How To Monetize Your Art Blog

Art blogs are great! They allow you to connect with your audience on topics that you’re skilled in and passionate about but wouldn’t it be even greater if you could generate an income from your combined interests? You can and we’re going to focus on using affiliate marketing to monetize your art blog.

“Valspar Tangy Dill” //Oil on panel// by 2nd Edition Finalist, Skye Rudin

What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is the promotion of a product or service, usually through social media and articles, by using an affiliate link that your readers can click on. Upon clicking on this special link, the reader will be navigated to the website of the product and be able to purchase it. Every purchase using your specific link means that you get a commission and these rates vary between companies. The commission rate is normally outlined in the company’s affiliate program which is accessible by a simple Google search such as “[company name] affiliate program”. Sounds simple, right, and it is!

One of the first things to know is that there are four parties involved in affiliate marketing. You have the merchant, the affiliate, the consumers and the network. The merchant is the company that owns the product you wish to market and you are the affiliate ie. the individual who promotes the merchant’s product for monetary incentives. The consumers are your blog’s audience and people who purchase the product being promoted. Meanwhile, the network is an intermediary and a link between the merchant and the affiliate that deals with payment and product delivery such as ClickBank.

“High Hopes” //Oil on linen// by 3rd Edition Finalist, Samuel Wilson

WHAT TYPES OF BLOG POSTS BEST SUIT AFFILIATE MARKETING?

There are numerous types of blog posts including lists, how-to-guides, reviews, interviews, case studies, and personal stories. As it relates to the art industry, imparting your knowledge through reviews, how-to-guides and personal stories are very common blogging styles along with interviews. In how-to guides, you can describe and explain to your readers how to use the product that you are an affiliate for, likewise in a personal story. To strategically place your links in interviews, you can research one or two essential products that the interviewee mentioned and give a brief review or present the interviewee’s unbiased opinions and the affiliate link. Remember that it’s not a sales pitch, therefore, you don’t want to overuse links! It’s all about being strategic.

“Stu” // Acrylic and Oil on Polyester// by 3rd Edition Finalist, Tom Ferson

Can I partner with any company?

Once the company has an established affiliate program or has reached out to you to participate, of course, you can. However, it’s better to promote products and services that you are passionate about and trust because you want to give the best value and quality to your readers. This would be more beneficial to you and your audience because your review would be genuine, credible, and trustworthy. For example, you can promote a high-quality Art brand that you have been using for a while and want to recommend to your readers. In fact, incredible coloured pencil artist, 2nd Edition 1st Place Winner, Jesse Lane has a partnership with Derwent, a brand he religiously uses in his photo-realistic portraits for creating deep rich shadows and hair textures. Equally, promoting things that are in your niche is another strategic way to capture the reader’s attention. In art blogs, readers would be looking for art-related topics, so, it’s best to promote products that correlate to the topic and field by enlisting in art affiliate programs such as Artfinder, Society6, Arteza, and many others. When applying to be an affiliate, the companies will focus a lot on how you plan to promote their product, and the best way to do so is through producing high-quality content on your blogs.

“Adrenaline” //Coloured Pencil on Bristol Board// by 1st Place Winner of 2nd Edition, Jesse Lane

HOW MUCH CAN I MAKE FROM AFFILIATE MARKETING?

According to New York Bestselling author, Neil Patel you can earn between $10,000 and $400,000 a year from affiliate marketing and if you are a pro, more than $1,500,000 but it all really depends on the number of consumers and the commission rate of the companies you want to become an affiliate for. However, here’s a cool way to make more from it. In affiliate marketing, cookies can be your best friend - yeah, those things that we often click accept to without fully knowing what they are and what they can do. In reality, they’re basically small files full of data that track which websites you’ve visited and your activity on them in order to enhance your online browsing experience. Now, if we apply this knowledge to affiliate marketing and your blog, each time a reader and prospective customer click on your affiliate link, depending on how long your affiliate cookies last (whether it be a day, weeks, months, or longer), you can earn a commission for a certain determined period after the reader has clicked the link even if they’re browsing other sections of the website and even other websites. However, you need to do this as ethically as possible because it is important to respect the privacy of your audience and it is always good to stay mindful of these aspects even though cookies are already programmed into your browsing experience.

Another way of increasing your commission is through researching keywords in your niche (in this case, art) to see what sort of items people are interested in. This will in turn help to boost the traffic on your blog and increase your search engine rank. You can use tools such as Google Keyword Planner to find the best keywords in your domain. Please note that to access Google Keyword Planner, you need to have a Google Ads account; however, it doesn’t need to have any active ads running to be able to use Keyword Planner. Once you find a product that you’re interested in marketing, you should also research the company and its values to ensure you are advertising a high-quality product that will pique the interest of the consumer and enhance their livelihood.

Continually, with regards to how much you earn, you should remain practical and as realistic as possible. I’m sure many of us would love to become millionaires in a day but it is very rare and a lot of hard work and patience has to go into it. Likewise with affiliate marketing through your blog. Yes, it can be very profitable but simultaneously, it takes time and effort to reach that stage as with most things in life.

“Abstract Paradise” //Oil on Linen// by 2nd Edition Finalist, Erik Nieminen

WHAT ARE AFFILIATE DISCLOSURES AND DO I NEED TO INCLUDE THEM?

Affiliate disclosures are statements placed near your affiliate link and are used to make known that you are being paid for promoting the product. This is super important so get your pen ready! You must include affiliate disclosures in every article because you can run into legal problems with the Federal Trade Commission and can be removed from affiliate programs if you don’t. When crafting your disclosure, you should overtly state that you are being paid for marketing a product that you love, what an affiliate link is. At all costs, avoid concealing, minimizing font size of disclosures, not including them, or only putting notices in some articles and not others because you do not want to jeopardize your reputation and breach legal guidelines and legislations.

Affiliate marketing is a nice, flexible way to generate passive income through your blogs. Once you produce honest, good-quality, user-friendly and audience-targeted content, you will be able to truly benefit from all it has to offer.