Everyone’s heard of Adobe before. Whether it’s for Photoshop or the good old Adobe Acrobat Reader, this company has been used for decades by millions of Internet users. If you’re in the right niche, you might be able to monetize your content through the Adobe affiliate program and promote a variety of the brand’s products. 

Read on to find out everything you should know about this opportunity, from the earnings that you can expect to whether the Adobe affiliate program sign-up is a complicated process or not. 

Adobe Affiliate Program Review

What does Adobe do?

Put simply, Adobe is one of the largest companies in the industry of making software that virtually anyone can use with as little hassle as possible. The products designed by the brand are always convenient and effective, but some do tend to cost quite a bit, which is why some people might look for alternatives.

There are a series of Adobe affiliate program alternatives that we will look into toward the end of this article, but you should know that almost no company on the planet has as much recognition as this one. 

So, when you pick another option, you’re basically trading off the ability to recommend Adobe products to your followers or readers, and that could come at a cost, since people know of the brand so well and trust it, too. 

What services can you recommend to your audience?

Here are a few Adobe software options you might have heard of and that you can easily suggest to your readership:

• Illustrator
• Lightroom
• Photoshop
• InDesign
• Adobe Premiere Pro
• Adobe Acrobat Pro 
• After Effects
• Adobe Stock
• Adobe Document Cloud
• Adobe Creative Cloud

How to join the Adobe affiliate program

There’s a separate page on the Adobe website that you can use to find out more information and apply to the program itself. The good news is that everything works through Partnerize, a network that you might have heard of before if you’ve used affiliate marketing in the past. 

As a part of the signup process, you will be asked for some basic information such as your email address, your username and personal details such as your first and last name, your address, and others. 

You will also be shown the terms and extras, which we suggest you give a quick read just to make sure that you don’t get booted out of the program by mistake in the future. 

All in all, it is a relatively straightforward process and you’re not restricted by the amount of traffic you are getting on your website, for example, as is the case with other affiliate programs. Ideally, you should have a media property of some kind, even if you are an influencer on social media (such as Instagram, for example) and you have a huge following. 

Types of Adobe affiliate programs & commissions

There are two main things you should be aware of in this section of this article. Some of the Adobe products that we have mentioned earlier are categorized differently by the company into what could be called two different affiliate programs. 

For example, the Adobe Creative Cloud affiliate program includes Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat Pro, Premiere Pro, and InDesign. A Creative Cloud & Document cloud subscription also comes with additional perks such as thousands upon thousands of fonts, millions of free video footage and images, and a wide range of tutorials. 

Extras such as access to Behance, Adobe Live, and Adobe Portfolio or a number of tools for teams are also available with the more generous subscription plans. But because what you are most interested in is what you can earn by promoting these products, here’s what you can make by referring to Creative Cloud sales – you get an 85% share of the first month’s monthly subscription of every user you convince to try these products. For yearly subscriptions, you make the same commission for the first month so long as your referrals opt for the monthly payment model. However, if they choose to pay the whole sum in one go, your share of that will be a rate of 8.33%. 

On the contrary, as a part of the Adobe Stock affiliate program, what you will be promoting are digital assets that other creators can use for their content. As you can imagine, these range from premium stock photos to video footage, royalty-free templates, and vector art and illustrations. There’s a fairly large collection of music and audio files available, too. 

In terms of what you can make as an Adobe Stock affiliate, your earnings are more or less similar to what we have already described for the Creative Cloud sales. You get a $72 commission rate for both monthly subscriptions and yearly plans that are paid every single month (for the first month). The same 8.33% rate is available for large yearly payments. What is a little different is that you can also make 85% of the value of any plan that involves the purchase of 3 standard assets per month. 

So there you have it – this is what you can expect to earn by using Adobe affiliate marketing, whether that be the Adobe After Effects affiliate program, the Adobe Premiere affiliate program, the Adobe Photoshop affiliate program, or the Adobe Express affiliate program. 

We would also like to note that the tracking cookie lasts for a month. Whether that is a disadvantage or not, you’ll have to decide – but it is worth adding that this duration is pretty much the industry standard right now. 

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Payment information

It used to be that the Adobe affiliate program worked through Tradedoubler, so affiliates only had two or better said, one payment method available – direct deposit with the possibility of opening up a virtual bank account such as Payoneer or Wise and being able to withdraw your earnings through that, too. 

However, since the program now works through Partnerize, there are a variety of payment methods available. First of all, you can be paid weekly or monthly depending on the schedule you set in your account. 

The four main payment methods are PayPal, wire transfer, cheque, or credit card payments. Consequently, you have a lot of freedom as to how you want to withdraw your commissions, especially when compared to what other affiliate programs have to offer. 

Pros and cons to being an Adobe affiliate

One of the first and perhaps most obvious reasons to consider joining the Adobe affiliate program is the recognition that this company has across the globe. 

Like we’ve said before, pretty much anyone that’s ever used a computer or the Internet has heard the name Adobe before and the chances of them having used at least one product designed by the company in the past are very high. 

As such, the task of recommending any of the Adobe products you might want to promote through your email list, on your website, or on your social media pages, is made a lot easier. One idea, for example, would be to run an email campaign whenever Adobe has a discount for Premiere Pro or Photoshop, two of the more expensive software options. 

Another benefit of this program is that the platform offers you a variety of means of promoting Adobe on your media properties – whether through ads, banners, or affiliate links. Apparently, there are also incentives in the form of occasional bonuses that are supposed to keep affiliates motivated enough to continue their activity. 

Partnerize also gives you all the information you need in terms of your stats and performance so that you can come up with ways of improving it. 

The commission rate itself is decent enough to jot down this program on your list of monetization options for your website. We would have liked for the cookie to last a bit longer, whether that be two or three months, but 30 days is what most other companies are offering anyway. 

Also, a recurring commission rate, even at 5%, would have been an extra incentive for some affiliates.

Perhaps another potential drawback would be the fact that these software options do not come cheap. Of course, images, video files, audio files, vectors, and anything else in this sense don’t end up costing an arm and a leg, but when it comes to professional tools such as Photoshop, Illustrator, or Premiere Pro, they really don’t come cheap. On the other hand, their performance and the generous features that they come with make them superior when compared to other software products. 

The high price point might put some of your referrals off, especially those that don’t have a significant budget at this time. 

Adobe affiliate program alternatives

Whether you want to use the Adobe affiliate program only as an option of diversifying your income or you’ve decided to skip this opportunity entirely, here are some other choices to consider. 

They aren’t necessarily better or worse, but since it’s always a good idea to avoid keeping all your eggs in one basket, you should know that they exist and are decent enough to consider. Most of them are in the design niche because the software niche doesn’t offer as many opportunities as Adobe products. 

Creative Market

We recently put together a review of the Creative Market affiliate program, so if you have the chance, we suggest that you give it a read. In short, this company offers you a share of 15% out of every sale that you refer to the business, with the caveat that this is the rate that you can expect for a customer’s first sale. 

If your referrals manage to come back during the first month and they make another purchase, you get another 5% of whatever they have purchased. So, while Creative Market is definitely an alternative for the Adobe affiliate program, the industries are also quite different (this one deals with themes and more, too), and the option itself isn’t as lucrative as you might think. 

Shutterstock

As one of the largest places to go to when looking for stock images, videos, and everything else in this sense, Shutterstock is another good option if you have a media property focused on design and for some reason, recommending Adobe Stock isn’t enough. 

The program is very straightforward – you make 20% out of everything you manage to sell through your affiliate link. In terms of payment options, you get to choose either PayPal or electronic bank transfer. The cookie lasts for 30 days, so there are no surprises there. 

Canva

As a Canva affiliate, you’re not going to be able to get rich fast – but the program does have a number of benefits, not to mention that Canva is probably easier to recommend to your audience compared to the likes of Photoshop. The subscription doesn’t cost an arm and a leg, so your referrals are going to feel less wary when it comes to paying for it. 

Other than that, there’s not a lot that makes this program stand out. The cookie lasts for the same 30 days that we have seen with other options, and in this case, at least the commission rate is either 15% for the whole yearly subscription paid in full or 80% out of the value of the first monthly subscription for monthly plans. 

As for payment methods, you’ll be happy to know that with this one, you can get your earnings through PayPal or bank transfers, so you have two options to choose from. The waiting period is just 15 days, which is a net plus. 

Envato 

Your commission rate varies when it comes to the Envato affiliate program mostly depending on what your referrals choose to buy. This is the reason why there are several different affiliate programs with this company, not just one. 

For Envato Elements, for example, you can make as much as $120 with annual plans sold through your affiliate link. Every purchase you have referred to Envato Market brings you a share of 30%. To find out more about this, check out our Envato affiliate program review here. 

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