YouTube Anti-Crisis: How Bloggers Make Money during the Quarantine

While the majority suffers from a huge decrease in their profits due to influence marketing budget cuts, CPA bloggers, on the contrary, have saved money and increased revenues.

In the midst of a pandemic and self-isolation, YouTube bloggers cease to profit from contracts and ad campaign views. Brands cut budgets even in quarantine-winning industries. But those who work in affiliate marketing have the advantage in this situation.

According to Admitad statistics, YouTubers in the gaming industry were able to increase revenues by 90% from CPA channel during the quarantine period.

EPICSTARS influencer advertising platform estimates the annual volume of the YouTube bloggers market at $40 million. However, according to the “Interactive Advertising Bureau”, a quarter of international companies and agencies have already stopped their promotion, and another 46% have cut expenditures. Admitad observations show that bloggers who continue to release content in the hope of profit from the increased traffic are left with no expected revenue.

Under the circumstance, the “cost per action” model becomes even more attractive: the blogger receives a reward for each purchase made through their affiliate link. So, they do not need to wait for offers from brands or rely on profits from YouTube advertising. They can choose advertisers to work with and even specific products they want to promote.

Yurii Piatkov

Country manager Admitad UK

“Many YouTubers suffer from a strong profit decline, as advertisers are cutting budgets for influencers during this difficult time. But let’s look at the bloggers working on CPA who saved money or grew their income. So far, only a small number of bloggers work on this model because fixed payments from advertisers are sometimes higher than the income from CPA. But working on CPA you don’t need to stop working on flat fees, you may as well place affiliate links. For example, gamers complain about a 30-50% drawdown in revenue from the YouTube advertising network last month and we have recorded their growth of more than 90%. Under such circumstances, brands want to pay for a result, for sales, so in the nearest future affiliate marketing is going to grow.”

There are some industries where the number of orders through YouTube bloggers decreased: tourism, clothing and shoes, electronics, and household appliances. Accordingly, bloggers whose content connected with these topics could suffer losses. But, thanks to the CPA model, they continue to make a profit even with a reduction in revenue from advertising contracts.

However, even despite the influence of the affected industries, the total sales of bloggers through affiliate marketing decreased only by 10.9%. At the same time, according to Admitad, the average check reduced by 30.1%, which means that viewers did not buy less, they began to buy more economically. In this case, influencers that offer discounts or cheaper products can achieve more sales.  

Many business directions only benefited from the quarantine and YouTube bloggers took advantage of it. Most of all, according to the affiliate network statistics, the number of actions (and hence the blogger’s income) in online games has increased by 90.9% over the past month. The next categories that grew in popularity were “Audio” (+ 90%) and “Products for children” (+ 81.8%).

The YouTubers who managed to increase the amount of sales most of all by promoting household goods (+ 277%), tools and garden products (+ 271%), audio equipment (+ 105.3%), food delivery (+ 71%) and goods for children (61.2%).

Alex Shokin

YouTube Blogger of Razor TV Channel

“Undoubtedly, views and online streams have grown by about 25-30%. As a game blogger, of course, I get additional income during quarantine, as people began to play more and be interested in games and therefore follow my links, generating traffic. ”

According to the blogger’s experience, it is now a good time to bring customers to the computer and mobile games, online cinemas, food delivery applications, audiobooks, and paper books.