Need Youtube Help! Can we put our affiliate link directly?
 

I am going to post my videos on youtube. Can I send them to my site and then redirect them or can I put my affiliate link directly. I will be driving to a clickbank product page.

Is it alright with the TOS Youtube? Or can I get banned

Re: Need Youtube Help! Can we put our affiliate link directly?
 

Anything can get banned in YouTube, for any reason. But they would most likely just remove the video, not ban your account. If you have a good video, they won't remove it just for having a link in the description or watermarked on the video. As long as you aren't promoting an illegal type of service like "Stream PPVs for Free".

Re: Need Youtube Help! Can we put our affiliate link directly?
 

If you're worried, why not just use a url shortener like tinyurl.com? A lot of people on Youtube use links like that - they are not going to go through and check every link. Besides, Youtube is a free video service where they encourage people to create their own content and they give us the option of putting a link below the video. Without people creating content they would be nothing - they know that and that's why they allow us to post links below our videos. There has to be something in it for us. There would be a lot less people creating content if they didn't give us this option.

As long as you're video is not copyright and you are not promoting anything illegal or against their terms, then you will be fine. FYI it will be the users of Youtube that are more likely to get you banned than Youtube themselves. The more people that flag your video the more likely Youtube is to review that video manually and/or disable that video.

So as long as you are not offending anyone, you should be just fine.

Re: Need Youtube Help! Can we put our affiliate link directly?
 

there is one more option, put your links in video annotations.

Re: Need Youtube Help! Can we put our affiliate link directly?
 

Also, what's more important is that you deliver value in your video, and not use any copyrighted material. As long as your video is helpful and delivers some value (and not just some silly one page slideshow that refers to copyrighted material, for example), the chances of you getting in trouble with an affiliate link are remote. I'd use a redirect with my own domain though, and you can use .info ones if money is tight (less than $2 at Godaddy).

Re: Need Youtube Help! Can we put our affiliate link directly?
 

You should have your link in 3 places ideally. In the video itself as a watermark, in a video annotation that pops up at a specified time during the video, and at the BEGINNING of the description below your video.

The one advantage to buying your own domain name (and re-directing) is that people can more easily remember it. If they see your link in the video or in an annotation over the video, they are not able to click either of those links so they need to type it into a browser themselves. If this is an affiliate link it will be much harder for them to remember. If it's a nice, easy to remember domain name then you will get a higher rate of click-throughs.

The other advantage to using your own domain name is that if you include the domain in your video as a watermark, if the product you are originally promoting goes out of business, you can simply change the product your domain name redirects to very easily. So the link in the video will still send people to a valid product.