20+ Best Art Affiliate Programs and Networks [2024]

You may have never actually considered art affiliate programs and networks but let us tell you why you should start promoting art affiliate offers right away. First and foremost the global art market value is more than $65 billion in 2022. This should be reason enough for you to get into it and start getting some shares of that cash.

However, we would like to explain how art affiliate programs can be different from other types of affiliate programs mainly because they are not as popular. If you're into art and you wanna figure out how you can make some extra cash off affiliate offers, fret not because in this article we will explain all you need to know to start your affiliate career in this niche.

What are Art Affiliate Programs and What Can You Sell

Art affiliate networks are not what you might think in 2022. Nowadays, when we go on TikTok, Instagram, or other social media, we can see many artists and illustrators doing art digitally. Most of them have a drawing tablet where they can showcase their art or their art process. You can also see some other artists that do art on paper or on canvases and they use oil paint and galoshes to paint and demonstrate their painting process.

This right here is a perfect example of how art affiliate programs work. When an artist shows that they are making beautiful art with specific drawing or painting tools, such as physical or digital tools, other people can get pretty tempted to have those. And that's exactly when an affiliate artist can make some money by introducing those products to their audience and gain some extra commission on the side.

The types of products that you can promote on an art affiliate program vary all the way from digital ones to physical brushes, paints, and other tools. Here's a complete list of products that you can sell in this niche.

• Prints, posters, banners, and wall hangings
• Watercolor paints, oil paints, acrylic paints, gouache, and spray paints
• Canvases and artists easels
• Markers, pens, and artists pencils
• Brushes
• Papers pads and notebooks
• Art kits that include instructions, books, paints, and all the tools necessary to create art
• Practice sets
• Drawing tablets or digital drawing tools

Payment Models in Art Affiliate Programs

Since there are generally two types of products that you can sell in this affiliate niche, there are only limited payment models to work by as well. In this section we're going to go through the payment models that programs in the art niche are more likely to pay you with and how you're going to get paid.

Revenue Share

Revenue share is a payment model in which the program decides to pay the affiliates by giving them a share of the product sales. Obviously, this includes all the types of products that only have a one-time sale opportunity, and when the customer purchases the product you will get the commission.

The range of these revenue shares can go from 5% all the way to 50% per sale. However, there is one more important thing to keep in mind. When you find an affiliate program that pays you 50% of the sales as your affiliate share, you shouldn't get too excited. Sometimes selling those products can be so difficult that when you actually end up selling one, it might not be worth it for you. On some other occasions, the products can be so low in price that no matter how high that filled commission is, you're not going to end up with much money.

This is why no matter how high the commission rate is you need to make sure that the program has products that are easy to sell and have a suitable price for your effort.

CPS

The cost per sale payment method is kind of similar to the revenue share method but with one difference. You are not going to get paid by percentage but by a flat rate per sale. So this means that if you sell a product that is worth $100 versus a product that is $1 000 on both occasions you are going to get $10 if that is the rate specified by the program.

Cost per sale means that no matter how much the products are worth you are going to get a certain amount per every customer purchase. While this might sound a little bad when you think about it first, It might actually make sense considering how often you can end up selling a product. As mentioned before, on the programs with a high commission rate, you might not be able to sell much anyways so a program that has a good flat rate For sale and sells a lot of products because of their credibility is worth much more.

Factors to Keep in Mind When Choosing an Art Affiliate Program

By now you might have gotten an idea of what art preferably programs are and how choosing one can be pretty tricky. In this section, we are going to go over some of the criteria and parameters that you need to keep in mind before you move on to signing up on it and promoting their offers.

Program Reviews and Rating

The first and most important factor to Look for in an art affiliate program is their scores and reviews. Usually on forums, you can find a lot of reviews and ratings of affiliate programs whether they work, whether they treat their affiliates well if they have support or enough material to teach the affiliates, or tools to help increase sales.

Firms are also great places to ask questions about any affiliate program if you have any doubts. We try to provide you with some reviews and scoring out of affiliate programs but if you need anything more than that you can always check on the Internet or even ask questions on famous affiliate forums. If there are people who have similar experiences they are very likely to share them with you and give you some insight into the affiliate program.

It's better to always have an open mind when dealing with such situations because you are going to put your effort into promoting their products. You don't want the products to turn out as scams or low in quality. Plus you can't always actually go in and buy the products and check them yourself to see if they have a good quality or not. If you can then great you can go for it but we are sure that most of you are just looking to get going with the affiliate offers. So do yourself a favor and check on the forums for opinions.

Another way you can make sure of the art product quality is by searching the products on YouTube and seeing if anybody else is doing any kind of reviews of them.

Commission Rate

We're doing affiliate marketing so we can help pay the bills, so if the affiliate program commissions are low, if they are not enough, and their products are hard to sell, then why do we spend our time promoting the products? If you want to see which commission rate in art affiliate programs is acceptable you can consider anything between 10% to 30%.

If the commission rate is anything below 5%, you might want to reconsider or check whether their products are legit, credible, or easy-to-sell products.

Cookie Duration

Cookies help save user data on the browser. When a potential customer opens an art website or online shop to shop for something but they change their mind and they return later on, cookies can help them remember that you referred them to the website and the website will count you in for the share of the sale.

The longer the cookie duration the better. In some programs, you can find cookie durations up to 30 days, some others 60 days, 90 days, and weirdly, some of them can be up to one hour only. Having a longer cookie duration means that you will get all the help you can get. So try to aim for programs with a longer cookie duration.

Minimum Payout

This is an important factor if you think about it. First of all, there are some trust issues for any new program, when you enter a program and you think to yourself whether they're actually going to pay you or not. The minimum payout is something in the terms and conditions of an affiliate program that can determine when you are allowed to press “withdraw”.

Some affiliate programs might say that you are able to withdraw your earned income when they reach $50, some others $100, or some others even higher. The lower the minimum payout the better. This can cause some trust issues to be resolved with the affiliate program before you start working with them. If the minimum payout is for some unknown reason very high, then it can mean that the affiliate program is trying to earn a lot of money from you but not give you the money that you deserve.

Sometimes payment frequency should also be kept in mind because some programs choose to pay you every two weeks and others every two months. Knowing these terms can help you understand and decide better for the long term.

Affiliate Trackers

Affiliate trackers are tools that some affiliate programs or third-party services offer to help affiliates understand how they're performing, how much they're selling, how many referrals they have made, and generally how the trend of their sales is looking. Are there any deficiencies in the performance of the affiliate, is there any way to improve it, how are users being redirected to the affiliate program, after how many days they end up purchasing a product, etc.

Sometimes the affiliate program provides you with an affiliate tracker so you can track your performance and get some insights. On some other occasions, the affiliate program doesn't do it and you would have to do it yourself by using third-party apps and tools. If you're thinking of comfort, then you should definitely check whether the program you're choosing offers an affiliate tracker.

Traffic Sources for Art Offers

Art affiliate products can be a little different to promote than other affiliate programs and affiliate network offers. In this niche, there are many artists always trying to get attention. However, after some investigation, we realized that those people are not necessarily your competitors. Most of those artists on social media or their websites are just blogging and looking for commissions so they can just do their job.

Their difference with you is that you are trying to promote affiliate products, such as accessories and tools. The odds are not always in your favor, because the type of content you are creating isn't really for aesthetics, but mostly for purchases. That is why you are definitely going to need some help moderating your content. Don't worry, because in this section we'll explain all about the type of traffic that you can benefit from.

Social Media

If you're good at doing art, there is no reason why you shouldn't start a social media platform account and post regular content about the aesthetics of drawing or painting. There are so many opportunities for you to get people interested in the type of tools that you use. So if you want to promote some affiliate products, the best way is to make these types of aesthetic art content and then use those affiliate products in the video so people can get interested, ask you what they are, and then you can explain to them what the product it is and where they can get some for themselves.

Some social media platforms perfect for this case are Instagram Reels, TikTok, and YouTube. It's really easy in this day and age to go viral with some art video so don't lose this chance. Speaking of YouTube, it's important to mention the benefits that you can gain from uploading art content on YouTube Shorts. YouTube is an amazing platform for affiliate marketing, but YouTube Shorts makes your job even easier because your videos might go viral, just as they might on TikTok or Instagram Reels.

If you want you can also include a link on your social media to your affiliate website, so when users get interested in your work, they can check out your website, check your product reviews, guides, etc. There is a good chance that they can get to your affiliate link from there. So there you go, two birds with one stone.

Affiliate Website

Speaking of affiliate websites, it's important to have an affiliate website or blog in this niche and talk about the aesthetics of art, art guides, or art accessory reviews. This is for the purpose of getting ranked on Google, so when people are looking for a specific drawing or painting accessory, like a drawing tablet, or paint brushes, or canvases, you can show up in the search results and give them the best options, along with the reviews.

We will talk more about creating content on an affiliate website related to art in a later section, but for now, it's important to note how handy art affiliate websites are. If you don't want to buy a domain or hosting, and you just want to keep it simple, then you can always use content-sharing platforms like Medium to post the same type of content. Posts on Medium get ranked on Google the same way That website articles do. So you can definitely do affiliate marketing without a website in this niche.

Paid Ads

It might be a little bit weird to say that you can drive traffic to your affiliate offer by paying for ads. You are trying to get paid in the first place yourself, so why would you pay for an ad platform to post your ads? Interestingly, the return on investment in ad campaigns is very high when it comes to affiliate programs. You might be paying $2 for every action taken by viewers on an ad platform, But it can be sure that you are getting at least $10 back from the CPS affiliate program you are part of. There are at least a few dollars of profit right there.

Artists are the main reason why creatives for ad campaigns exist. So if you are an artist, and if you are trying to get some traffic to your affiliate offer, then better get working and create the most aesthetic and pleasing-to-the-eye ad ever made. Obviously, there are many Tips and tricks when it comes to posting an ad campaign on platforms like Facebook Ads or Instagram Ads, but nothing that you cannot handle. You can always check out some video ad networks or image ad networks for the purpose of promoting art affiliate offers.

Keep in mind that when you are running an ad campaign for an affiliate offer, you are not actually allowed to include the affiliate offer link on your ad, but your affiliate site link. This is how ads generally work for affiliates. Some people might get interested in your ad, click on the CTA to come to your art affiliate site landing page, click on one of your guides or product reviews, and end up making a purchase with your promo links.

Weirdly, it's easier done than said, because what we just explained might feel a little bit complicated. However, if your website or content is interesting and appealing enough, interested users will find your affiliate links in less than a minute.

Tips to Promote Art Affiliate Programs Effectively

Promoting art affiliate offers can be a little bit tricky if you don't follow the right tips for writing, trends, keywords, etc. In this section, we have included a comprehensive guide for promoting art affiliate offers successfully so they will lead to sales.

Focus on Trends

The most important factors when it comes to art and design are the trends, hottest topics, challenges, and recent news. When you know about the latest trends in the art industry, you can know what your audience is likely to search for, be interested in, and want to buy. Learning about the latest trends isn't that tricky, and you can do it via simple tools that are mostly free.

One such tool is the Exploding Topics website. On this website, you can search for the category you are looking for, such as design in this case. The website gives you a list of the trendiest topics in the past three months, six months, or older. Using this website, you can get to know all the topics that are likely to get some attention on Google. So basically, whoever writes about the topic first, gets the most attention.

Another great way to know about the latest trends in the art industry is to check Google Trends. Google Trends has got to be one of the most primary sources for finding recent trends in any topic or category.

You can simply search for a certain keyword or topic in a specific country in a specific span of time such as the past hour, past four days, past week, past month, or older. Make sure to use this when we want to write content in a later step.

Keyword Targeting

Keyword targeting is equally important when it comes to gaining organic traffic. Organic traffic is any traffic that you don't have to pay for. Using art-related keywords or long tail keywords in the art niche, you can gain a lot of traffic to your affiliate website when users simply search for a product that they are looking for, such as art accessories for drawing tools.

You need to use these keywords everywhere in your content. You would even say that you need to use these keywords in the descriptions of your videos on YouTube or Instagram. When dealing with content on an art-related affiliate website or blog, you want to make sure that the website has the keywords you want to target everywhere including in the title of the articles, in the text, in the alt description of images, in the meta description, and even in the URL of the page.

Here are some recommended art-related keywords you might want to focus on when starting to work in this niche.

When reviewing the keywords above, you might notice that the keywords with the Highest SEO difficulty are the ones that have a commercial search intent. For example, the keywords like paint sprayer, drawing tablet, art supplies, paintbrush, and art prints are the keywords that will bring the most customers to your website rather than just people looking for information.

Commercial sense search intents are the most profitable search intents ever because those are the people that are looking to buy something. You might have noticed that there are a lot of people looking to buy artistic posters and wall hangings for their houses. Luckily, this is exactly one of the product types that you can sell on art affiliate programs. This means that unlike what you might think, most of your audience is actually people who don't do art, but people who are just looking to buy some artistic pieces.

Writing Top Notch Content on Art Affiliate Site

In this section, we want to review all the things you need to get started with writing content on your art affiliate site. First and foremost, you need to understand that there should be three types of content on your affiliate site, not just this art niche, but all other niches as well.

Three types of content that you need to have on your affiliate site include:

• Art guides. Such as drawing guides or painting guides for people who want to learn how to draw Something;
• Art supplies. As in the accessories or tools needed to draw something, such as paintbrushes or canvases;
• Art product or service reviews. These could be art or drawing app reviews, drawing tablet reviews, etc.

On each one of these content types, you need to provide value to your readers. Value, in this case, basically means anything that isn't immediately obvious to the reader. As an example, if you're writing an art supply review, you need to write about the pros and cons of the product, your own opinions or first-hand experiences, if you have any, and some tips to keep in mind for the buyers so you can make their purchase or decision-making easier.

It goes without saying that you need to use your keywords all across your text. In later sections, we will see some examples of people who are doing art affiliate content perfectly to investigate what we can implement as well.

Engage with Your Community

Community means everything in the art industry. People are always commenting and interacting with each other to improve their art, Learn about the tools that others are using, and improve as artists. You can also use this to your benefit and gain some attention on forums and communities by writing simple answers to other people's questions.

Some of these communities can include Quora, Reddit, etc. Usually, you can also include an end link to your affiliate website, and have people go there to read your product reviews or guides and possibly click on affiliate links so you can make some money.

Case Studies

In this section, we are going to take a look at two popular websites and platforms in the art niche that are promoting affiliate offers and driving traffic to affiliate programs and networks.

Case #1: Creative Bloq

Creative Bloq is one of the most prominent websites in the art industry, where people get all the recent art news and information. We should also mention that this website earns an annual revenue of $2 million. While they do have some ads and we have to admit that, it's important to note that they also have a lot of guides and reviews on art supplies, etc. This can be easily proven if you search for a simple art topic and Creative Bloq comes right up on the search results in the first 10 ranking positions.

Now let's take a look at how Creative Bloq gets to have such beautiful rankings and income. First of all, we should mention that Creative Bloq has a lot of articles on news, how-to’s, buying guides, and reviews. They write about all types of art-related products, including video editing, digital drawing, illustrations, drawing, etc. You don't have to write about all that, you can mainly just focus on one single sub-topic.

For example, let's take a look at one of the painting-related buying guides on their website. This one is about the “best acrylic paint brushes in 2022”, and at the beginning of the article, you can see a list of all the products with their prices, a summary, and a link to the affiliate website where the reader can shop for it.

When it comes to each product on this list, you can see a couple of details that we will expand on a little bit here. First and foremost, every product needs to have a tagline that explains its most unique features, in this case, the Princeton Aspen brush is the “best acrylic brush for heavy paint and texture”.

The next thing is this specification section. This section needs to include all the details and features that the reader can get about the product at one glance. In this case, the quality, the brush hair type, the handle length, and the bristle firmness of the Princeton Aspen brush are specified immediately after the name of the tagline.

The next most important detail is the “reasons to buy” and “reasons to avoid” sections. In these two sections, you need to give readers a quick highlight of all the advantages and disadvantages of the product and explain why this product is actually worth it. You might think that the “reasons to avoid” section is not needed, but this just adds a little bit of honesty to the product review, and makes the user consider the weak points as well. However, you want to write more of the Pros and less of the Cons.

Last but not least, in the summary box, you want to include some links to your affiliate sites or shops where readers can purchase the product.

In the description section of the product review, for each product you want to write a little bit of honest personal opinion or just experiences. You can describe the article, explain more about the features, and just expand on anything that the reader needs to know.

If you think about it, Creative Bloq and a lot of other websites across different niches have done this and have been very successful so there is no reason not to do it.

Case #2: ArtNews

The second website here that we want to talk about is ArtNews, which is a prominent website in the category of art news and buying guides. Most of the things about ArtNews are similar to the Creative Bloq, and you can see that both of them are on the first 10 results on Google for many art-related products with commercial search intents.

Art News also has buying guides such as the one that is captured below. They also list the products that they want to recommend to users and include some of the most important features about the product along with the affiliate link.

Interestingly, since ArtNews has a lot of audience that look for the latest art news and not just the buying guides, it makes over $50 million a year. However, we cannot deny the fact that the majority of that revenue can come from affiliate marketing, because they have an entire section dedicated to ArtNews product recommendations.

In this section, they talk about all the products that they want to promote as affiliate products, and that definitely has a lot of impact on their income especially since they do a lot of seasonal or holiday-related product review posts.

Conclusion

Art is a niche that can appeal to all ages, from three years old all the way to 100 years old. Everybody wants to learn how to draw at some point, and everybody needs some tools for it. That is exactly your time to shine and recommend the best products they can have. Fortunately, this niche is not a seasonal niche. This means that you can always promote these offers and they are almost evergreen. It will take another 100 years before humanity will rely on AI to generate art, so for now you can still count on a lot of children, teenagers, and adults wanting to draw with new amazing art products.