Let’s imagine Ilya. On Monday, he decided to try affiliate marketing, on Tuesday he saw the comfortable starting budget for Facebook, and by Wednesday he realized he wasn’t ready to pay that much for a pig in a poke. That’s how Ilya came to YouTube Shorts, which beginners usually associate with a simple idea: “Copy trends, make quick clips on the fly, and scoop up traffic with zero investment.”
This idea is only half true. Ilya really won’t pay for video views, but he’ll invest time in finding ideas, editing, choosing accounts, analytics, and building a funnel. If our hero picks a bad offer or goes too far with moderation, at best Ilya just won’t get any views. At worst, he’ll lose potential profit, his video, his account, and as much time as he would with Facebook.
There really is money in YouTube Shorts, and today we’ll explain how a beginner can get it.
Why YouTube Shorts Is Popular in Affiliate Marketing
In 2025, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan announced that YouTube Shorts gets an average of 200 billion views daily. Most of these are users from India, the US, and Brazil, but the platform has a huge audience from other GEOs as well.
An affiliate can find traffic for any offer and any country on YouTube. The majority of viewers prefer entertainment content, which works equally well in any language.
In the ad account, you buy ad impressions, but in Shorts you have to earn them first. However, a successful video can keep bringing in organic traffic after publishing, and a single channel can work with recommendations, search, the channel page, and related videos all at once.
But you can’t really say YouTube Shorts is easier or harder than paid sources. Facebook, Google Ads, and other major platforms still require affiliates to have basic skills: making creatives, planning targeting, placements, budgeting, and so on. Some of these challenges are already being handled by Andromeda, Gemini, and other internal neural networks. Shorts demands more creativity in finding ideas and editing videos: if a user rewatches, likes, or shares a video, the system pushes it further. If not, the video stops being shown and gets buried.
When (or if) Ilya gets tired of affiliate traffic, he can switch to whitehat — the YouTube Partner Program. With the official partnership, you can earn from videos on any allowed topic, even funny cats. The earnings will be lower, but you don’t have to worry about bans and can steadily upload videos to a network of channels. In this case, you also don’t need to think about a funnel: users watch videos — YouTube pays for the views.
Verticals for YouTube
We’ll look at specific niches for YouTube Shorts in the next section, but for now let’s explain an important principle for beginners choosing a niche: start from the monetization model.
- Classic traffic arbitrage. This should be an offer that can grab attention in a couple of seconds or be explained in one minute. For example, dating, adult, or gambling fit this criterion, while high-ticket crypto investments or insurance niches do not.
- YouTube Partner Program. The platform does not specify exactly how much it will pay per 1,000 views, as the payout depends on the GEO of the viewers and the value of the video’s topic. For example, finding and retaining an audience for luxury goods is objectively difficult. However, this audience can be offered ads from expensive brands that pay YouTube for promotion, resulting in higher payouts for the channel owner.
Overall, the ideal path for a beginner looks like this: start with white niches like humor or animals to understand the structure of engaging Shorts, and then move on to gray niches.
Top verticals for arbitrage with YouTube Shorts
At first, the best vertical is the one where a beginner can come up with 30 different storylines, not make a single cent from them, and still come up with 30 more. The logic is simple: if an affiliate just learned about YouTube Shorts yesterday, read a couple of guides today, uploaded a few videos, and wants guaranteed earnings, UBT is not for them. You’ll have to test a ton of ideas, approaches, and hooks that no one shares for free. And all this—almost purely on enthusiasm. For example, some info-entrepreneurs stubbornly convince beginners to enter the AI video niche, claiming it’s easy money. With something like n8n, you can set up a conveyor belt to create similar videos with animals, dramatic stories, and so on. The idea sounds tempting, but few mention that the platform has kept this niche under special scrutiny for over a year now.
For a beginner who is not ready to give up, the most promising niches are the following.
Software and utilities. This vertical is convenient because the product’s value can be shown directly on screen: how to trade stocks, how to find a date in an app, how to clean your phone, and so on.
Usually, the user is either led to a profile, and from there to a long video or a link in the bio. Regardless of what the arbitrager chooses, the traffic can then be redirected either to a landing page with PWA or to a store. When choosing an offer, it’s best to focus on the wow effect. The less time from downloading the app to seeing results, the higher the chance of attracting traffic.
Physical goods and e-commerce. Here, most of the work is done by the product itself: unboxing, household testing, comparing two models, or demonstrating a problem are usually clear without a long introduction. A beginner can shoot a video on their phone, show the product in a real scenario, and then direct the viewer to a review, storefront, or product card.
The product can be digital. For example, at one time selling ChatGPT subscriptions was popular. People showed how to quickly buy a plan with crypto on a marketplace, then shared their referral link.
Education and digital products. In a short video, you can give a mini-lesson, break down a common mistake, or show a specific solution to a popular problem. To start, you can choose HR or AI services that don’t require installation on devices. You can lead the viewer to a full guide, a review, or directly to a landing page.
The principle is the same as in other niches: the faster the user gets a result with zero prior knowledge, the higher the chance of conversion.
Dating. If someone hasn’t seen dating ads, they probably have never been online. As long as you avoid explicit photos and videos that lead to adult offers, there won’t be moderation issues. In practice, even very basic creatives convert.
Payouts are higher in adult, but it’s much harder to push. Thanks to AI algorithms, YouTube now detects explicit content much faster than before.
Gambling and betting. The main approach in iGaming hasn’t changed for quite a while: a popular or not-so-popular streamer spins slots, hits a jackpot or a big win, and shows strong emotions on camera.
To find references, simply enter keywords like “maxwin,” “maxbet,” “jackpot,” or “big win” into the video hosting search.
How to Get Traffic from YouTube
You shouldn’t start by buying ten accounts, but with a testable hypothesis. That’s why a good workflow for the first test looks like this: 1 offer, 1 GEO, 1 target audience segment, 3 creative formats, and 1 landing page option. If you spread yourself across many offers, after 50 videos you’ll just learn that 50 different ideas… gave 50 different results. The effective workflow looks like this:
- Select an offer and confirm YouTube as a source with your manager. The affiliate must be absolutely sure that traffic can be sent directly from YouTube Shorts, whether the referral link can be replaced with a promo code, and if using the brand’s logo and name is allowed. Otherwise, choose another offer.
- Create a viewer profile in one sentence: who they are, what they already know, and what problem they want to solve right now. Without this, you can’t build a proper video structure. For example, for the Betano brand in Brazil, it could be M18+ who already knows the brand and is interested in football betting but hasn’t registered yet and wants to know how to quickly top up their account via Pix and place their first bet from a smartphone. With this hypothesis, it’s easier for the buyer to choose a storyline: instead of reviewing the whole app, show the path from registration to deposit in 20–30 seconds.
- Collect 20–30 references on YouTube using keywords in your working vertical. You need to record not just views, but also the first frame, duration, storyline, CTA, and publication date. There is even special software for trend research, but it’s usually paid. As a free alternative, you can install the vidIQ extension. It helps filter out videos that quickly went viral. We’ll talk more about this extension later.
- Prepare three different approaches: offer demonstration, win story or UGC, or reaction, as well as breaking down a popular mistake. During testing, change elements one at a time to avoid confusion.
- Build your funnel and analytics. If you’re driving traffic to a link, shorten it using special services with a UTM tag and separate YouTube clicks from other sources. If you’re using a promo code, use different promo codes for different approaches.
How to Find Topics That Are Already Trending
At the start, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Everything interesting for the audience has already been filmed and continues to be filmed every day. So let’s look at two options: free and paid.
Free. There is software online called vidIQ. It offers more advanced statistics on YouTube videos, including Shorts. This is not an ad, so we won’t provide a link.
You can use the service’s features both in your personal account and directly on YouTube.
To find video ideas, go to YouTube search, log in with a clean account, and enter a thematic keyword for your vertical. The software will immediately show approximate statistics for that keyword.
To the left of the search bar, there’s a button with filters. If you click it, an interface with different search parameters will appear.
The majority of filters, including those for Shorts, are available on paid plans. But there’s another way: go to the channels of creators who are currently at the top or were at the top before, open their Shorts, and use the filters again.
This way, you can find references for free and get a better understanding of what the audience is currently interested in.
Paid. There is also plenty of software online for analyzing trends and finding viral videos. They also provide advanced statistics, but for around $50–60.
These tools are even simpler: enter a keyword, the built-in AI suggests similar keywords, search for videos, and filter by views.
Account Preparation
Before uploading, decide what kind of account you need: a fresh new registration or a channel with relevant history. At the start, we recommend using new accounts, but if your budget allows, purchased accounts won’t hurt.
How to Choose Purchased Accounts
Finding a quality channel on the market is tricky, as not all sellers are honest. They might sell you anything from an empty email with a created channel, a profile with some age, a channel with videos, or a ready-made project with subscribers. Ideally, an affiliate should buy both the audience and the attention of the algorithms in the working niche. That’s why a 2012 account with zero stats only gives you a nice date in the “About” section. But that’s where its advantages end.
To reduce the risk of investing in junk, stick to the stats. First, open YouTube Studio yourself or ask the seller to do it, and check analytics for the past 90 and 365 days. What matters are viewer countries, languages, traffic sources, subscriber growth, and which videos brought in the main audience. For example, a channel with 30,000 subscribers might be riding on a single viral video from three years ago.
Also, study the GEO of the target audience. A channel with traffic from India won’t help much if you need to attract sports betting fans from Spain, even if it used to get millions of views. Check the share of returning viewers and recent uploads. If view counts are stable but subscriber numbers jump by several thousand in a day, you might be looking at a channel with fake subscribers.
Screenshots from the seller are used only for the initial review. The final check is done through the assigned role in YouTube Studio, since the platform allows you to grant channel access without sharing the account password and to assign the participant the appropriate permission level. This way, we see the actual date ranges, sources, and restrictions.
Next, open the sections for violations and copyrights. You need to check for active warnings, strikes, Content ID claims, deleted videos, and feature restrictions. The thing is, if a channel gets three warnings, the system deletes it along with all its content.
Ideally, the situation should look like this:
- the audience matches the future vertical and GEO;
- there is no critical history of restrictions or questionable content;
- the statistics are confirmed inside YouTube Studio.
If the seller only provides an old registration date and a screenshot of subscribers, we consider such a deal as buying an unknown history.
Analysis of New Account Registration Principles
Create a separate Google account for a new channel. Phone numbers for this are inexpensive.
It’s best to enable two-factor authentication right away, add backup recovery methods, and set up the channel with a name, avatar, and description.
Next, prepare a starter content package for a week. For the first test, gather 5–7 videos on one topic, so after a successful Shorts, the viewer can open the profile and watch more. One random video gives almost no data: it’s unclear whether the problem is in the account, the storyline, the first seconds, or the chosen audience.
One week is enough to gain initial experience. In the analytics, track:
- how many viewers chose to watch instead of skipping;
- at what second the main drop-off starts;
- what percentage of the video is watched;
- whether there are repeat views;
- which countries the impressions come from;
- whether viewers go to the profile;
- which storylines bring subscriptions and clicks.
At the start, publishing one clip per day is enough to allow time for analytics and preparing new videos.
A working new account launch looks like this:
Create an account → set up the channel → prepare a batch of videos → run the first tests → analyze audience reaction → scale up successful storylines.
The key here is consistency. Remember, YouTube Shorts collects over 200 billion views daily, so sooner or later the buyer will get either the desired traffic or invaluable experience.
How to Properly Warm Up YouTube Channels
Warming up a channel has always been like folk medicine: on the first day you watch cat videos, on the second you subscribe to bloggers, two hours later you start liking posts, and then YouTube’s algorithms will initiate you into the YouTube Shorts cult. Every affiliate has their own experience, so there’s no consensus on account age and warming up. Some look for channels with months of downtime, others start uploading right away with a fresh account. In an interview with FB-Killa, an expert says directly that he creates an account on a clean IP and immediately starts publishing videos:
| You don’t need to reinvent the wheel with accounts. There’s no such thing as warming up, phased registration, or anything like that. Register an account on a clean IP — and go straight to work. Personally, I only run a few accounts long-term. I don’t have any upload farms. I think it’s pointless. The percentage of dead accounts on YouTube is very high. So it doesn’t make sense to upload hundreds of accounts a day. Hoping that at least 20 percent of them will survive and bring in minimal traffic — that’s not for me. |
YouTube directly advises to “follow your audience,” not to try to please the algorithm. This means you need to track viewer reactions and adapt your videos to their tastes, and then the system will handle the rest.
Boosting Behavioral Metrics
On forums and in Telegram chats, you can find private software for boosting behavioral metrics, but it’s almost impossible to find a decent option publicly. YouTube is owned by Google, so the same neural networks are at work, quickly detecting fraud.
To boost behavioral metrics, it’s safer to take another approach: act like a real person, publish Shorts in a single niche without trying to drive users off the platform. It’s much more effective to analyze the niche, form hypotheses, and make one quality video than to rush out 10 clips without analysis. Then the algorithms will test different audience segments until they find the right one.
Warming Up with White-Hat Videos
White-hat videos are needed less for warming up and more for understanding your target audience’s needs. On YouTube, affiliates can lead viewers from Shorts to long-form videos. This not only brings you closer to joining the platform’s official partner program, but also helps you quickly figure out what your audience likes. Shorts usually disappear from the feed quickly, while long videos can drive traffic for years, building channel trust.
Creatives for YouTube Arbitrage
Viewers choose Shorts by the thumbnail only at the start of a session, when they first open YouTube. Usually, these are trending videos, and getting into trends right away is nearly impossible. It’s much more likely that a user will find your video in the feed, and only the first seconds can hold their attention.
But it’s important to find your own balance here. If the first line promises a “secret way to always win,” but then it’s just a regular slot recording, the viewer leaves. A good hook quickly sets up a conflict: “Why you’ll never lose weight without sweets,” “These bookmakers won’t pay your winnings,” “Testing a product that claims to replace five devices.”
Creative Preparation
Before making a good creative, you need to decide on the video length. There’s no universal number for every niche, but here are some general guidelines:
If an affiliate plans to create compilations from other people’s content, here’s a quick practical lifehack: first, drop all the source clips onto the timeline in your video editor so that one follows another. Then export the video and upload it to YouTube as a draft. If the system allows it, you can edit the whole thing. If not, you’ll get a notification like this:
YouTube won’t let you publish such a clip. So the affiliate saves 30–50 minutes on editing and can test another hypothesis.
After publishing, don’t delete the video just because it didn’t hit recommendations within an hour: 1,000 views on a cat video and 1,000 on a crypto investment clip are different audiences and different value per view. That’s why it’s more effective to compare a series of videos and the overall funnel performance, not just a single attempt.
Examples and Cases
We couldn’t find fresh cases on UBT with classic traffic arbitrage. But here’s a network of channels that gets millions of views on content made in a couple of minutes, even without AI. The channels:
The channels are new, only one is just over a year old. But together they’ve already racked up over 370 million views. If you subtract the 30 million views needed to connect to the YouTube Partner Program, that leaves 340 million views. At a rate of at least $0.05 per 1,000 views, the profit is $16,500. The videos are taken from the internet with almost no changes, the music stays the same, and the editing is identical. In Adobe Premiere, a template for these clips can be made in an hour. Then, in 10 minutes, you drop in a new source, add effects, and the clip is ready to publish.
Which Metrics to Track
In YouTube Studio, start with four metrics: Shown in feed, the share of viewers who chose to watch, average watch duration, and average percentage watched. These show at which stage the video stops converting: it’s not shown, gets swiped immediately, or dropped halfway through.
Then combine content stats with stats from the affiliate program. Always track profile visits, clicks to the landing page, registrations, confirmed leads, FTD, EPC, and revenue per thousand engaged views. A video with 30,000 views and five deposits is clearly more effective than a million entertainment views with no conversions.
The minimum test table should include date, channel, GEO, offer, format, hook, duration, feed impressions, view rate, average watch percentage, clicks, leads, confirmations, and spend. Without it, YouTube Shorts arbitrage quickly turns into a collection of impressions: “this video seemed to take off, but that one didn’t for some reason.”
Useful Tips for Traffic Arbitrage via YouTube
We browsed affiliate forums and put together a short list of useful tips for beginners:
- Start with one channel and one vertical. Only move to a network after you gain experience and understand the specifics of the work.
- Get the source approved before uploading. Shorts, like any source for UBT, often deliver unpredictable results, which advertisers don’t like. This is especially true in iGaming, where advertisers want a very specific target audience, not just a random visitor with a single deposit.
- Build your own asset. In UBT, you can and should create a website, Telegram channel, newsletter, or subscriber base. A video can get banned or drop out of recommendations, but a loyal audience can be monetized again through another offer without extra effort.
- Check your content on a phone. Buttons, subtitles, and important elements can be covered by the app interface. For example, in CapCut, subtitles may be perfectly centered at the bottom, but in Shorts they might disappear under the subscribe button.
- Set stop conditions. Trends are born and die dozens of times in a single day. So you need to decide in advance how many videos and how much money you’re willing to spend before closing a hypothesis. In UBT, the budget is not just money, but also time, nerves, and motivation.
Conclusion
UBT with YouTube Shorts lets beginners test hypotheses without paying for every impression, but this is the only reason the source is considered free. Affiliates pay with their time: searching for ideas, making videos, analyzing retention, and building the funnel to the offer.
Start with one GEO, one product, and a few creative formats. Always get the source approved by the affiliate network, launch a series of original Shorts, and link channel metrics to clicks, registrations, and confirmed actions.
In your first tests, focus not on millions of views, but on understanding the workflow. An affiliate should know which storyline retains the audience, where viewers come from, and how much money each thousand engaged views brings. Once you have these answers, Shorts turns from a lottery into a scalable and automatable source.
FAQ
Conditionally free traffic means organic views for which the creator does not pay YouTube directly. Primarily, affiliates invest their time in producing videos, farming accounts, editing, and planning the funnel.
Yes. A new account can publish Shorts right after creation, but it will take time to grow.
Yes, until you see the first results. If after 20–30 videos the channel doesn’t get reach, you can either change the topic or create a new account.
A new account gives you a transparent history and full control from the start. A purchased channel may offer a ready audience, stats, and unlocked features, but you also inherit its GEO, possible violations, and questionable rights to the content.
For your first test, choose a pace that lets you maintain quality and analyze results. At first, posting 1–2 clips a day is enough, but do it consistently. YouTube likes regularity and predictability, not randomness.
URLs in Shorts descriptions and comments are not clickable. So, use links in the channel profile or direct viewers to a related long-form video.
YouTube rules prohibit this, so first collect trending references and try to create something similar but better. For example, add more transitions, animations, choose more relevant music, and so on.
You can, but only after making them unique. If a successful competitor appears, it's more profitable to track their posts in Reels or TikTok and then upload them to YouTube.
To earn ad revenue, a channel needs 1,000 subscribers and 10 million Shorts views in the last 90 days. Once these requirements are met, the user applies, the system approves, and payouts are credited.
In analytics, track the share of users who continue watching, average watch time, and view percentage. In the funnel, add profile visits, clicks, registrations, FTD, EPC, confirmed revenue, and expenses. The main final metric is the bundle's ROI, not the number of views.
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