Best Photography Affiliate Programs 2023 to Make Money
If your site caters to photographers – whether you do your own photography or you try to show others how to get into it – one of the most lucrative opportunities for monetizing your platform is to affiliate with photography gear brands online.
Plus, since photography gear are usually highly-sensitive pieces of hardware (and priced accordingly) you can make lots of revenue from sales conversions on your platform.
Check out our Tiktok Marketing Tips and Instagram Marketing Tips.
There’s also plenty of services for other kinds of photography-related products like presets, software suites, and more. If you’re looking to improve the income you’re getting from your photography-related blog or website, check out the affiliate programs highlighted in this post.
Top 8 Best Photography Affiliate Programs
Photography gear and services sites are a dime-a-dozen, but if you’re going to be affiliating yourself with a photography brand, best make sure you’re tying-in your platform with a brand that’s known for their quality and reliability. Here are the best-performing photography affiliate programs in 2021:
Amazon
Commission Rate: 4%
Cookie Duration: 24 hours
It’s hard to argue against Amazon when it comes to photography products, especially since most photographers we know (us included) source a lot of their equipment and photography supplies on Amazon. The main draw to Amazon, at least from the customer perspective, is the security, the convenience, the reliable delivery service, and the wide selection of products and brands available.
If you decide to go the Amazon Affiliate route for your photography site, the commission rate is pretty solid at 4%, but make sure your audience clicks your links ready to buy since the short 24-hour cookie window might make it hard to hold on to your leads long enough to make a conversion.
That said, Amazon makes up for the short cookie duration with an extremely high conversion rate, and as long as your cookie survives the sale, you’ll earn a commission on everything else in the basket when your customer checks out.
Adobe
Commission Rate: 85% one-time on monthly subscriptions, 8.33% of annual subscription, $72 monthly recurring for Adobe Stock subscriptions, and 8.33% per stock photo sale
Cookie Duration: 30 days
Apart from actual physical photography gear, every photographer worth his salt needs professional software tools to help them make the most of every photograph. In the world of professional photography, very few software tools perform better than the Adobe Creative Suite.
These years, Adobe offers its entire suite of high-end tools as the Creative Cloud (Adobe CC) as a software subscription. They also offer Adobe Stock, a subscription-based service for stock photos with the option for individual stock photo purchases.
As a photographer, you’ll mainly be promoting tools like Photoshop and Lightroom, with the former being the most popular image manipulation tool on the market and the latter being the most popular photo editing tool for professional photography. If you can convert a monthly subscription, Adobe pays a commission of 85% on the first month, or 8.33% of the first year of an annual subscription.
For Adobe Stock subscriptions, you can earn a commission of $72 per month, or 8.33% of every stock photo sale. Cookie duration is an industry-standard 30 days, which offers plenty of time to keep your conversion rate up and the commissions flowing.
B&H Photo Video
Commission Rate: 2-8% per sale
Cookie Duration: 60 hours
B&H Photo is the one of the largest international stores for photography gear, and their comprehensive selection of cameras, gear, accessories, bags, and all kinds of tools and electronics has allowed them to become one of the most promoted photography platforms with a huge network of affiliates.
One of the biggest draws of B&H Photo Video, especially for professional photographers, is the guarantee that all of their products go through official, authorized distribution channels, meaning quality control, warranties, and product guarantees are so much easier to enforce.
Apart from their status as a legitimate distributor of some of the top camera brands in the world, B&H Photo Video also offers substantial commissions that range from 2-8% on every sale despite the rather short 60-hour cookie window. Most consumers might opt for cheaper stores, but if you cater to a professional audience, they’ll appreciate the guarantees that B&H has to offer.
Adorama
Commission Rate: 2% per sale
Cookie Duration: 30 days
Earnings Per Click: $0.04
Just like B&H, Adorama is another popular photography store that caters to professionals and enthusiasts alike. Despite offering a similar selection of photography products – everything from entry-level to high-end cameras, gear, supplies, tripods, electronics, and so much more – Adorama’s biggest draw is the amount of deals and discounts that’s perpetually available on their platform.
Adorama is also an authorized and official distributor of top camera and equipment brands, but it caters better to the more budget-oriented audience. The commission rate is a little lower at 2%, but the deals and discounts on the platform do make it easier to get those conversions, so you can make up the revenue with sheer volume.
The 30 day cookie window is industry standard, and also aids in completing conversions compared to other platforms. They also offer per-click earnings at $0.04.
Focus Camera
Commission Rate: 3%
Cookie Duration: 30 days
Earnings Per Click: $0.04-$0.37
Put B&H Photo Video, Adorama, and Focus Camera together in a room and you have the big-three of photography affiliate programs. Almost every single one of the top-performing photography sites today are affiliated with at least one of these three platforms, and for good reason.
With an equally comprehensive selection of photography products, Focus Camera caters to all kinds of photographers, from beginners to pros, and are an authorized dealer for some of the biggest camera brands in the world.
The Focus Camera commission rate is higher than that of Adorama’s at a fixed 3% per sale, and their 30-day commission blows B&H out of the water with an industry-standard 30 days. Focus Camera also offers a very lucrative earnings-per-click system for their affiliates, with EPC rates as high as $0.37.
Skylum
Commission Rate: 20-40% per sale
Cookie Duration: 90 days
Despite being the most popular software brand for professional photographers, Adobe offers high-end solutions that might be too expensive for smaller operations or photographers just starting out. If you cater to such an audience, a cheaper yet highly-effective software solution exists and its name is Skylum Luminar.
Skylum offers different software solutions for photographers, with the most popular one being Luminar – a professional photo editing tool that’s touted as ‘the future of photo editing’.
Skylum offers a substantial commission rate – one of the perks of partnering with a new brand still trying to penetrate the photography software market currently being dominated by Adobe – so you can earn anywhere between 20% and 40% on every sale, with increases based on volume.
Skylum also offers earnings per click at $1.17, and with the 90 day cookie window, you’ll have plenty of time to work your audience all the way through to conversion.
GoPro
Commission Rate: 5%
Cookie Duration: 7 days
GoPro has become a household name when it comes to fast-paced adventure documentation, and if you’re looking to partner with an action-cam brand, then we highly recommend going for the original, the pioneer.
GoPro offers a fantastic affiliate program, thanks in a big part to its unique products and comprehensive range of travel-focused camera accessories, making travel photography so much more accessible to as many people as possible.
Any photographer – from hobbyists to full-fledged pros – can benefit from GoPro products, and their 5% commission rate allows for plenty of revenue opportunities despite the relatively short 7-day cookie.
Peak Design
Commission Rate: 10% per sale
Cookie Duration: 30 days
We’re finishing off this list of the best photography affiliate programs with Peak Design, one of the most popular and critically-acclaimed brands for travel bags and accessories, particularly for photographers.
With their focus on backpacks, camera bags, and other travel accessories aimed at the photographer market, Peak Design is a great brand to affiliate with, regardless of your specific photography niche.
Peak Design offers 10% commission for every sale, and with the 30 day cookie window, the revenue potential with this program is substantial.
Tips for Promoting Photography Gear and Digital Products
The best approach to take when you’re promoting photography gear and digital products on your platform is to consider, first and foremost, who your audience is and what they want.
Sure, the professional-grade gear and equipment on B&H Photo Video might be the best in the industry, but if your audience consists of novices and learners, would they really benefit from the often expensive tools and supplies available on that platform?
Maybe they’ll be better off at Adorama where they can take advantage of all kinds of deals and discounts. Or if they’re the type who like to document their adventures but aren’t into the technicalities of professional photography, maybe an affiliate program with GoPro might be more appropriate for your platform. When it comes to affiliate programs, success is always based on how well you cater to the needs of your audience.
Tips to Drive More Traffic to Your Blog
Why some blogs take off and others don’t generate much traffic can seem completely random. In fact, the blogs that generate the most traffic often have several things in common, from content creation to social media sharing tactics. If you want to drive more traffic to your blog, create a strategic approach using certain strategies, like long-tail keywords and asking for shares, that have worked for other bloggers in the past.
Here are 6 easy tips to drive more traffic to your blog.
1. Know Your Audience
To come up with content and engage readers, you need to know who those readers are. Your blog needs a niche so you know where to focus your marketing efforts and how to find readers. Without a focus, you’ll end up creating a bunch of random content that doesn’t go together. Something may draw readers to your blog, but it won’t entice them to stay since they won’t see anything else that interests them.
In addition to nailing down your audience, you have to make sure you’re interested in your blog topic. Your posts will feel more authentic and you’ll have more motivation to write.
2. Use Good Design
If your blog has too many design elements or is hard to navigate, nobody is going to stick around long enough to read any posts, even if your posts are sensational. That’s especially true for your smartphone layout, which needs to be simplified and sleek to keep people on your site. More people are using smartphones with large, high-resolution screens, like the Samsung Galaxy S6 edge from T-Mobile, so make sure you add a few relevant pictures and videos to keep your readers engaged.
On a fast network like T-Mobile, loading videos and pictures won’t be a problem. Don’t overdo it, though; if your layout is too busy it can detract from your message, especially on a phone.
3. Research Your Topics
Picking the right topics (and having more of them for generating that extra content) is another part of getting people to share and read your posts. You want your content to be either entertaining or educational, so it’s important to know what people in your industry are writing about and what they want to read about.
Check out Quora and Buzzsumo to see what people are saying about your industry, and use that information to start generating ideas.
4. Create Good Titles
Why do posts go viral? Many times, it’s because the title is engaging. People click on interesting titles, and when they like the content, they share it. The type of titles that are popular right now promises something unexpected or interesting. When you create a new post, try out a few titles. Tweet about it and post it on your other social media with a different title to see if one gains more ground than the others.
5. Concentrate on Keywords
SEO is one of the most effective ways to get your blog pushed higher in Google search results. A lot of people just don’t understand how to do it right. What you need are long-tail keyword phrases (with three words or more) placed strategically through each post, and placed once in the title. Google some of the topics you want to write about, then see what phrases other people have searched at the bottom of the page. Check out the Google Keyword Planner to see which keywords are most likely to bring traffic to your blog.
6. Ask for Shares
Ask people to share or retweet your content! Social Bakers analyzed more than 350,000 tweets to discover whether asking for retweets (RTs) boosted the number of RTs a post got.
They discovered that it’s definitely effective: asking for an RT got an average of 73 retweets, whereas asking for nothing got an average of two.
Another way to entice people to share your content is to offer incentives: throw contests and giveaways where the price of entry is sharing your post or retweeting a tweet.
