Is this a good idea?

I have heard of that technique and it may be a good idea i if it works for you of course! If the numbers make sense. You will need to determine the amount you are willing to pay each month. Also you will need to track this to determine how many sales are from the videos that promote your link.

After you have those numbers YOU can decide it it is a good idea. Youtube is a huge search engine and can drive lots of good traffic.

Very true, YouTube is a big source of traffic and the weight loss/fitness community is huge.

No harm in just asking some popular channels if you can advertise.

Get an idea of how much you want to spend - those top channels will cost a lot more.

Of course that's a good idea. YouTube is a beast and it suitable for your niche. Even the millenials (the biggest generation after "Baby Boomer") watch more youtube than TV.

I have never done this so I can't tell you from personal experience how good a strategy this is. However . . .

IMO, it is never a good idea to count on an income stream that you don't control. So the video gets taken down or the owner decides to put his own link on it. What then? What if you pay him monthly and the strategy doesn't work? You've lost the money you spend on driving traffic to the video and you've lost your money in renting the space. In addition, you aren't capturing contacts in the niche if you simply put up an affiliate link.

I would say, go ahead and try it to prove the concept if you like, but don't get into any long-term commitments because it may work against you.

Steve

It works and it is a good idea (at least for us). I did it myself but instead of letting them place an affiliate link we placed direct links to our services/landing page and gave them a commission (i don't know if would work with affiliate links... they could just do it themselves). Make sure the videos are highly relevant to your products/services/niche. This is a cheap way to advertise. What you want to know if it's worthed for you compared to other advertising methods.

What happens if they put the video down? Well you move on and you contact the next one (a way to avoid this most of the times is to check how long the video has been up. They don't put down videos randomly. They do it with the videos that do not comply with their policies so don't choose "risky" videos). There is risk in every advertising method.
Don't complicate your life and your business too much in taking this easy decisions (unless you are seriously short on advertising money). You want to know if it works for you? Just test it.

I actually used this same concept a couple of years ago on Twitter.
I contacted 10 accounts relating to a product in my niche, asked them if they could tweet once a day about my product & proposed a 50/50 split of the profits at the end of the week.

I actually made myself just over $100 that week & all i did was leverage someone else account.

I think it can work, just go after YouTube accounts that don't seem to be monetizing what they do, they will say YES to an extra bit of cashflow!

It used to work quite well when channel owners didn't really know all of the ways to get income out of there channels.

These days, they will be more inclined to check out the affiliate programme themselves and just put there own affiliate link in the description, and possibly make more money that you're offer.

I think it would be a better idea to use the money you where gonna pay the guy, and just have some of your own videos outsourced.

Just do some testing. It can work, but whether it will work or not for your specific offers with those specific videos, with the specific amount of money you pay for using those videos - that can be found out only by actually testing. Always do a test and ramp up what you see is working fine! That's the way to go.

If others let you use their videos then go ahead but why not make your own killer videos.

I think it's a great idea. If those video's are successful, you know they're driving traffic and it's going to be to your target audience. That product is right where you want it to be and I'm sure that the YouTuber would be happy to help out if it means he gets paid.
The great thing about this aswell is that you never know what could happen in business and the YouTuber may be perfect to have as a go to guy for example. If you never ask then you never know
Best of luck

Exactly what Steve said.

To be honest, I don't think you'll even get to the stage where someone with a popular video will agree to put your affiliate link in the description.

Sooner or later, they'll figure out what you are doing and sign up as an affiliate for whatever network and promote themselves.

You want to have as much control over your business as possible, so paying random people you don't know to "rent" their videos is not exactly reliable...

It Definitely wouldn't hurt to try!
YouTube as everyone knows is massive, that alone might grab up a lot of traffic. The only down side i think would be actually getting a big player on you tube to do that, that is unless your putting down a hefty amount of coin.

Yeah, I've actually had some friends who've done this before and have made bank.

The key with this here is to target high authority users on YouTube and target their top video(s). Of course, you'll want to work some sort of payment out with them or whatever compensation they wish. If you can make it happen, you can expect a lot of traffic!

Best of luck.

Hi,

Yup, that's really good idea. Youtube is a powerful place to gain free traffic and earn money. Paying for those already have had high ranking videos it's a good idea.
Well, if you have a relationship with one who you want to pay and request he/she puts your affiliate link on his/her video description, it's ok. But if not, make sure that your affiliate link is unique, I mean it doesn't public or difficult to find out.
Why? If it's easy to drag that product's affiliate link, why don't they use their affiliate link instead of yours? This is my opinion.

- Anhvu

Are we allowed to have affiliate links in our video descriptions?

If you find popular videos on YouTube, watch them to see how the video has been created, read their descriptions and figure what keywords they have used and then create your own.

There are ways that you can rank videos in a short amount of time and if your content is good your videos will stay up in the ranks and get a nice amount of traffic.

The "method" of contacting people on YouTube to place affiliate links in their video description has been spammed to death in the most popular niches and you will get hardly anyone to agree to your proposal.

Well that's one idea i first heard about when youtube started building more traction and experts jumped on the bandwagon.

It can work but you'll have to keep a close eye on your numbers. I'd rather pay for performance then pay them a flat rate without really knowing the results.

Another idea would be to run a youtube PPC campaign and target those channels, a quick video with call to action will target a lot more channels and bring you traffic a lot faster.

If you find a channel with a good amount of video, then it a very good idea. this method has made me thousands of dollars , i think there is a toll that can help you find this video., so go ahead.

sounds like a plan.

now its time to test it..

Its important to take action now.


-Ike Paz

Thank you everybody for your advice. I have contacted a few people on youtube already. I will let you guys now how it works out!