11-20 is decent. Anything over 100 is a pretty good indication there’s interest on social media.

As for competition? You no longer have to worry much about it, because you won’t be getting much of your traffic from Google. Most of it, at least at first, will come from social media. And competition doesn’t really matter much on social media, because there’s so many users to go around and they consume a lot of content each.

Once you’ve chosen a niche (or a few niches), it’s time to choose a few products to promote. Next, we are going to look at the criteria to look for when deciding on a product to promote, because choosing the right products can make or break your campaigns!

Choosing An Amazon Product To Promote

Alright, thus far we’ve learned what doesn’t work anymore— namely micro niche sites. We’ve also covered the importance of writing longer, higher-quality content, and why it’s so important to use social media to promote your sites.

But now it’s time to talk about choosing products to promote, and it may not always be the obvious choices that make the most money.

One of the best types of products to promote is the one that is weird or shocking, but still something people would want to buy.

Let’s say your website and social media are all in the recipe niche, and you find a really cool kitchen gadget that can peel, core, and dice an apple with the press of a button in three seconds. (Doesn’t exist that I’m aware of, but that would be cool.)

This product is shocking and exciting. It’s something people would be quite interested in, and they would probably tend to share it, because holy moly, who wouldn’t want to see a a gadget that can make apple cubes like George Jetson?

Another type of product that works very well is the extremely useful one. Take the LifeStraw water filter. When it first came out, people were absolutely amazed. (Frankly, I still am.)

It’s like a really large straw with a water filter built in, and you can literally put one end into dirty water and suck the other end to get perfectly healthy, clean drinking water.

Genius, right?

It almost sounds too good to be true, but no, the darned thing actually does work, or so they say.

At one point, this thing was exploding all over social media, and it seemed like everyone was talking about how cool this thing was.

This was the perfect type of product to promote to all sorts of markets—housewives with families to protect, survivalists, camping and backpacking enthusiasts, preppers… the market for this product is quite substantial.

Now, it doesn’t exactly have to be such an amazing product. The odds of finding these really useful products, or really wild and crazy products, is slim. But finding products that are useful that not everyone knows about is not particularly difficult at all.

The main reason you want to promote products like this is so your content will be shared. When people visit your site to read about the product, you can write a snappy article about the product and add a link to it

Only about 10% of your content should focus on selling the product, and next you’re going to find out how to create killer content to promote all those great products you found to promote!

Content is one of the most important elements of this strategy, so read on to find out how to make the type of content that gets shared!

Creating Great Content

Content is a much more important element than it was in the days of micro niche sites. Back then, content written by overseas outsourcers and then spun with software was common, and articles were only 100-300 words. That won’t fly these days, because Google won’t rank it, and social media won’t share it.

In the past, keyword research was the main element of content creation. Now keywords really don’t matter as much, since Google isn’t the king of traffic anymore.

Creating great content requires a little research. You need to visit other sites in your niche to get an idea of the type of content people are currently looking for.

Content should be between 1,000 and 3,000 words, and also have some other forms of media, such as pictures (which are especially important for sharing on Pinterest, Facebook, and other sites), and videos. You can even use other people’s content by embedding YouTube videos onto your own pages and writing commentary to go along with them.

This content should be mostly free of spelling and grammatical mistakes, and thoroughly researched and written. This is not only to please Google, but, most importantly, to please visitors.

Remember, the old amazon affiliate method simply wanted to please Google by using keywords in the domain name, several times in the articles, and in back links. The content didn’t matter, because you actually just wanted visitors to leave your site through your affiliate link as quickly as possible.

But now that you aren’t going to be so worried about attracting Google traffic, you need to focus on making visitors happy. This, in turn, will please Google, because Google measures bounce rate (how long visitors stay on your site, and whether they read any other articles while they are there).

This means the longer and more interesting your articles, the better you’ll likely rank in Google, AND the more likely your content is to be shared on social media, which is where most of your traffic will come from.

There are easy ways to write content quickly, such as roundup posts. For example, you can gather 10-20 links to other people’s content, write a small description of each one, and provide a link at the end of each description.

Don’t worry about losing traffic to those other sites. Just set your links to open in a new window so the user stays on your site to read the rest of the content after viewing the other site.

Another bonus is that Google loves to see sites that link OUT to quality sites. In the old days, it was mostly links IN that counted for ranking, but now the links you send OUT matter, too.

The bottom line:

Make great content.

This is the best way to please both Google AND visitors.

Next, we’re going to talk about promoting your content on social media. Social media doesn’t have to be scary, and you will soon see just how easy it really is!

Social Media Promotion

Social media is THE way to get traffic these days. The traffic is easier to get than Google traffic, and its often a lot more effective in terms of getting the traffic to take action.

Before you decide you don’t want to use social media, just read through this whole article and see what you think. It’s really quite easy to use, and no, you don’t have to spend all day talking to people. Social media really doesn’t work that way.

Look, I’ve heard it all before:

“I hate social media with a passion!”

“I’m not a social person.”

“I tried social media and it didn’t work.”

If you think you hate social media, or you think you have to be a social butterfly to use it, you’re wrong. And if you think social media doesn’t work, you’re definitely wrong, because social traffic is some of the easiest, highest quality traffic the internet has ever seen!

Most people seem to think you have to chat all day to be effective on social media, but that’s not true.

It’s just like any other promotional method. Once you share a post, you really don’t have to interact with anyone if you don’t want to. People may comment on your posts, but you aren’t obligated to respond.

Let’s take a look at one social media site so you can get an idea of how easy it is to use – Pinterest.

If you’re not familiar with Pinterest, it’s like a virtual cork board, basically. You create different “boards” and then “pin” content to those boards.

There’s a system in place to let people comment on content and be “social”, but most people don’t really use it much. More likely, users just “re-pin” content, meaning they pin other people’s content to their own boards, which is a great thing. They may also just “like” the content.

Pinterest is a beautiful thing, because all you have to do is create different boards and “pin” your own content and other people’s content to those boards, and as other people see it, they will “re-pin” it to their boards, letting their own followers see it.

The biggest “secret” to using Pinterest is simply making sure each article you write on your site has a fantastic image to represent it on Pinterest.

Ideally, the image should be taller than it is wide, because Pinterest gives more real estate to taller images, thus making it more likely your content will be seen.

Next is Facebook, the behemoth of social media.

Once you build a fan page in your site’s niche, you can spend a little money on Facebook ads to grow the page’s fan base. Once you get a decent number of fans, the page will begin to grow organically.

Using a great image on each article will also benefit you on Facebook, because it will show up when you share your content on Facebook. A great image will make it more likely that people will visit your amazon affiliate site when they see the post on Facebook, and that they will like, comment, and share, which will get your content seen by more people.

Instagram is also another very useful social site.

Instagram is a content sharing site. You post an image or video using hash tags (like keywords, but proceeded with a hash tag symbol, like this: #keyword).

Other people will find your content by either searching for that particular hash tag, or they’ll see it because they have followed you on the site.

Again, you don’t have to be social. Just share your content, and you’re done.

You can’t provide direct links on Instagram, but you can post the URL of your Amazon affiliate site in the description of anything you post, and you can have a link to your site in your profile, too.

Hopefully you see the power of social media, and that it really doesn’t require you to be social. It’s just sharing content. That’s it!

Now we'll talk about ways to make money, including the best ways to promote Amazon products, and how you can make income in addition to your Amazon links.

Making Money With The New Amazon Strategy

This is the final paragraph on the new Amazon affiliate strategy, and it’s all about the bottom line—MONEY!

No method is going to be profitable unless you’re monetizing it correctly. And I have seen a LOT of sites that aren’t monetizing Amazon correctly—or anything else for that matter.

These days, throwing affiliate links into every post is a formula for disaster. Not only will Google not like this, but your visitors will see right through it.

You should put Amazon affiliate links in only about 1 in 5 or 1 in 10 posts, on average. Yes, that means the rest of your content isn’t theoretically monetized, but that’s okay. You are looking to build a long-term business, NOT just get people to your site to shove them off on an affiliate link as quickly as possible.

You should have an opt-in form on your site to capture leads so you can market to people later.

Don’t let a list intimidate you! A list is just like using social media. You share links and content. That’s it! No big deal, right?

When you choose a product to promote, you’ll want to write an article about the product itself. This will be in its own post, and ideally something people will find interesting enough to share.

You can talk about how useful the product is, and mention different ways it could be used.

Or you could talk about how funny or crazy it is, and make a few jokes about it.

There are many different angles you could take in a post about an Amazon product, and you should be able to figure out which to take based on each specific product.

You may be worried that you won’t make any money by only posting 1 in 5 or 1 in 10 articles with affiliate links, and that is understandable. But you can make money in other ways, too.

For example, you can add AdSense links to your content. This will help you make additional money from your traffic.

You can also create videos for YouTube that will accomplish two things:

1. It will draw people to your site from YouTube.

2. You can make money on YouTube by monetizing the videos you post.

Making videos that show you using the Amazon products you promote are especially effective, because they can show that the product actually IS quality and effective, so if you feel comfortable making videos, they’re the perfect way to get additional traffic AND more sales.

This concludes this article on making money as an Amazon affiliate. Remember, you can’t be successful if you don’t take action, so please use what you’ve learned and go make some money!

In this article we’re talking about becoming a YouTube influencer and using that influence to market your brand.

An influencer is someone who’s branded themselves as an expert in their niche, and has built a huge audience for that expertise.

Let's start by taking a look at how you can take your influencer video marketing to the next level by using customer stories.

Marketing Customer Stories

There’s almost no better way to tell the story of your product or service than by using your own customer’s stories.

Rather than a video of you bragging about your company or showing pictures of your merchandise, your videos will allow satisfied customers to sell your brand themselves.

The audience will see other people just like themselves, and will connect more with those videos than they might with a more typical advertisement.

But how do you get customer review videos? It’s actually pretty simple — and you usually don’t have to do more than offer a small freebie to get them to help you advertise.

Many people will be happy to help create a video just for the thrill of being on “your show” and getting their 15 minutes of fame.

With those, all you have to do is make sure their names are mentioned and that their efforts are publicly appreciated.

“Thanks to George Doe, one of our best customers, for this great video!” is all those customers need by way of “payment.”

With others, you might offer to provide a free product or service — if they will return the favor by filming themselves with that product or using that service.

Unboxing videos are very popular now, so you might film the customer opening the package and describing the product to your audience.

Or if you offer services rather than products, film the customer’s satisfied use of those services.

How-To videos are also popular, and a How-To from a customer will go farther than one by yourself.

Film your customer using the product or service and describing how it works as they do so. People love to learn how something works, and this way you get two bangs for your buck.

The audience will be happy to learn about your products or services, and they’ll see a satisfied customer who will encourage them to jump onboard and purchase their own product or service.

Another idea for customer videos is the “Around the World With X” video, where X is the name of your company.

Simply have a contest where the entry ticket is a film of the customer holding your product in a recognizable location — say, the Brooklyn Bridge or a by a famous waterfall. Or anywhere, really, that isn’t just a generic room in someone’s home.

Raffle off one of your products or services to a random filmmaker and you should get tons of entries from your customers, especially if you allow them to send in multiple films and receive multiple entries.

The idea is to allow your satisfied customers to sell your company for you. And the idea works extremely well if you use a little creativity when making your videos. See if you can come up with even more ideas for a customer-generated video for your channel.

“Showcase one or two video clips on YouTube,” says Div Manickham of Dell Boomi, “and your customers will be your advocates, sharing with the world how you helped them to be true heroes…Showcase your product in ‘One Day in the Life of a Customer.’”

Next we’ll take a look at those How-To videos and how to use them in marketing.

Marketing With How-To Videos

“Marketers not using YouTube, the second-largest search engine in the world,” says Marija Zivanovic-Smith of NCR Corporation, “are doing their companies a disservice.

If you don’t have a library of How-To videos, start building one now.”

“The do-it-yourself culture,” she says, “has been thriving for a long time and continues growing.”

People want to know how things work and how they can use various products and services in their own lives.

Creating a library of How-To videos will not only attract potential customers looking for help, but also advertise your business to those viewers.

They’ll see that your company is actively trying to help them out, and that will set you above other companies without that video library.

How-To videos are easy to make, too. Just pick a product or service and start asking questions.

How do I use this product to open a can?

How do I save a file with this software?

How do I put this together properly?

Think of questions that a typical customer might have and start making videos to answer each question for them.

If you keep your questions specific, you can create a whole library of How-To videos for each product or service you offer.

Do a Google search for some of your competitors and see what sorts of videos they’re providing. Or Google any famous company and look for their How-To section. You’ll likely see a large section devoted to the topic.

“Get creative,” says Zivanovic-Smith. “Have fun. Make your videos succinct. Enjoy the residual benefit of customer support fielding fewer calls.”

With a good How-To library, not only are you saving on customer support calls, you’re also advertising your brand for the customers looking for help.

You’re letting them know you’re a company who cares about them and wants them to be able to use your products or services without getting confused or frustrated. That’s the sort of thing that gets shared on social media and on blogs. And that’s the sort of word-of-mouth advertising you want.

So get started on that library and remember that less is more. The more specific each video is, the better.

Marketing Behind-the-Scenes

Now we’ll look at how behind-the-scenes videos can advertise your business and improve your marketing.

“There’s a reason YouTube vloggers are so popular,” says Melissa Kandel from little word studio. “Their content is engaging, authentic, and unscripted.

Take a tip from vloggers and create casual videos — a day in the life at your office, an act of kindness from your interns, a team member’s perspective at a conference booth.”

Here’s where you show that you’re not just a faceless company. You’re a real human being with a life that can be interesting to your customers. With these videos, you don’t want the polished, professional look that you’ve been aiming for with the rest of your channel.

A good behind-the-scenes video looks raw and unfinished. Think of a backstage video tour from your favorite band or celebrity. They’re not heavily edited or polished up. “Less production value or editing,” says Kandel, “can sometimes offer more value because it shows your brand isn’t just a name. It’s real.”

So what should you film? Just as Kandel suggested, try “A Day in the Life” videos where you “follow” either yourself or another employee around for the day. Show what duties they have, what their job entails. Tag along to a meeting (but don’t record anything sensitive!) or invite the camera to lunch. Chat with other employees and show that your subject is just an ordinary fellow with a real life, not just a cog in the system.

You can also create videos at a conference or convention, especially if you’ve reserved a booth for your company. Show the employees setting up the booth and showcase the products or services your company is promoting. Interview some of the booth’s visitors to get their honest opinions of the display. Who knows? You may even get some tips on how to improve your marketing, too.

Film a birthday party for an employee or a pizza party given for exemplary work by a department.

You can also showcase the expertise of your employees. Kristen Wessel of ChicExecs PR & Retail Strategy Firm suggests you use your employees as talent in your videos. “Ask them to speak about specific areas that they are experts in,” she says, “and offer advice and tips for businesses.”

“Become well-known in your field,” Wessel adds, “by posting these videos on YouTube and creating a company channel that entrepreneurs will want to subscribe to in order to get the latest tips and industry trends.”

If you use your own employees to film these tips and trends, you’re not only saving on professional speaker fees, but also showing off the talent in your company by promoting the expertise of your employees (or yourself, if you’re a one-person business).

Now let's look at cross-promoting your videos for even more exposure.

Cross Promoting Your Videos

“Many people have great content in their videos on YouTube,” Ellicia Romo of Peoples Mortgage Company says. “However, their channel may get lost.”

Not everyone uses YouTube as a search engine, although it is the Number 2 search engine in the world currently. And not everyone may discover your channel organically, by browsing the topics on the site. Your channel might be just one among hundreds, maybe thousands, of similar channels on YouTube. What can you do about that?

“Leverage the ease and popularity of YouTube,” says Romo, “by posting and then sharing your video in many other ways. Lead people back to your channel.”

She suggests embedding your video in the monthly newsletter your company sends out. What? You don’t have a monthly newsletter? There’s another thing for your “To-Do” list, then. Put out a newsletter and feature your latest videos there.

Another good tip is to use the end screen feature when editing. “Always ask people to subscribe,” says Romo. “Then, consistently post.” The more videos you have in your channel, the more time people will spend there, so be sure you’re posting something relevant two to three times a week.

Consistency is key in the video influencer marketplace. That way, when you add that “Subscribe Now” link to your videos, your audience will find a satisfying library of videos to peruse instead of just a few hastily thrown together offerings. Your company will be seen as professional —and helpful, as those videos will be educational and entertaining.

Another way to cross-promote your video channel is by adding links to your social media posts, company blog, and website. Make sure customers and visitors can easily find your channel, and that they are able to see what that channel offers them.

Have a short trailer that autoplays on your website and blog. Feature your latest video in a social media post. And don’t forget your industry newsletters or journals. Advertise your channel and let others in the business know what you’re doing with it.

Cross-promoting can really jump-start your channel’s visibility. The more places you showcase those videos, the more people will click your link and check them out.

Next we’ll look at search-optimizing your video content.

Marketing by Search-Optimization

“Video is booming,” says Patrick Ward of High Speed Experts, “but don’t get too hasty to jump in. Before you yell ‘lights, camera, action,’ start with an SEO mindset.”

SEO, of course, stands for Search Engine Optimization and it means making sure your videos and your YouTube channel contain the right keywords to be found on a search engine.

The way to do that is to locate “key search terms you want to be found for and make videos around that.” And you can do that by pretending to search for your own products or services. Go to Google and type in any question a customer might have about your company and what it offers. See what comes up. Then, go to those companies and check out which keywords they’re using on their websites, video channels, blogs, and social media posts.

Start adding those keywords to your own video channel offerings. Why do this? “Because,” says Ward, “Google is increasingly placing videos from YouTube (which it owns) in the native search results, drawing the eye of users, garnering you not only views but also views from the right people!”

When you type in those questions, notice how often YouTube videos come up as an answer to your question. Pretty much every search, right? Google is starting to pay attention to YouTube videos and realize that they sometimes have exactly the right answer for a question.

What you want to do is make sure your videos are among the ones that pop up in that search. Tweak your title tags so they make more sense to a viewer and are more specific. Don’t depend on YouTube to suggest the best titles for you. Make sure your titles tell the viewer exactly what they’ll be watching so they’ll be more likely to stick around for the entire video.

Master long-tail keyword themes that are more specific and drive fewer searches, too. These are keyword phrases like “how to get bloodstains out of clothing” or “nikon 5600 DSL camera.” Fewer people are going to be using these phrases, so you won’t get quite as many “hits” —but the hits you do get will be looking for exactly what you’re offering.

Mastering SEO will help you improve your YouTube channel’s visibility, and that will help you market your business to more people.

Now let's have a look at employer brand content.

Marketing Employer Brand Content

“People surf YouTube for a number of reasons,” says Andrew Caravella of Sprout Social, “but they’re all looking for a captivating and compelling story.”

YouTube is now the Number 2 search engine on the internet, so when people are looking for answers, they’re looking for videos. Your job, if you’re interested in becoming an influencer, is to be certain your video channel is the one they find during their search. One way of doing that is to produce quality employer brand content.

“Gain the attention of your community,” says Caravella, “by producing content that showcases who you are as a company, what your culture is like, and also highlights the people on your team.” You want your videos to show viewers what your company is like — not just your mission statement and a list of product or services, but what the people are like and what the atmosphere is like where they work.

Create videos that show your actual employees at work, or even at play if your company has a sports team or company picnic. Show the employees talking about your company’s purpose and why it’s a great place to work. Your videos should communicate your passion for your products or services. Make sure your personality stands out.

One great idea for an interesting video is your company’s origin story. Did you decide to create a product because they were lacking in the market? Or did you discover a way to improve an existing product based on a personal story? Whatever the story, make it interesting and make a video about it.

Explainer videos, like the “About Us” page on your website, can show viewers who you are as a company and why your brand is better than the competition. “Employer brand content,” says Caravella, “will help raise awareness and strengthen brand identity, while simultaneously attracting new talent.”

Explaining your company in an entertaining video can not only attract new employees, but potential customers as well. If your culture and moral values align with theirs, viewers will be more likely to purchase what you’re selling.

Testimonials and case studies work well as videos, too. Showcase videos from happy customers and employees. Show your team’s skills, critical thinking ability, and creative problem-solving.

Spotlight particularly successful or talented employees. Create videos of things like awards ceremonies and announcements. Whatever shows off your company’s heart should be in a your YouTube channel for your audience to see.

Next we’ll look at leveraging user-generated content.

Marketing with User-Generated Content

“Great video either tells or conjures a story,” says Eric Fletcher of Eric Fletcher Consulting Group.

Whatever the source, your videos should tell the story of your business and its culture. Your audiences don’t want a sales pitch. They want to be entertained and informed. They want that story. Your job is to make sure they get what they’re wanting.

User-generated content is that created by your audience members and customers. “In one of the best campaigns I’ve seen,” says Fletcher, “a brand asked its community to submit their own short video story about their personal experience with the brand.” This is an excellent way to promote your brand without a sales pitch or boring lecture.

In that example, the request “emphasized creativity and brevity and promised recognition and reward for outstanding submissions. The result: creative, authentic, relatable stories featuring the brand as the hero.”

Why should you care about user-generated content though?

“Consumers are 2.4 times more likely to view user-generated content as authentic when compared to content created by brands” according to Christina Newberry’s review of a Businesswire survey. “That offers brands an important credibility boost,” she says, “since most people say less than half of brands create authentic content.”

It’s also about creating trust. “A full 92% of customers trust recommendations from people they know,” says Newberry, “and 70% trust online consumer opinions.”

And modern people aren’t just asking their friends and neighbors about your company. 30% of millennials surveyed say they would not visit a restaurant whose Instagram presence didn’t attract them.

Newberry says this all leads up to one thing: the impact on purchasing decisions. “Nearly 80% of people,” she relates, “say user-generated content has a high impact on their purchasing decisions.”

What does this mean for your business? It means you need to be collecting personal stories from your customers and asking for their input. User-generated content is one of the best ways to encourage potential customers to stop waffling and buy.

With a little creativity, you can come up with great ideas to get your customers sharing their stories on your video channel. Have a contest with a free product or service as the prize, or reward everyone who sends in a video with a 10%-off coupon. If you allow your customers to be creative, you’ll get some bang-up videos for your library.

Thanks for reading!

Click here if you want some free training on how to make money on YouTube.

Creating a YouTube channel is easy, but knowing how to flood your channel with loyal subscribers is a whole other story! In this YouTube Marketing for Beginners article you'll find out the essential steps to launching a channel that drives in traffic from the very first day!

Why Monetization Shouldn't Be Your Main Focus

You're probably aware of the fact that you can make a significant amount of money just from YouTube, but that shouldn't be the sole reason for creating a channel. If you do end up earning money from it, great! But first you need to build your audience.

Make sure that your videos focus on quality, not just quantity. Yes, you'll probably get more subscribers by uploading a lot of videos, but be selective about the videos that you create, since you want to make sure that people keep coming back and go out of their way to share your content.

And never, ever spend money in order to get fake views or bogus subscriptions. There are plenty of accounts out there trying to sell you these shady offers. Avoid them at all costs.

Not only is it highly unethical, but it'll actually cause your numbers to go way down and potentially, put your account at risk.

That's because YouTube focuses on watch time metrics, not by subscribers and views. So don't let the fact that you have to have so many subscribers and views in order to monetize your video let you buy into this scam.

Every time you create a video, make sure that it's going to engage your audience. Will they want to comment, click the like button and subscribe to your channel? Will they want to share your video with your friends and family?

Make sure you create a variety of marketing videos, too. Be sure to cover every aspect of your business. This will give your viewers a better sense of what your business is about, plus encourage them to buy your products.

If you do reach a point where you can monetize your videos, wonderful! But always focus on quality, not quantity. Don't let that monetization mark convince you to put out more videos with less quality, all because you want a big paycheck from YouTube.

There are millions of videos for people to choose from on YouTube. Make your channel authentic, and create content that really makes them remember your brand.

Make Your YouTube Channel Your Primary Focus

If you have the time, then consider making your YouTube channel your main focus. At least in the very beginning, when you're putting everything together and trying to understand how YouTube works.

Set a schedule for yourself using everything we've covered, both in this article and our Special Report about YouTube Marketing for Beginners, and watch your channel grow. If you really want to put the pedal to the metal, then commit to doing this for 40 hours a week and see what happens!

Learn from your mistakes and edit videos as necessary. Share your content across several different platforms, and find new ones to share to as well.

YouTube even gives a list of options when you go to share a video. So take this time to create accounts just for those platforms, and see what they're about. You may find a great community that's just perfect for your YouTube channel.

If you're running a large company, then see if you can have one of your employees commit to doing this full-time. If it's just you running your company and your time is short, then break it up into segments.

In order to succeed at YouTube marketing, you really need to be committed. So in the beginning it may seem like a lot, but try and make this your main focus until you get the hang of it.

Eventually you'll get to a point where uploading will become second nature. You'll remember everything you're supposed to do, and can upload and share in no time!

Write down different tasks to do each day of the week. For example, spend Mondays looking at your competitors' accounts and see what they're doing that's so successful. Then on Tuesdays, go through the comment sections of your own videos and see how people are reacting to your content.

Once you get the hang of YouTube, these are both practices that you should continue to do in order to stay on top of your game.

With so many YouTube accounts out there, it's important to stay knowledgeable about YouTube marketing in order to stand out, and making this your main priority right now will help you do just that!

Why You Should Create Playlists

A great way to keep viewers engaged is by creating playlists, which are videos that continuously play after each other. It's easy to set these up, too. Simply click on your video and choose ‘Add to playlist.'

From there, it'll give you the option to choose from a playlist that you've already created or choose to create a new one.

For example, if your brand does a lot of how-to videos, then you might want to create a playlist just for this category. You can break it down further by creating playlists for different how-to's, too.

Or if your brand is into listicles, then create a playlist just for these types of listicles. And again, feel free to create different listicles playlists.

For example, a makeup company might create a playlist featuring listicles about their lipsticks, mascaras, foundations, etc. and then another one for different makeup looks.

When people click on a playlist, they know that another video will immediately begin playing after the first one ends. This is what viewers want. They don't want to have to keep clicking on your videos. They would much rather relax and absorb the content that you're creating.

It's also a great way to encourage people to subscribe to your channel, since if they like what's in the playlist they'll probably want to keep coming back to your channel. Whenever you create a marketing video, ask yourself what playlist it should be placed in.

And it's a good idea to mention your playlists within your channel description, too. Suggest one or two for new subscribers, so they can get a good idea of what your channel is about!

Just remember that playlists allow the

to stay engaged, since they're likely to take their hands off of their device and just watch, meaning they're less likely to click on thumbnails for another YouTube account.

Why You Should Use Arrows And Circles Within Your Videos

If you've ever watched a YouTube video, then you probably already know what we're talking about.

In order to keep viewers engaged and alert throughout your videos, then you'll want to incorporate graphics throughout. Just having someone stare at the camera and talk isn't always that engaging, regardless of what they're talking about.

People like to see things change throughout the video, such as when a shape pops up on the screen and tells them to look somewhere else.

The most popular shapes that appear in videos are arrows and circles, since they tell the viewer exactly where to zoom in on the screen. They're pretty self-explanatory.

Whenever there's something in your video that you want to highlight, just use an arrow in a video-editing tool to draw attention to the viewer. And you can choose to zoom in if necessary. Whatever it takes to tell the viewers where to look.

Circles also work well.

For example, if you're talking about a specific feature of one of your products, use the zoom-in option and insert a circle within your video-editing software. Make sure that the circle is around exactly where you want the focus to be.

Viewers respond well-and actually expect-these types of shapes to pop up throughout your video. It's common among all types of YouTube videos, too. Take some time to look at how other channels use these shapes.

The most important thing is to keep them engaged, and prevent them from leaving your video before it's over.

Take some time to see what other shapes your video-editing software offers, too. Maybe there's something that will make your content stand out from your competitors! Just remember to make your content interesting so they'll come back.

Why You Should Create A Brand Logo

In order to really stand out as a brand, especially among your competitors, you put have a logo. Studies have proven that over time, people remember logos and immediately associate them with that brand.

Once you have a logo, make sure you include it in all of your videos and across your channel. And. Make sure that it's the same across all of your social media platforms.

You can take it a step further and war an item of clothing with your logo in videos, such as a shirt or a baseball hat. Or just wear something that contain the colors of your brand logo.

You should also look into using your brand logo to watermark your videos, meaning nobody is able to steal it and use it for their own personal gain. A graphics designer should be able to help you with this task.

Once you create a brand logo, look into having it put on physical products that will be featured within your video. For example, something as simple as pens that you can casually hold.

Every time a customer sees your brand logo, they will start to associate it with your business and products.

Consider doing some type of giveaway that features products with your brand logo on it, too. There are plenty of YouTube accounts who offer free giveaways to subscribers, so take some time and research how you can do this too.

Just remember that the more a customer sees your brand logo, the more they'll associate it with your company.

And consider creating a welcome video that you can post to your page that features your brand logo, both at the beginning and very end of the video. It's a great way to introduce customers to your company!

Why You Should Promote Off Of YouTube

Even though people must have a YouTube account in order to subscribe to your channel, you really need to promote all across the internet.

If you don't know where to start, Y YouTube has you covered.

When you click on “share” button on one of your videos, a series of sites pop up. The most popular ones are Facebook and Twitter.

Take the time to create accounts on the sites suggested, making sure you fill out your brand information and posting your logo, and then share every time you upload a video.

The bigger you cast your net, the more views and subscribers you'll receive!

Some of these sites might be ones that you haven't heard of, such as Disqus, but if YouTube is suggesting that you share to it, then chances are good that a lot of people visit that site.

It might seem tedious to take the time and sign up for these accounts, but it'll be well worth it in the end. You may find subscribers on sites like Pinterest and Twitter who never would have found you, simply because they came across one of your videos that you shared!

If the sites allow you to play with colors to create your profile, then try and stick to colors that represent your brand and match your brand logo.

And take some time to look through these sites, see if there are groups you can join that benefit your company, and see if it makes your YouTube audience grow.

How You Can Increase Subscribers

A great way to get more subscribers is by promoting your other videos in your end screen. The end screen is the very last part of your video that's been uploaded to YouTube, and you can find out more about it in your YouTube Studio.

You have the option to add verbiage, and this is where you'll want to mention where and how viewers can see one of your other videos. Simply type it into the end screen and then include the link to the video within the description.

Try to just promote one video at the end of each video, since trying to promote too many on one video can feel overwhelming to the viewer.

This encourages viewers to stick around on your channel and see what else you have to offer.

This is especially good in case they really liked one video but maybe not enough to hit that subscribe button, but the one you're promoting is just their cup of tea. Or if they did like that first video and just want to see more of your content!

Another common but effective way to gain subscribers is to just ask. It seems a bit forward and may have you second guessing yourself, but people on YouTube do it all the time.

Take a look at one of your favorite YouTube channels, then go to a video. Chances are good that at some point within the video, either in the beginning or at the end, they ask the viewers to comment, hit the like button and subscribe to your channel.

As long as you're polite about it, people usually respond well to this request. And of course, you'll also want to ask your viewers to share!

Conclusion

Continuously look for ways to share your content, engage your viewers, and try to attract more viewers, and your channel will surely grow!

I hope you've enjoyed this article about YouTube Marketing for Beginners, and wish you the very best with your new channel!

If you are looking for other ways to make money online and create a life of total freedom, then check out this free exclusive webinar with my mentor John Thornhill – you’ll learn the 4-step system I am using to profit from the billions being spent on e-learning.

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Tips and Tricks for Success!

The internet has opened an entire new world of opportunity. With all kinds of social media channels, blogging platforms, and video hosting sites, there are endless possibilities for making money online. One of the most popular video-sharing sites is Youtube. So it's no surprise that many people are wondering how to make money on Youtube – but it isn't that simple. Making money on Youtube takes time, patience, effort, and creativity. Its possible to turn your favorite hobby into a profitable endeavor with these tips and tricks!

Signing up on Youtube

In order to start earning on Youtube, you'll need a Google account and a Youtube account. To create your account, you can either sign up on the Youtube home page or from inside your Google account.

Once you've created your account, you can upload your video content.

Optimizing your Channel

The first step in making money on Youtube is to optimize your channel.

First, create a channel that accurately reflects your brand. This will help you when you're trying to monetize the videos on your channel. It's also a good idea to add a link in the title of each video so people can find your other videos easily.

Next, make sure you have a clear profile picture and banner for your channel so it's easy for people to recognize you. You should also add links in the description of each video (if possible) to get more views and subscribers.

Finally, subscribe to other channels that are relevant to yours and leave comments on their videos! This will lead them back to your channel and they'll be more likely to subscribe if they like what they see!

Building a Brand

The first step to making money on Youtube is building a brand. You'll have to have a handle that stands out, be consistent with your branding efforts, and have a recognizable logo. This will help build your audience and keep them coming back for more.

Monetizing your Videos.

There are a few ways to monetize your videos. The first is by running ads before or during a video. You can also use a site like Adsense to earn money from the display of ads on your Youtube channel, as long as you have a Youtube Partner status.

In addition, you can make money from the monetization of the videos themselves by receiving payments from YouTube for advertising purposes. You can also make money by using affiliate marketing links within your videos and linking them to products that you recommend. For example, if you want to use a link to purchase a product from Amazon, you could say something like “this is an example of something I might recommend”.

The best way to generate income is through online courses and workshops. The more knowledge people have about a certain topic, the more likely they are going to want to buy into it! If its something you're passionate about at least, this will be easy for you!

Click here if you want some free training on how to make money on YouTube.