Whether you run a blog or website about marketing, branding, design, or anything else in this niche, you’re probably looking for new ways of monetizing your content. If that’s the case, you’ve ended up in the perfect place.
For today’s article, we’re looking at what the Creative Market affiliate program has to offer – from how much you can earn to whether or not there are better options out there. Read on to find out more!
Creative Market Affiliate Review
What is Creative Market?
As its name suggests, this website is the place to go to if you’re looking to purchase any type of design whatsoever. The categories listed on the site range from vector graphics and product mockups to instagram templates, shopify themes, and display fonts.
Photos are also available for sale in case you feel like your followers would be interested in getting premium imagery. If it sounds a little similar to other brands you’ve come across in the past, that’s because it actually is, but there’s no shortage of what you can suggest that your readers try out.
What services can you recommend to your audience?
First of all, we’d like to note that the way you might be able to earn something out of recommending Creative Market is not by convincing your followers to open up shops themselves, but by actually recommending something out of the huge inventory of products that exists on the website.
It would have been nice for you to get a commission out of the membership recommendations, too, but besides the actual pricing, there’s really not too much to add with that respect. If you or one of your list would like to open up a shop on Creative Market, they might look into getting one of the available plans, which now range from $19.95 per month to $99.95 per month.
So, given that it doesn’t involve any type of affiliate marketing, we are not going to go into a lot of detail about that and move on to the actual things that you should be recommending for a commission.
It goes without saying that the cost of these products varies a lot from one category to the next. If you go on Illustrations -> Artwork, the pricing of most packages ranges from $15 to $18.
On the other hand, if you’re looking for something specific in the photos category, the price can also vary quite a bit. For some image packages, you’re likely to spend around $40 whereas high-quality shots of an individual or a natural process might set you back anything from $14 to $19.
Fortunately, the task is made a lot easier by the fact that many of these photos are grouped together by the creators themselves. Let’s take a look at what themes have to offer.
If you have ever purchased a WordPress theme before, you probably know that the cost of these digital products tends to vary a lot depending on functionalities and actual design.
That definitely seems to be the case with some of the ones that we came across on Creative Market. One of the more budget-friendly ones we encountered is called Valerie and it is a WordPress Elementor theme – at the time we are writing this, it is priced at $59.
The sky’s the limit when it comes to how expensive themes can get, of course, with POLISH, a WordPress Elementor one being priced close to $200. It all boils down to what your audience would best vibe with and whether or not they intend on using it for a commercial website, for example.
How to become an affiliate partner on Creative Market
If you have been using affiliate marketing as a way of monetizing your website or media properties for quite some time, it will come as a disappointment to you that you will need to go through the company’s own website to join the program.
Most of the affiliate programs out there now choose separate networks for the management of everything and the affiliates themselves appreciate this, as well. When you go on a platform where you have all of the stats you need regarding your performance with dozens of programs at the same time, it’s much easier to keep track of everything.
The platform is also the one that is in charge of paying you, so you’re basically getting all of your earnings in a single place, so when you’re withdrawing your commissions, you’re doing so from the earnings of multiple programs you’ve joined.
Creative Market has chosen to manage its program separately on the website.
You will need to answer a number of questions before being accepted into the program, but none of them might be a surprise – you will be asked for your website URL, the reason you want to become a Creative Market partner in the first place, as well as the ways in which you intend to promote this service.
Once you are accepted into the program, you’ll gain access to your Creative Market affiliate link and a number of other marketing tools such as banners and images for a wide range of social media networks. You can even copy the code to actual design packages and showcase them in your content, too.
Creative Market Commission – How much can you earn?
As a Creative Market affiliate, you can make up to 15% out of every new customer’s first order, regardless of what that might be. But the good thing is that if your referrals return during the first month after they have clicked on your affiliate link, you will earn an additional 5% in earnings.
While Creative Market is definitely keen on stating that their top affiliates earn thousands of dollars every single month, we’d like to make a simple calculation to show you how much you can earn.
Suppose you’re one of the lucky ones that manage to convince one person to get a WordPress template for $200. Your commission on that will be $30, which we’d argue is pretty decent. But what if the initial purchase is a $14 individual photo out of which your 15% cut is just $2.1? If that customer comes back and makes a second order of a $200 template, your cut out of that is going to be just $10.
So, as you can see, it all comes down to what your audience purchases and how they decide to purchase.
While the duration of the tracking cookie remains a mystery since we didn’t really come across any information in this sense on the brand’s own website (or other sources that we have checked), it’s probably safe to say that it is the 30-day industry standard that you might already be accustomed to.
Payment information
Even though we took the time to check with the affiliate program rules and regulations to make sure that we do encounter some type of info regarding the payment methods, unfortunately there wasn’t any available.
Apparently, at the time of setting up your partner account, you select a payment method that you prefer, but we couldn’t find out whether that means PayPal, wire transfer, or any other methods currently being used by other programs.
However, what we did find out is that there is a threshold of $20 that you need to reach in order to be able to withdraw your earnings.
Pros and cons of the Creative Market affiliate program
Pretty much any type of affiliate program out there comes with both benefits and drawbacks. We would advise trying to make an assessment of how much you might be able to earn with this opportunity before deciding to submit an application.
While Creative Market is a fairly well-known platform where people can get all sorts of designs, photos, fonts, illustrations, vectors, themes, and more, it’s still not as well-known as some of its competitors – such as Canva, one of the largest websites that exists in the same industry and that also has an affiliate program.
We would have liked for the payment information to be a little more transparent on the Partners page, especially with regard to payout methods.
We would have also liked a higher recurring earning possibility over a longer period of time instead of the 30-day period. The fact that the value of some products is quite low can deter some affiliates from joining the program in the first place.
Finally, there’s another way in which this program could have been slightly better – if you had the option of also referring a Creative Market subscription and making money off of that, too, that would have given you more opportunities.
Creative Market affiliate marketing alternatives
If you are not convinced that this is the right partner program for you at this time, have a look at the other choices that we have showcased below. You’ll find that many of them are world-known and have easy-to-use software options, so they might make better alternatives on the whole.
Canva
We wrote a separate review of the Canva affiliate program, so if you have some time and want to find out all of the details, we suggest you give it a read.
This is a somewhat different earning opportunity compared to what Creative Market has to offer as you are going to be recommending the subscription rather than a physical product.
For every person who purchases the Canva Pro plan for a year, your commission will be $36. If that referral renews their subscription after the year has passed, you can expect the same rate to hit your account – so this is a recurring affiliate program. Canva is one of the biggest design companies in the world and pretty much everyone has heard the name before, so you might want to consider just for that reason.
Envato
As an Envato affiliate, there are quite a bit of products and services that you can suggest that your followers try out, particularly in the niche of themes and other extras designed for websites.
When it comes to how much you can make with the program, your future earnings vary depending on what your audience will purchase. Consequently, for Envato Elements, you can make up to $120 for an annual plan or $60 for a monthly plan. As for any theme purchased through the Envato Market, you’ll make 30% out of that sale’s value.
The nice thing about this one is that the brand is well-known enough for you not to have a hard time recommending it to your followers. Plus, the payout threshold is just $10, so that’s one less thing to worry about – not to mention that there are two payout methods available, mainly PayPal and Electronic Funds Transfer.
Adobe
Adobe Stock is a service that’s more or less similar to what we described when talking about Creative Market and Envato. The best thing about the program is that the commission is more than decent, with single purchases generating a rate of 8.33% and subscriptions making you up to $72.
This one is definitely worth considering since once again, Adobe is a huge brand and its products have been used and are still used by millions of people across the globe.
99designs
This one is slightly different. The 99designs affiliate program allows you to make money by sending out traffic to the website and convincing people to open a contest or a project.
99designs is a place where people can go and find designers for logos and anything else they might require, but it is also the go to of designers for finding work, at the same time.
There are different tiers depending on how much business you get the company. For example, in the beginning, your commission rate will be $50 for every new contest customer. Once you make more than 25 sales through the platform, your commission will become $75 and after 50 lifetime sales, your rate is increased to $100.
TemplateMonster
This marketplace can be used to purchase anything from website templates and graphics to plugins and more. There’s even a huge share of presentation templates available for people who do not feel like working on their own.
As a TemplateMonster affiliate, you make 30% out of every sale that you send to the business. What’s interesting about this one is that the commission rate is a recurring one, so if someone creates an account through your affiliate link and purchases using it time and again, you’ll still make the same amount of money.
The downside is that the program is self-managed, but given the rate and the fact that it’s a recurring one, we’d say that it shouldn’t be that big of a drawback.
Final thoughts
So, should you become a Creative Market affiliate or should you skip this opportunity? While there are pros and cons that you should take into account, we’d say that there are also better (and possibly worse) alternatives out there.
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