Having strong calls to action in a video is very powerful…especially when it’s a YouTube Video. On YouTube itself, you certainly don’t have a good opportunity to display links. The only real place to put a clickable link (instead of inside your video which we will see soon) is in the description area. Not many people know to look there to get a clickable link unless you tell them. Also, the description box is always underutilized by marketers, but that’s a different topic all together.

Forget about expecting people to type links that you put as text inside of your video. There is a slim chance people will do that and it’s just not easy for people. You want to make it as easy as possible for people, because that means you make  money quicker – and that’s a good thing!

Having a message pop up on your video where the person can actually click the link that will take them to what ever site you want to take them is super powerful.

Don’t be fooled into thinking this is just a simple click of a button. You need to go through 9 simple steps to put this in place and many marketers just don’t know how to do this…but it’s your lucky day.

In this post, we’ve have outlined all 9 steps on how you can get clickable links inside your YouTube video within the next 10 – 15 minutes or less!

You will be able to:

• Put clickable links inside any YouTube video (no, you don’t have to redo the videos at all)
• Give viewers calls to action right inside your video so they will act quickly
• No have to rely on YouTube’s lame description area for people to click on your links

This is a game changer…I promise you!

So Let’s Get Started…

Setting Up Your YouTube Account

Here’s a video explaining the steps. Below the video you will find the written instructions.

Watch Video Overview Above

Step 1:

Go to: www.google.com/webmasters/tools and click Add a Site.

Add the site where you will be adding links to send people.

Note: the links you put in your YouTube Videos MUST MATCH the website you are adding here in this process. If it doesn’t match, then you will not be able to add the link…so choose your domain wisely at this stage.

Step 2:

Next you will need to verify the site you just added. Google will provide you with an html file to upload to the site you just added:

You can FTP this file or you can go to your cpanel and upload the file to the main directory.

Click verify after you have uploaded the file.

It should give you a notification if you are successful or not:

Step 3:

Click Continue and then press the settings button on the top right of the screen:

Then click Associates

Step 4:

Click Add User and add your email address:

Step 5:

Go to this site: http://www.youtube.com/verify and verify your YouTube Account.

Step 6:

Head over to your YouTube Account by clicking on your picture at the top right and then clicking Creator Studio. You will see a left hand menu bar. Click Monetization.

Step 7:

Go through the steps to enable monetization. This doesn’t mean that you will have ads in your videos. This feature has to be enabled to use the external linking feature.

Step 8:

Head over to Status and Features and make sure you are Partner Verified.

Step 9: 

You should be good to go at this point to start adding external links to your videos!

Steps To Adding Clickable Links

Step 1:

Pick the video you want to add external links to from your video manager. If you don’t have a video yet, you need to make one 🙂

Step 2:

Go to the settings of your video. There are tons of ways to get there. If you are at your video on YouTube, you can click the info and settings button and that will take you where you need to be.

Step 3:

Once inside the settings area, click on Annotations.

Step 4: 

Move your mouse to the positioning of the video where you want the link and then click Add Annotation

Step 5:

Choose the type of annotation. I usually like the note annotation because it puts the link in a simple square box.

Step 6:

Put the text or link that you want in there. If you put text (like Click Here as seen below), the text will be the clickable link that you want….but hold on, we are not up to the linking yet. Notice that once you add the text, it will add it to your video the way it’s going to look. You can move the box where ever you want inside the video. Notice you can change the text size and the box size. There are only 2 options for the text color, black or white. You can also change the background of the box which is nice because you can really make the box stand out in your video.

Also notice you can adjust the timing of when the box pops up and how long it stays up for.

Step 7:

Once you’ve chosen the position of your annotation and the colors, and such, it’s now finally time to add the link. Click the box that says Link. On the pulldown, choose Associated Website.

Step 8:

Put the link in the text box. Remember – the link must match the domain that was verified above. You can’t just put any link in there. So if you are trying to put a random link or an affiliate link that is not cloaked with the domain that you just verified it’s not going to work.

You saw above that I registered http://debbiedrum.com. Therefore, my link has to be http://debbiedrum.com/whatever

If you are using affiliate links or any other type of link, you have to run it through the main domain you just registered, otherwise, again, this method won’t work.

If you put another type of link in there, Google will reject it right away with this message:

If successful, it will look like this:

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There you have it my friends. That’s it. Now you can start adding as many clickable links inside of your YouTube videos.

=> Let us know how much you think this post just rocked your world!