Best YouTube Channels to Learn Affiliate Marketing and SEO

If you wish to learn how to build organic traffic and monetize your website, then we’ve found some great YouTube channels that will teach you about keyword research, affiliate marketing, display ads, SEO, writing content for your website and more. 

We searched for and watched many, many hours of YouTube videos to come up with this list of the best YouTube channels that teach you how to build and scale a successful niche website that generates an income for you. The channels selected were those who offered great actionable tips, were open and transparent about their process and results, and were easy to follow and understand. It also helps that these people were also very personable and entertaining in their teaching style. 

The YouTube channels are: 

1. WPEagle — Alex Cooper

Alex Cooper is the founder of WP Eagle and has worked in the internet marketing industry for over 20 years. He also started making videos in 2016 teaching people WordPress and Internet marketing on his YouTube channel WPEagle.

One of the greatest things about Alex’s channel is the level of sharing, transparency and detail he goes into with his websites. Very few people share the domain names of the websites they’re talking about. But Alex happily shares his Google Analytics dashboard, Google Search Console, Ahrefs, Amazon Associates and Ezoic Ads dashboard screens with you for the following sites he owns:

AirFreshR https://airfreshr.com/ (site given away to a subscriber in March 2022)
BestPressureWasher https://bestpressurewasher.com/
DartPicks https://dartpicks.com
BestCornPopper.com https://bestcornpopper.com 
Wheelalong.co.uk https://wheelalong.co.uk
BestRoofBox.com https://bestroofbox.com — ( sold in June 2021 for $70k, it was generating an income of $3k/month at the time).

His videos are just pure gold as you often see him working on his affiliate websites so you can see exactly what his process is. You may see him working on his WordPress site or writing content using the Jasper AI writing tool. You learn a lot this way as you see him actually doing it live right before your very eyes. He’s also happy to answer viewers questions during these live sessions.

2. Spencer Haws of Niche Pursuits

Spencer Haws started building affiliate websites in 2005 and achieved enough success to be able to quit his full-time business banking job in 2011 to focus solely on his ventures. He’s also the founder of Long Tail Pro (keyword research tool), Link Whisper (building internal links using AI) and co-founder of Motion Invest (marketplace for buying and selling websites).

What I like most about this channel are the great interviews that Spencer Haws and now Jared Bauman (since August 2021) conduct with world-class experts of the affiliate marketing, SEO and flipping websites world including Kyle Roof and Musfiq. A new interview is posted every week.

I particularly like how Jared asks the questions that we’d all want to ask and learn about SEO etc. I’ve picked up a lot of great, actionable tips. It’s relatable and practical. I like how he summarises the highlights and interesting points of the interview in the intro and then cuts to the interview.

You can also read the transcript and see a list of the resources and links mentioned in the YouTube interview/podcast on the Niche Pursuits Podcasts page.  

3. Morten Storgaard is the Passive Income Geek

Morten Storgaard started building passive income websites back in 2007. He started out doing eCommerce, then got into online marketing and SEO consulting. He now works solely on his own websites. One site he shares publicly is GoDownsize.com, which makes over $33k/month from ads and affiliates. He also launched a course in 2021 teaching others how to build passive income websites over at Passive Income Geek.

Morten’s videos are very beginner friendly. He explains his strategies clearly and in great detail. It’s like you’re looking over his shoulder as he shows you exactly how to do what he’s talking about. A good example of this teaching approach can be seen in this tutorial on keyword research.

His approach is also very budget friendly. He talks about using free tools such as Google Analytics and the Google Console and finding underserved topics using Google’s autocomplete method, especially when building a brand new website. His strategy is to focus on the searcher’s intent and writing the best article to answer the question, rather than using paid keyword research tools to try and find the exact keywords to target.

4. Authority Hacker — Gael Breton and Mark Webster

Gael Breton and Mark Webster are the guys behind the Authority Hacker YouTube channel. Gael’s background is in marketing and Mark started in online marketing, doing Google AdSense campaigns and creating ClickBank products in 2008. They have built a portfolio of authority websites since 2013 which have generated millions of dollars in revenue. A screenshot they’ve posted on their website shows over $85K and another shows over $1.5M in total revenue earned. 

Their YouTube channel covers internet and affiliate marketing, SEO, reviews of online marketing tools and services, interviews with prominent experts such as Kyle Roof and Jon Dykstra and more. 

I like how Gael and Mark banter off each other and so often end up adding more interesting points and tangents to the topic. Their expertise and experience really shows through in their videos whether they’re reviewing websites or sharing how they flipped a golf website for 6 figures. 

They’ve also created two paid courses: The Authority Site System 3.0 (for beginners) and the Authority Hacker Pro (for experienced marketers) training programs which teach you how to build authority affiliate websites.

5. Neil Patel

Neil Patel is a top marketer and entrepreneur and founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar, and KISSmetrics. He now owns Ubersuggest (free SEO tool) and NP Digital which helps clients with paid campaigns, SEO, social media and content marketing. 

His videos cover digital marketing, SEO tips using Ubersuggest, and related topics. I like how Neil can share a few great tactics and tips on a topic in a short-ish video (5–8mins). It’s great that he also summarises the main points in the description, if you prefer to just quickly scan the summary. He posts new videos to the channel 3 times a week. It’s a good channel to regularly check into for a quick lesson to level-up your marketing and SEO knowledge.

6. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a software company that develops online SEO tools founded by Dmitry Gerasimenko in 2010. The main tools are Site Explorer, Keyword Explorer, Site Audit, Rank Tracker, and Content Explorer. Their crawler is only second to Google and crawls 5 million pages every minute. This is one of the most popular SEO tools on the market. Ahrefs also offers a range of free SEO tools which are a good start to dip your toes into this search tool and to familiarise yourself with the Ahrefs interface.

The Ahrefs YouTube channel offers digital marketing tutorials on SEO and YouTube marketing. Topics covered include keyword research, link building, content marketing, technical SEO, YouTube SEO, and Google ads. Sam Oh, Director of Product Education is the main teacher behind these educational videos. He explains concepts clearly and thoroughly. He’ll take you through how to use the Ahrefs tools to help you grow your website’s traffic. There are also a number of helpful playlists on the channel including the ‘SEO Course for Beginners’ and the ‘Affiliate Marketing Tutorials’.

7. Fat Stacks — Jon Dykstra

Jon Dykstra had been working as a criminal defence and litigation lawyer for 6 years when he was asked to hire a web developer to build the law firm’s website. Jon then wrote blog posts for the site and got interested in SEO and content production, and built his own successful non-law website on the side. He ended up giving up law to focus on building niche websites full-time in 2012. Jon now has 17 websites in his portfolio, and shares the income reports for 8 of these niche sites. In September 2021, these 8 sites generated over $93K (gross) revenue.

Jon’s approach to building authority niche sites focuses on targeting low competition, long-tail keywords even if there isn’t much search volume for those keywords, publishing good content, and then monetizing the site with display ads. His Fat Stacks YouTube channel explain these tactics and other tips in greater detail. He also publishes useful and informative articles on his Fat Stacks website and newsletter. 

8. Miles Beckler

Miles Beckler co-founded the meditation and spirituality website Ask Angels with his wife Melanie in 2009. She’s the face of the brand and he runs the technology, advertising and SEO side of things. The site’s grown to 8M+ visitors a year. 

Miles and his wife were living the digital nomad lifestyle and were often being asked what they do and how they do it. This plus him being sick of the number of ‘fake gurus’ out there selling their courses for $X amount of dollars (many of which Miles bought and tried) led Miles to start his YouTube channel and Miles Beckler website to share his knowledge of digital marketing in 2016. 

I like how he shares a great amount of knowledge for free and makes his money through his affiliate websites, rather than trying to sell you a course. His channel covers topics including affiliate marketing, writing content, SEO, keyword research, blogging, sales funnels, and Facebook ads. 

I like the practical, no-nonsense approach way he teaches. He takes you through what works and why it works step-by-step. He also frequently emphasises the fact that you have to be put in the work, be consistent, and focus on building one site at a time rather than starting numerous projects simultaneously to eventually achieve financial success with your affiliate websites. He tells you straight out that this is not a get-rich quick scheme to make money that the ‘fake’ gurus try to make you believe it is. 

9. Passive Income Unlocked — Jeff Bridenstine and Ben Esman

Jeff Bridenstine tried lots of different ways to make money online before finding success building niche information sites 4 years ago. He soon brought on board one of his best friends Ben Esman and together they now have 6 niche websites in their portfolio. These sites generated over $26k in gross revenue in January 2022 and over $49k in December 2021. 

Jeff and Ben teach you the strategies and the practical steps on how to build and scale a niche website to make money. I like how they’re so humble and just launch straight into what to do and how to do it. There’s no marketing fluff or blah chit-chat in these videos. I really appreciate how they respect the viewer’s time.

They were very generous in revealing the domain of one of their sites My Backyard Life in August 2021, to enable their viewers to directly see their strategies in action. This site was started 2.5 years ago, has over 600 posts and is now already making over $10k a month.

10. Affiliate Marketing Dude — Marcus Campbell

Marcus Campbell is a self-taught marketer. He graduated high school and worked in computer sales, was a magician, and started building websites. He then studied marketing, search engine rankings, advertising, psychology, and business books. He’s now logged over 16 years of experience as an internet affiliate marketer. 

Marcus shares his knowledge and tactics on how to make money with affiliate marketing offers on your websites and blogs. I like his direct style. Marcus keeps it real. He shares the brutal truth of what really matters to get results. He doesn’t worry about fancy themes or plugins. He even tells you his sites may look like they were designed in the 90s and look ugly but it doesn’t matter as those factors don’t rank. He shares with you what things to focus on such as finding the right keywords to target using Ahrefs, what type of article to write, how to find a high paying affiliate program to place on the article, and where you can go to get the article written for a good price.

11. Caffeinated Blogger — Greg Kononeko

Greg Kononenko has been doing online marketing part-time since 2006 and went into it full-time in 2015. He has built close to 400 websites for clients and himself to date.

His Caffeinated Blogger channel and website cover topics including blogging, affiliate marketing, writing content, building websites and blogs, and driving traffic to your sites. He also covers other ways to make money online not directly related to building affiliate websites for example ‘Online English Teaching Jobs’.

I really like Greg’s highly practical, no-nonsense, easy to follow, step-by-step approach to teaching a range of topics including Clickbank Affiliate Marketing (2022): $200/Day Clickbank Tutorial and How To Write Content for Website: Write GREAT Website Content FAST.

12. Shaun Marrs

Shaun Marrs was introduced to internet marketing and Black Hat YouTube by a colleague in the Air Force in 2012/2013. Since those days, Shaun has built up a portfolio of sites that now give him a full-time income. He now shares his knowledge on topics including keyword research, ezoic (display ads network), writing blog posts on YouTube and Reddit.

He started a $1 Million Blog Project in December 2021 where he will try and build a website to a million dollar valuation with a brand new domain. He will document his journey along the way so you can see his process and tactics and learn what works and doesn’t.

Shaun’s videos are especially useful to beginners as Shaun literally takes you through a topic step-by-step. He shares with you the exact process of how to do something and tells you why he’s doing it that way and what he’s trying to achieve with that method.

13. Google Search Central

If you want to keep up-to-date on what’s happening in the world of Google Search, then you can’t go past hearing the news and updates directly from the horse’s i.e. Google’s mouth.

This channel is where you can “find information and tools to help you understand and improve your site in Google Search.”

There are a number of playlists but the ones I find most interesting are:

1. Google Search News (monthly). 
These videos cover topics such as Google ranking algorithm updates, Core Web Vitals ranking changes, Crawling and indexing updates.

2. English Google SEO office hours (weekly). 
“These sessions are open to anything search & website-owner related like crawling, indexing, mobile sites, internationalization, duplicate content, Sitemaps, Search Console, pagination, duplicate content, multi-lingual/multi-regional sites, etc.”

John Mueller, Search Advocate on the Search Relations Team at Google will answer your questions during the office hours session.

3. #AskGooglebot (bi-weekly or so)
In this series, John Mueller answers your questions from Twitter with the hashtag #AskGoogleBot. Topics covered include: ‘How long to keep 301 redirects?’ and ‘Does a website theme matter for SEO?’.

4. Search Off the Record (every few weeks or so)
Search Off the Record is a “podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team.” These are more in-depth conversations surrounding topics such as ‘Let’s talk Core Web Vitals’, ‘The Future of SEO’ and ‘Inclusive language in Search’.

Hopefully, you’ll have checked out some of the videos from this list of YouTube channels to find which presenters and styles resonate with your style of learning. Then hopefully you’re on your way to building successful and profitable niche websites.