The photography niche is a great niche to be in as an affiliate marketer. Photographers range from amateur to professional and all levels require various equipment and gear.
Photography affiliate programs are put into place by merchants in order to increase sales through the marketing efforts of affiliate marketers. Many of these affiliate programs range anywhere from 2.5% to 50% commissions. Affiliate commissions are often paid via PayPal thirty days after they were earned.
As an affiliate marketer, you can earn a steady income online in the photography niche. In this post, I will also share how you can do that using the same online business model that I use.
Here’s why most beginners find success with this online business model.
Table of Contents
Photography Affiliate Programs
- Expert Photography
- Canon
- Neewer
- PhotoShelter
- Vallerret
Expert Photography
What I like about this website is that it offers various free and paid courses to help improve your photography skills. This is a great website to recommend to beginners and intermediate photographers.
As an affiliate, the Expert Photography affiliate program offers 50% commission on all of their products and they have quite a bit of them. The cookie length is 365 days which is above average as most cookies last for 30 days.
URL: https://expertphotography.com/careers/affiliate-registration/
Commission: 50%
Cookie Length: 365 days
Canon
Who doesn’t know Canon? It is one of the most popular camera brands on the market. You could enter into any subniche of the broader photography niche and promote Canon with confidence.
The Canon affiliate program offers a 2.5% commission rate and 30-day cookie length. If you happen to be a Canon user yourself, it is even easier to recommend their cameras.
You can join the affiliate program through CJ Affiliate.
URL: https://shop.usa.canon.com/shop/en/catalog/affiliate-program
Commission: 2.5%
Cookie Length: 30 days
Neewer
This company specializes in selling lighting equipment, tripods, and other photography gear. You can find studio lighting equipment as well as lighting for recording videos.
Photography accessories sell just as well as the actual cameras. Lighting equipment is important for photographers, vloggers, and even those that simply use Instagram for photos and video.
The Neewer affiliate program offers between 6% and 10% commissions. Their affiliate program is managed through GoAffPro.
URL: https://neewer.com/pages/neewer-affiliate-program
Commission: 6% – 10%
Cookie Length: not disclosed
PhotoShelter
This is another great service for photographers. It enables photographers to have a central location to host their photos, sell them, and deliver them to their customers.
The PhotoShelter affiliate program offers between $6 and $165 with a 60-day cookie length. A great target audience for this service would be those that want to earn income from their photos.
URL: https://www.photoshelter.com/about/index/partner/affiliate
Commission: between $6 and $165
Cookie Length: 60 days
Vallerret
This company specializes in cold-weather gloves for photographers. I really like this product as it is such a useful product for photographers that take photos in cold weather.
It enables anyone to take photos without having to remove their gloves. The Vallerret affiliate program offers a 10% commission rate, 30-day cookie length, and is managed by Refersion.
URL: https://us.photographygloves.com/pages/affiliate-program
Commission: 10%
Cookie Length: 30 days
How to Make Money with Photography Affiliate Programs
There is another way to make money in photography without selling your photos online.
The affiliate programs above are only scratching the surface of the many that are out there that you can apply to.
For beginner affiliate marketers, it is challenging to make their first commission let alone steady commissions online.
I use to struggle with earning regular commissions until I focused on one strategy. That strategy is niche websites.
It wasn’t until I created a niche website (essentially a blog) that I began earning steady commissions online.
A niche website is simply a website that focuses on one topic. In this case, the niche would be photography.
Photography itself is a broad niche and a competitive one at that. You can definitely earn steady commissions in the photography niche by niching down a bit more.
Choosing a Photography Niche
There are many subniches within the photography niche that you can go into that have less competition but still have a hungry audience.
I did a bit of keyword research to find some great photography niches. You can go with any of these or use them to brainstorm one of your own:
- portrait photography
- newborn photography
- boudoir photography
- wedding photography
- drone photography
The advantage of going with a subniche is a great way to attract a targeted audience that is highly likely to buy the products that you recommend.
Choosing a niche is often the largest struggle as an affiliate. Even when I started, I really had no direction.
Instead of trying to learn it all on my own, I purposely sought out an online training program that would teach me how to earn income from a website.
Thankfully, I found this one and since taking action on everything that I learned there, I was able to work my way out of a full-time retail job to work on my website full-time.
Creating Your Website
There isn’t much that you need to create a niche website. It is extremely low-cost and easy to maintain.
The only things that you will need include:
- registering a domain name
- getting a web hosting account
- installing WordPress on your hosting account
Don’t worry if all of the technical aspects feel overwhelming, almost any web hosting company can set you up with everything that you need.
Writing Your Content
Your website’s ability to earn income will be based on the content (blog posts) that you create.
The way I write a new piece of content is by doing keyword research first. It is important to write content that your niche audience is searching for.
You can use any keyword tool that you like (free or paid) or open up Google Search and type in a keyword related to your niche.
It will return autosuggest results and these can provide you with a wide variety of blog post ideas.
Write as helpful a blog post as you can. I try to write a post as if I’m writing to a good friend and helping them with a thoughtful answer.
I also write a new post weekly and when it is a brand new website, at least 2 to 3 times per week. However, one post a week is also sufficient.
Making Money On Your Website
The way your website will make money is by promoting affiliate products. You can link to affiliate products from within your content.
There are some marketing strategies that you can learn that can help with conversions. I don’t recommend putting too many affiliate links in your content.
One or two work well. Particularly one right at the end of your blog post. These are things I learned within the training program I followed.
You can learn more about that here.
Closing Thoughts On Photography Affiliate Programs
I hope that the affiliate programs shared above provide you with a great starting point. You can find more by doing a web search of your own.
The ideal way to earn income from these affiliate programs is to create a niche website. The content that you create attracts targeted visitors who can benefit from the products that you recommend.
Learn how I am able to earn a steady income online with one website and promote other people’s products. Click here to learn how.
