5. Incorporating Affiliate Marketing into Existing Content
Affiliate marketing can fit into your existing content strategy & workflows really well. Starting with the content you already have can be the quickest way to incorporate affiliate marketing into your business at the start.
What existing content might you have that could be monetized with affiliate links?
Where are you already promoting other businesses or products to your audience? Here are some of the most common pieces of content that photographers already have where they could switch out standard links for affiliate links:
Existing Blog Posts, Including Client Sessions:
What content do you already have where you might be linking to products? If you regularly list credits when you are blogging client sessions (which you probably should be doing), these have the potential to be affiliate links of the stores belong to affiliate programs. This could be a dress or suit designer, shoe brand, accessory designers, Etsy seller, rings, details, stationary etc.
Accommodation recommendations:
If you shoot a lot of destination work and often end up recommending places to stay to your clients, or you simply blog about your own travel & adventures too, accommodation sites, such as booking.com or VRBO, have affiliate schemes, so switch out a standard link for an affiliate one (unfortunately, Airbnb discontinued their affiliate program).
If you have destination guides on your blog, some travel affiliate sites have widgets that enable you to embed an accommodation search right on your page too.
For travel affiliate programs, I recommend Travel Payouts
“How to prepare for your shoot” guides
For many areas of photography where you are working with people (I’d argue even when you’re working with products), you might already be sending clients information about how to prepare. Some common things you might be including in these are:
- What to wear (with recommendations)
- Pack list for a destination wedding
- Recommendations for makeup or beauty products / what not to do & alternatives
- Suggestions for accessories or props
Posts for other photographers where you share what gear or software you use
Lots of photographers now have a “What’s in my Bag” post or a list of the equipment that they use on their About Me page. This can be great if you have a large following of other photographers and even those Uncle Bob’s who want to check out your website and see what you are using. Photographers who offer mentoring & workshops often have a page specifically for these too, so this can be a great place to mention any software or equipment that you love using and recommend to others.
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Pretty much anywhere you are linking out to a product or service that isn’t just a simple vendor recommendation, look to see if you could be using an affiliate link instead of a regular one.
Next, we’re going to look at how you can use affiliate marketing as part of your strategy when you are creating new content…