I have been focusing the last couple months on YouTube. There is a reason. It is because it works. I haven’t seen a snow ball effect quite like what I have seen with YouTube. Please enjoy my video below on How to make money on YouTube Basics.
I recently have been spending a lot of time on YouTube. I created two separate channels and am monetizing my videos. Monetization is when you give something, in this case a video, the ability to make you money. YouTube will embed ads on your channel or at the beginning of your video.
If someone clicks on the ad, Google pays you money via your Google Adsense account.
Question: How do I get traffic to my videos so that it gives someone the chance to click on an ad?
My Answer: Social media and forums are the way I am driving traffic to my YouTube videos/channel.
- I use my Pinterest board YouTube Videos Worth Watching.
- I also post on a couple forums where I am a registered member. I get a lot of traffic from the forums.
- I also linked up my Facebook account with my YouTube channel. This way every time I upload a new video it posts to my Facebook page.
- There are dozens of other social media sites to post videos to as well. Currently I am only focusing on three which is easy to manage. Click Here for a list of other Social Media Sites.
If you decide to do a channel, please message me so I can check it out. Good luck.
Well, last week I receive an email from Amazon.com stating I had violated their operating agreement for Amazon associates by having a domain with Amazon in the name. Oops, did not know that. Learning experience for me.
Well the email wasn’t cold it just stated that I need to close the site and notify Amazon once I did. It also stated that they would purchase the domain from me at the cost I paid.
Good news is that I didn’t have anything on FindMeOnAmazon.com and just was using it for forwarding to my Amazon associate link. This took little work and within five minutes I turned the forwarding off.
Bad news is now Pinterest has completely hijacked Amazon affiliate links. They are changing them to their own link on the board links, image links, and pinned from link.
Back to the drawing board with Pinterest.
- I still think that having a domain that forwards to your Amazon associate main page will work. Just make sure the domain doesn’t include Amazon in the name.
- I read through all of Pinterest terms of service and privacy policy. There is nothing about them changing Amazon affiliate links to their own. Must be an internal technical decision made by programmers.
- Find other affiliate programs and pin items from their site. I am surprised how many companies have affiliate programs.
I will keep researching ways to use Pinterest but for now, I would stay away from Amazon unless you have a domain that is forwarding to Amazon.com.
Check out my recent YouTube video on Pinterest part 2.
Best wishes.
Pinterest recently made changes within the last week that has completely changed how people were making money on their website through affiliate marketing.
I came across an article online describing how Pinterest was monetizing their website and was shocked at what they are doing. (Monetizing refers to the process of giving your website the ability to make money for you.)
In the past, I have shown you in depth how to make money using Pinterest on one of the YouTube videos. However, recently they are doing the following to the end user without their permission or them knowing.
Originally you would sign into your Amazon.com affiliate account and then find an item you wanted to pin. You would pin the item then go into your Pinterest account and change the URL of that pin to your Amazon.com affiliate item link.
Your pin on your board with look like this picture on the left. You would have the click-able image of the item with the Amazon.com link at the bottom of your pin. This link if clicked on will use your affiliate link and if someone makes a purchase you earn a commission.
Then if someone clicked on the image you would have a small window open where you are zoomed in on the image like the picture below.
Now, if someone were to click on the image it would take you to that product on Amazon.com.
Also, there was another link from Amazon.com that included your affiliate link that stated where the image was just pinned from.
Now this is where my frustration with Pinterest comes into play. Pinterest has some type of algorithm that when someone clicks on the image or the pinned from link, they automatically remove your affiliate link and insert their own Amazon affiliate link.
This really stinks right. I mean now out of the 3 possible affiliate links you only have one that works. The link on your main board.
You might be asking, “So Stephen, how do I get around this so I can maximize the opportunities for someone to click on my affiliate links?”
Well this is where I did some testing.
I actually bought a domain name called FindMeOnAmazon.com. I figured I would have this URL auto redirect to my Amazon.com main page affiliate link.
This now changes my board image to include my website FindMeOnAmazon.com. This link will still take people to my Amazon.com affiliate link.
The other thing this does is when a person clicks on the image and the window comes up with a zoom view it removes the pinned from link at the top.
This is a good thing because this link used to be Pinterest’s affiliate link.
If someone clicks on the image the link will be automatically changed to Pinterest’s affiliate link for Amazon.com. Unless, the user right clicks and either opens an new window or new tab. This is weird and I am not sure why this makes a difference in the link.
Pinterest is making a lot of money off of people without them ever knowing.
They are replacing people’s affiliate links with their own.
I am increasing my chance of success by me having my own URL that auto redirects to my Amazon.com affiliate link page.
Before there were 3 total links someone could click. The main board link, the zoomed image link, and pinned from link. Only 1 of those links would correctly use my affiliate link.
Now there are only 2 links and 1 is correctly working. So, I went from getting only 33% of the opportunity to 50% now.
Using Pinterest for affiliate marketing is not a get rich quick scheme. If anything, it should be treated as a fun experience and make some extra money throughout the year. Every new social networking site will always bring about a great opportunity and as users we need to be ready for change.
