My Approach to Affiliate Marketing in 2026

0:00I have an email I want to read briefly just just a question that I got about affiliate marketing in 2026 So we'd love to know how you approach affiliate marketing in 2026. It is is it still a large source of revenue for you and if you were running an affiliate site, how would you pivot to turning it into a brand? All right Here's how I do it So I've said in the past that I think affiliate marketing is dead to me the reason that is is because The way that I do affiliate marketing is through Amazon and Amazon only gives me a 3% commission and the most of the products that were Recommended to people are pretty low cost and so we're making like pennies But those pennies do add up. It is an important source. It is a large part of the revenue It's not the largest, but it's not nothing so we're gonna continue to do it but In different industries you have different levers that you can pull and I do too

1:00so Here's how I'm not saying that I would do this, but here's what I would do and The reason I think that this is so valuable is because I Have recently been Convert it. I've bought very expensive things because of an affiliate brand. Let me explain and Let me not be cryptic so I Was looking for a very well-made Weight bench a pretty versatile versatile incline bench for my gym and I'd already went on Amazon and bought like you know, whatever the top seller was I think it was like a hundred and fifty bucks or a hundred and twenty bucks or some and that was like cool Right had that in the gym for about a year Realized this thing's a fucking piece of shit. I need to replace it

2:00so I Usually in this case will turn to wire cutter I recently just bought a refrigerator and before I went out and bought that refrigerator I just said what does wire cutter think is the best refrigerator in 2026 because whatever they say it is That's the one I'm buying because I know that they actually test this stuff and Every single recommendation that I've gotten from wire cutter has been a banger like has been the right thing to buy so From a track record perspective I am happy with the recommendations that wire cutter has provided now wire cutter is a massive massive brand with no single influencer But they've built their reputation on actually testing this stuff and When it came to the gym equipment when it came to this bench. I was like, okay

3:00Wire cutter doesn't have anything on this And plus I I need like a refrigerator is a refrigerator. We all know how they work I just really kind of wanted to know the best brand But if I want to see how something works or how I use something at the same time of getting to know like what is the best I turn to YouTube and so that's exactly what I did there is a very popular channel called home gym reviews and this guy Literally buys or gets sent. I don't know doesn't matter these pieces of equipment and he reviews them He shows you how they work. He works out on them. These videos are not short. They're like I watched a 20-minute or maybe even a 30-minute video on incline benches of 2025 like late 2025 and And he gives you what's nice about it is like he shows you all the different the different

4:02Benches that he recommends and he's showing it to you in his home gym. He has all of them and then he's basically saying I think this one is the best for the all-around like it's good quality It does all the things you wanted to do. It's not over. It's like it's good budget range all that stuff and he's just very thorough now I'm Almost positive that he has a direct relationship with these Makers because you're not buying they're not Amazon links. You're buying these products directly from the manufacturer And I'm pretty sure they reach out to him now because he's so influential That if they if they say hey, would you mind reviewing one of our products? We'll send it to you for free, but like give us your honest review like just hey, here's a free thing Like Like they want that they want the honest review because it helps sell stuff and they usually he'll say yeah

5:03Give me the free thing. Do you have an affiliate partnership? If there's an affiliate partnership great and then he is pitching it At no point in the video does he say like there's a link in the in the description for the product You kind of naturally go well, I want that product. Let me check the description for the link And there it is. I clicked it. I bought the product and I'm very happy with it and so Affiliate marketing is very much alive and Even someone like me could do this exact thing Mine is a little more difficult in that With Jim equipment if I had a home gym if I turn my brewery into a home gym right well Why do that? Let's just take my brewery, okay? If I wanted to run a YouTube channel this way, I could 100% do this which is I Go okay, I have this like kickass home brewery. It's a full video studio or it doesn't even have to be a video studio

6:08Just I mean he doesn't have like video equipment everywhere He just got he has a guy with a DSLR camera following him around in his actual home gym, right? And I think now he's got like a much bigger facility that he has like multiple home gyms at in because he this is what he does for living And I know he makes very good money doing this But when he started it's just his garage. Oh, maybe it's called garage gym reviews He's also got another channel where he just does budget Equipment too, so like this guy is he knows everything about gym equipment and You you trust him, right? He's very good on camera all that stuff, so Let's say I decide to do the same thing. I'm like all right. I got this kickass brewery. I'm gonna review brewing equipment And I'm gonna start a channel where I review brewing equipment and These companies send me the brewing equipment. They already do this by the way. I get free equipment

7:11The thing is is that I don't do reviews. So like Maybe I should start doing reviews. I don't know So I have another friend who does this for golf stuff. So like it's very much alive You can make a ton of ton of ton of money and by the way my friend who has the golf site like He has a website and he has a YouTube channel and he's on his YouTube channel people trust him That is the way to go now. That's how you evolve you don't you can evolve the brand or whatever it's called But what you're really doing is making it more personal You're becoming an influencer and you are actually reviewing these products whether you buy them yourself Or they get them sent to you but the best thing you can do is get a relationship with that company like hey Yes, you can send me the product. I will do an honest review Do you have an affiliate program because let's sign up for the affiliate program and I will send you if the product is good

8:11I will send you traffic That's a good deal Some of these companies may not even have an affiliate program set up where they do special deals where they're like Okay, how about this? We'll just set up a coupon code and then we'll just track through that and then just pay you Based on the on the coupon code usage you just have to you know trust the company and have some sort of written agreement in place So this is all possible. I know another guy who does this with bags his name is Chase Reeves He does he reviews bags and when I say bags. I mean like Backpacks things you carry stuff in like you know not paper bags and shit But like he reviews bags. This is all he does all he does and Every time he reviews a bag from the most part He has a affiliate relationship with the company. He's reviewing and if it's a good review and he sends traffic to those people He gets a cut of those sales coming from his channel Now That is an entire business you can make an entire business doing that without ever making your own product

9:15I'm pretty sure that the home gym review guy doesn't have any of his own products. I don't know why he ever would Because these other companies there's so many other companies that make these products and you just want Someone to do the work for you Someone is doing the shopping for you and saying I've tried all of these out. This is the best It's the same thing with tech reviewers. It's it's whatever it is I Could I could honestly do it with home brewing if I? Wanted to I could probably start another channel called like you know brew reviews or something like that and Wow, it's not a bad idea actually and do like low-fi General equipment reviews on top of the videos that I'm already doing It's not a terrible idea. It's really not a terrible idea. I could also Publish those videos. I could publish those reviews the written version

10:16Which basically could just be the transcript you did you take the transcript of your video of you actually reviewing the product and then Putting it into something like clawed to turn it into a like a neseoed article put that on your site embed the video take a bunch of pictures with your iPhone boom You could do that all day. So not only are you hitting the the YouTube algorithm you're hitting the Google algorithm and even better than that if you can do short versions of it That would be kick-ass And then what you can do what I think which I think is like The sickest part of all of this and and again. I could do this for pools The and I'll tell you why I really struggle with pools and why home brewing equipment is so much easier to do With home brewing equipment. I could or even gym reviews or tech reviews or Whatever you do, right?

11:16You can say all right I'm going to review this one product. Here is the review Great, then you review another product and more and more products and the more products you review the more Categories are going to appear. So you're going to be like well, I've reviewed in my case for different brewing pumps and Now I'm going to do a video where I do like a tier list of the best brewing pumps or here are the four brewing pumps Which one do I recommend and you go through each one and you say I tried this one here's the b-roll of that you can see it because you've already filmed it You know this one is great for this blah blah blah, you know, you don't disparage anybody if you don't want to but just fucking be honest And then that's a fifth video. So like let's say you have four I say I review four brewing pumps and then I And then I do a fifth video of like the best brewing pumps and then I do that video every year

12:20So the best home brewing pumps of 2026 the best home brewing pumps of 2027 and Then a new pump comes along. I I do that review now. I got that review in 2028 I have the five best pumps video You can just keep doing this all day and I don't think you really like when I watch the home Reviewed like go and watch those videos because I Think what you'll see is like how easy it actually is to do it does require in his case two people I mean, I he probably used to do it by himself, but now he's got like a videographer Somebody holding the camera. He's got a lapel mic on and he's just he you know He probably does the work of like actually reviewing it. There's some there's he's using the product Right, but he's not like battle testing it and like putting it through the ringer. He's probably just like using it for a week

13:21I know like Mark has brownie what he does is like he owns a car and he lives with it for two weeks and then he reviews it It's like okay, you don't not really like You know, he may have his like checklist or whatever of things to like note But for the most part and then he just fucking films the whole thing like Mark has films his autofocus channel Which is like car reviews on His iPhone by himself And he's got millions of followers Like It's not hard to do and Honestly, I could do it for home brewing. No one has done it. No one. I mean there are people who do it, but it's like You know, I do think there's a there's a skill to it now Why I don't do this for pools? The problem with pools is Well, one you kind of need one and I don't have a pool Well, I don't have a hot tub either and that is on purpose because I have the room and the money to have both of those things and the

14:28Obvious right off, but I Personally, just don't want to teach pool care all day and also take care of a pool. I don't want to do both things so It's just I don't yeah, I'm just not interested plus I live in an area where like pools are not really a thing But hot subs are that said even if I had a pool If a company wanted me to review a pump I Would have to like dismantle my entire Like my entire filter system like cut PVC wire 220 lines It would be a nightmare to do and it would take almost an entire season to test something so like if I were trying to test multiple filters Or multiple pumps or heaters or chemical systems or chemicals or What like they're they're kind of hard to test because

15:30unless I Had a bunch of people throughout the United States testing these and filming them Which I could do On different pools Yes, but the it's just because of it's like how easy is it to like get a car and drive it for two weeks Even though it's like this big item it doesn't interrupt anything. It's not like but like Let's say you were somebody who had to Review air conditioning units for a house How are you going to do that? You'd have to install an air conditioning unit In the same house Multiple times and be like and live with it for a while to even be able to review it It's like such a massive undertaking that it's almost not worth doing at least at a youtuber scale, right? So there are just some things I think that would be hard to do like an actual honest to God review on and

16:32And so you kind of just have to do research and take you know and use the power of the public To aggregate and find out what the best things are but then again anybody can do that Which is a lot of what affiliate marketing sites are is really just Aggregates of like okay, what's the best-selling product on Amazon? Let's look at the reviews Let's use AI to analyze the reviews and find the best one and then just create a list from that Like that's not really doing reviews. That's doing listicles and That I think is what is dying Because it's not the review yet. That's not meeting E.E.A.T. standards You know expertise Experience authority trust. So yeah, so in in coops case who does the homogen reviews? It's like yeah, he's got the experience. He's got the expertise He has the authority. He's got the largest channel on this subject and people trust him

17:35He's a trustworthy guy because he's fucking actually buying this shit and testing it Like he's doing the work and it's like for the first shit like that like that are basically toys for guys who are into working out like That's an easy gig, man That's an easy fun gig And I will tell you it's easy. It's fun, but it's hard and how I know that is because my friend Sean who runs his site has told me so He's like, yeah, I you know, it's cool to get golf equipment. It's cool to test it out, but like It's still work Like you have to go out and do the work. You have to film You know, you have to like bat. You know, it's not just like it's not a casual thing And so he does it, but it's a job and so for me if I were to do that for home brewing Sounds fun. Sounds great. Get to play with toys all day You still got to

18:36You know, you still got to do the work. You still got to film. You still got to be on camera You still got to test the equipment. I'd have to brew a lot of beer to test equipment You know, you have to you know, in Sean's case, you got to play a lot of rounds of golf in In Koops case, you got to open a lot of boxes like just an insane amount of boxes of heavy gym equipment coming to your house all the time like and then scheduling when you're going to actually sit down and test it when you're going to film it It's a lot of work. It's definitely more work than just Going on a website and saying all right. Well, everyone thinks that You know, Reddit says you could basically scan Reddit right with an AI tool and say okay Everyone likes this product. Let's just make that the review and then post that on a website and you're like Well, you're not adding anything new to the internet. You don't have a take. You don't have a spin

19:37You're not you don't have any expertise. You're definitely not building trust because Take a picture of it. Show me why this is the best. Show me how to use it What makes you a fucking expert You know, and I know To the person who wrote this email you are an expert and the equipment that you're reviewing is easy And you have the facility to film in I don't know if you know if you I don't know if you're good on camera or not But I don't at this point like I think that just takes that's just a skill to develop over time and you'll get there and it'll be fine So That would be my approach to affiliate marketing is I'll recap it real quick. I would I would buy the products myself I'm okay with them sending me the product

20:40However, you do have to disclose that so you have to say the the company sent me this product in Exchange for an honest review I'm just gonna give you an honest review I'd rather not say that I'd rather buy the product because then I don't have to say that instead I can say I bought this with my own money As soon as you say that you've knocked out the tea in the EAT You're immediately trusted because you put your because you have stakes in the game. You put up your own money In fact, Marquez that's what he does. He buys every tech product He doesn't get anything sent to him for free He pays for it because he doesn't want to have to say that But I'm pretty sure I'm right about that. I could be wrong like he might get sent cars for free because like Why would you buy a car each time? But I know he only gets the car temporarily to review it and then it goes back to whoever actually owns it

21:43So like getting it lent to you by a third party is Better than having it lent to you by the company because or lending lending it to you Is maybe a little bit better because like you're not getting a free gift because like if somebody sent me a like a brewing pump Technically if it's a good pump like that's a free gift to me I it means I my bias may lean a little bit towards like not completely ripping the company apart and so like You're immediately kind of on your back heels doing the review because you got a gift Whereas if you bought it Immediate immediate trust so I would Buy my products I would Actually use them I would film the entire process of using it with my iPhone I wouldn't go you know if you wanted to use a good camera or have a camera man. That's fine

22:46Get a little tripod put your iPhone on it like that's really all you need If you want to up your audio game get a lapel mic There's a DJI 2 mics 300 bucks plug it into your phone and you got kick ass video. You got kick ass audio right 4k You know like you just don't think you can get better than that and then you you Review the product in real time like review it Talk about what you like talk about what you don't like and And And just get as much footage as you possibly can of the of the process of using it You know talking about it. You know if you got if you want to like beat it up a little bit beat it up a little bit You know in my case if I'm talking about like a brewing pump which I've mentioned like run hot or through it run cold War through it run, you know run it for you see how long it runs if you get a decibel meter see how loud it is

23:48Compared to other pumps You know how easy is it to connect how he doesn't get is it how easy is it to clean things like that like if you're if you're an expert right Then you know how to do this stuff Because you've used it before and then film the whole damn thing Stick it in any program edit it together. You don't have to add music. You don't have to add an intro You don't have to do shit Publish it on YouTube get a decent thumbnail have a pretty standard title and Then take that transcript From the you're from your edited video Which you can download directly off a YouTube or you could pay for a company like Rev to create Captions for a few bucks download that stick that in the clawed and Have clawed you know with some guardrails that you have to kind of build but have clawed right you up an article in

24:50Your using your words say you're not allowed to change my words All you can do is just all you're doing is grammatical editing and Formatting but don't change what I'm saying don't add to what I'm saying and Have it print you out a Full fucking blown article on whatever that product is and then You're gonna publish that on your website with With the video embed it and you know what if you don't even have to take pictures take screenshots from your video and Put that in the article where it makes sense add add arrows to point to things if you need to add you know Just to give people some more help visual aid and do that Every week with a new product and then Once you get once you've reviewed you know a series of products and you feel like hey, I can do

25:54Supplemental videos where you say okay I'm gonna do one review a week Where I'm gonna do one single product review every week week great Same week do another one where you're comparing to products do a versus video This verse that and just battle tests them together and then do you can do a third type of video where you just do you know The best of three and then you could do you know four Compare four or create a tear like It's endless what you can do just reviewing stuff Just and then you make your money two ways You make your money through the affiliate partnerships you have with these companies You're probably not going to get every company to agree to an affiliate partnership, but I'm willing to bet that if you buy their product and you say hey, I bought your product here's a link to my YouTube channel

26:57I I'm reviewing your product here's you know, you don't show them the video. It's an honest review Would you you know do you have an affiliate program I can sign up for if so what's your rate if you don't have one Would you mind setting one up or or coming up with some sort of partnership? I'll include your link in the description in the pinned comment include your link in the in the review on our website and you know Symbol is that if it's if it's an if the products for sale on Amazon send in an Amazon if The products you can a lot of these products you can find on the affiliate program built in the YouTube Because YouTube has their own affiliate program from like companies like Walmart and I think Ace Harvard like bigger companies like that On top of that monetize the video Once you want you want to get enough views you publish enough videos publish enough hours you're gonna have The ability to get donations the ability to run ads

28:03Like other people's ads on your content where you make money you'll be able to You know add the affiliate program in there have it directly linked to those products if they if they have a Shopify store and they're already connected to YouTube like you can already do that like people right now can recommend my book Through their YouTube channel because our products are available Through those networks and a lot of companies are going to be able to do that And that's how you make money you make money on YouTube you make money on your website Through the affiliate links if you want to add ads to your website go ahead. I think it's I think it's Dead and it's not worth it. I'd rather just like worry about SEO get some good views get some good traffic and You know get people on an email list. I would have an email list so that way you can send them every new video you publish

29:04You can add affiliate links into your emails as well and And Yeah, that's what I do I hope that that's helpful. So go to jivanici.com gio v an I sc i.com subscribe to my newsletter and You can email me if you got any questions, and I'll talk to you next time I'm talking next time I'm talking next time I'm talking next time