Home Business Youtube Affiliate Marketing: What Is It? Can It Thrive In Malaysia?

Youtube Affiliate Marketing: What Is It? Can It Thrive In Malaysia?

0

Before this, we’ve touched on all the basics of affiliate marketing, and how you can join in all the moneymaking fun in Malaysia. In that article, we wrote on how you can get into affiliate marketing using your website. But did you know that you can create an affiliate marketing campaign using your Youtube channel? Yes, you can and some would even say that it’s the future of every affiliate marketing campaign. So in this post, we’re going to discuss Youtube affiliate marketing, and how relevant it is in Malaysia.

Introduction To Youtube Affiliate Marketing

If we’re talking about the basics, then a Youtube affiliate marketing campaign is exactly the same as it’s website counterpart. The idea is your audience clicks on an affiliate link, make a purchase, and you’ll receive a commission from the lead you generated.

But the main difference is, while a normal affiliate marketing campaign is created on a website, a Youtube affiliate marketing campaign is created on a Youtube channel.

How does this work? Simple.

As mentioned earlier, it works the exact same way as a normal affiliate marketing campaign. It still uses banners and links as the primary means of generating leads. But instead of embedding the banners and the links on your website, a Youtube affiliate marketing campaign embeds the link and the banners in the forms of annotations or overlays, and links in description.

Here’s a link from the Marques Brownlee channel.

Here you can see an example of affiliate links in the description.

And here’s another example of how you can insert a link into the annotations of your video.

The video is equipped with clickable overlays/annotations which will lead to the merchant site, and generate you a comission.

But a word of warning, some viewers don’t really like having obstructive overlays and annotations as they feel like it’s taking away from their immersion of the video. So when you’re setting up your Youtube channel, try to experiment with your videos. Which one connects more with your audience?

So that’s two of the most popular ways how an affiliate link and an affiliate marketing campaign can be integrated into your Youtube channel. So now let’s move on to the next topic, why is Youtube affiliate marketing campaign becoming more popular?

The Reason For Youtube Affiliate Marketing’s Growth

Now some of you might be thinking, if affiliate marketing works well enough on websites, why is Youtube affiliate marketing a thing?

It’s because there are a lot of advantages offered by Youtube affiliate marketing, that beats out it’s website counterpart. So now let’s look at the advantages offered by Youtube affiliate marketing.

Advantage #1; Huge Audience

Now this probably goes without saying, but the audience in Youtube is huge. Youtube is the biggest video-sharing platform in the world by far, and it’s popularity has propelled it to being the second most used search engine in the world, right behind Google.

Youtube is one of the biggest source of traffic on the Internet right now, with a massive audience.

It has gotten to a point where saying that Youtube’s traffic is massive is an understatement. Here’s a statistic to help drive that point home for you; almost 5 billion videos are watched PER DAY on Youtube. You want another statistic? Youtube gets almost 30 million visitorsPER DAY. All across the world, people are watching videos on anything and everything.

It doesn’t matter what your niche is, you’ll probably find an audience on Youtube.

Advantage #2, Amazing Growth

If the massive popularity of Youtube is already shocking to you, then be prepared to have your minds blown by this next fact. Youtube is primed for further growth. Yes that’s right, Youtube, even with all it’s audience, is set to grow even more.

The reason for this is the fact that as the years go by, humans have grown more visual. According to Tubular Insights, almost 80% of Internet content would be video by 2019. Youtube’s own revenues have reflected this as well, growing from an estimated $1 billion in 2012, to $12.4 billion in 2017.

This means that if you’re looking for a growing market that will help you make more money as time goes on, you really can’t go wrong with Youtube.

Advantage #3, Stability

Remember back in 2018, when Facebook changed their algorithm? For most people, the change went virtually undetected, as it didn’t affect their lives at all. But for internet marketers and affiliate marketers who rely on Facebook for their traffic, the change practically destroyed their businesses.

2018 was full of small little content businesses that went out of business due to the change in Facebook algorithm, and now every internet marketer out there is being extra careful to avoid that kind of situation again.

With Youtube affiliate marketing, you don’t really have to worry about that. Youtube relies on the subscriber system, which means that even if Youtube changes their search algorithm, your subscribers will still be shown your new videos. This, combined with the fact that Youtube has one of the most stable search algorithms, ensures that there will be no drastic changes for you to worry about.

Advantage #4, Freedom In Niches

Just like having your own website, Youtube is a platform where you’re free to make videos of any kind, about any topic. The only content that Youtube marks as unsuitable for their platform is ‘Adult offers’ and ‘Gambling’, so everything else is fair game.

Youtube allows any niche to thrive, as long as there is an audience for it.

This means that you can choose any niche as long as it’s not these two, and you can make videos about them to kick off your affiliate marketing campaign. This applies even more in Malaysia, where most of the niches are virtually untapped by the Malaysian market.

The only thing you have to worry about is the oversaturation of some niches, which can make it hard for your channel to be noticed. As with normal website affiliate marketing campaign, you need to do prudent market research before you settle on a niche.

Advantage #5, Visual Medium

Ask any expert, and they’ll tell you that the visual medium is the way forward. As mentioned in previous articles, the attention span of human beings is shrinking smaller and smaller with time.

Take a look at this inforgraphic.

This infographic shows how the attention span of a human being has shrunk in recent years

We now have an attention span smaller than a goldfish. Hence, it’s now getting harder and harder for anyone to grasp people’s attention in the written medium.

Which is why Youtube and it’s visual medium is the future.

What Type Of Videos Should You Make For Youtube Affiliate Marketing?

Some of you might be asking, “okay if Youtube affiliate marketing is so good, then I want to get in the action as well. But what kind of videos should I make?” This is another beauty of Youtube. There is no specific guidelines or rules of the type of video you should make.

As long as it’s a video, you can upload it on Youtube.

But for a Youtube affiliate marketing campaign, there are a few type of videos that is recommended. Now let’s look at the three best type of videos for a Youtube affiliate marketing campaign.

Product Review Videos

Just like how it’s easier to sell products on your affiliate websites if you write product reviews, it’s also easier to encourage your audience to buy something with a product review video.

With product review videos, there’s two main routes you can go; either a single product review video or a comparison video.

This is an example of a single product review from Faris K Reviews, a Malaysian Youtuber who specialises in vaping products.

A single product review is exactly as advertised. For these type of videos, what you have to do is you have to give your opinion on a product, and by the end of the video determine if the product is good or not.

This way, if your audience decides to buy the product you’ve reviewed, they can just click on the link you’ve provided for them on the description of your videos.

This is an example of a comparison product review, from Silvia Gani.

The other type of product review videos you can make is a comparison product review, where you compare two or more products side by side. The aim of this video is usually to point out the pros and the cons of each product, and help your audience make a decision on what to buy by the end of the video.

REMINDER

If you decide to go the product review route, always remember to be honest with your audience. I know that it’s tempting to talk up every product so that your audience buys anything, but if you do this you’ll lose the trust of your audience.

And if your audience don’t trust you, why should they watch your review videos?

How To Videos

If you feel like making product review videos is not your thing, then we recommend you to make ‘How to’ videos.

Here’s a great example of a ‘How To’ video from Lowe’s Home Improvement.

The aim of a ‘How to’ video is to help your audience in making something or doing something by themselves. This is a great opportunity for you to link some of the products that you’re using in your video description.

The advantage of a ‘How to’ video is that your audience can see for themselves that the products that you’re using really works. This is another very popular type of videos used by Youtube affiliate marketers in Malaysia.

Best Of Videos

Now a ‘Best of’ video is basically a video where you take a general item, and you make a video listing the best products in that item class.

Here’s an example.

This is an example of a ‘Best of’ video from Unisport

As you can see from the example, a best of video is simple. You just have to take a number of products from the same item class, and rank it.

But this doesn’t mean that you can just throw any product at any ranking. Your audience will appreciate it more if your ranking is backed up with insights and facts.

Problems With Youtube Affiliate Marketing

I know that we have been waxing lyrical about Youtube affiliate marketing, and some of you might be convinced that it’s the best thing in the field of affiliate marketing right now.

But that doesn’t mean there is no drawbacks to Youtube affiliate marketing. In fact, there are several.

So in this section of the article, let’s talk about the cons of Youtube affiliate marketing.

Drawback #1, Content Creation

For most people, this will be the biggest drawback to Youtube affiliate marketing by far. With Youtube, you can’t just hire any writer to come up with content for your channel. You have to come up with engaging video content.

This is further exacerbated by the fact that not just everyone is comfortable in front of the camera. This can be offset by using animations or slideshows.  But still, creating good animations requires considerable skill, and slideshows needs to be amazingly interesting for you to keep your audience engaged.

Without proper video making skills, Youtube affiliate marketing might be a tremendous challenge for you.

Drawback #2, Challenges According To Niches

For some niches, creating a video is easier than some others. For example, let’s say your niche is tech and hosting sites. Creating a video displaying some of the features a hosting site is quite simple, all you need is a screen recording software or hardware, and you’re set.

As an example, this is a video from Ryan@Web Eminence for a BigCommerce review.

As you can see from this example, if your niche is tech, then it’s pretty simple for you to create content for your channel. In most cases, all you need is a screen recording equipment and a microphone.

The problem arises when your niche is something technical and handy. Here’s an example.

Here’s an example of a baking video from Bigger Bolder Baking. If your niche is something technical and skill based like this, then you require skills and equipment in order to create content.

For skills based video, you need proper equipment and skills to create content, and this might be quite costly.

Especially if you’re based in Malaysia, where equipment can be quite costlier than other places.

Drawback #3, Linking Restrictions

Back in the days, running a Youtube affiliate marketing is super simple and easy. All you have to do is create engaging videos, and put up your affiliate links on the description of the video.

But in 2017, Youtube has tightened up the procedures.

Now, Google has stated that “If the main purpose of your content is to drive people off of YouTube and onto another site, it will likely violate our spam policies”. This makes it harder for you to drive your audience to the merchant sites, as it might be flagged as ‘spammy practices’ by Youtube.

And to make it worse, Youtube has also introduced another linking restriction.

Now, if you want to link to other websites, you need to approve your channel for monetization.

As you can see above, Youtube now requires your channel to be enabled for monetization for you to add end card to your videos, which can link to other websites. Enabling your channel for monetization requires your channel to join the Youtube partner program,  which limits their membership to channels with 10,000 total public views or more.

Drawback #4, It’s Hard To Drive Traffic For

For some niches, you are entirely dependent on Youtube search traffic. This makes it hard for you to generate traffic to your channel, as it all depends on your videos.

This differs from websites, where you can generate traffic by tweaking the SEO of your website. With Youtube, if your video is buried under countless of other videos of the same ilk, you’ll never be noticed by anyone.

If your video is not on the first page of the search results, it might be hard for you to get traffic to your channel.

Can Youtube Affiliate Marketing Thrive In Malaysia?

Now for all you fellow Malaysians out there, you might be thinking; “Youtube affiliate marketing sounds good and all, but can it really thrive in Malaysia?”

Well I’m here to tell you that it absolutely can.

The thing with the Youtube scene in Malaysia is that it’s very underdeveloped. Of course, you see a lot of Malaysian Youtubers out there, but most of them are in very specific niches. There are a lot of other niches you can explore and you can easily profit from in Malaysian Youtube.

Especially if your content is in Malay, as the pool of videos in Malay is smaller.

There are a few Youtube channel that shows us that Youtube affiliate marketing in Malaysia can work.

The Faris K Reviews Youtube Channel is one of the best Malaysian Youtube affiliate campaigns I’ve ever seen.

In the example you can see above, Faris K Reviews is a simple Youtube channel created to review pod vape systems and vape juices. In his videos, you can see that they have a lot of affiliate links for the products they are reviewing.

So if you’re asking if Youtube affiliate marketing can thrive in Malaysia, my answer is yes, it absolutely can.

Conclusion; Should You Do Youtube Affiliate Marketing?

My simple answer is, yes. Yes you should. As mentioned earlier in this article, Youtube, and the visual medium is the future. In order for you to not be rendered obsolete, you should jump on the Youtube affiliate marketing bandwagon as soon as possible.

This goes double for Malaysians who are still on the fence about this, as Malaysian Youtube is very still underdeveloped.

Just remember to choose your niche properly and do some market research, as Youtube is already quite packed, and you don’t want too many competition in your niche.

Exit mobile version