Make Handsome Profits with These 5 Craft Supplies Affiliate Programs

Who loves crafting here? Since I was a little girl, I have been fascinated by all things created uniquely and artistically—anything that spells “arts.” I’m drawn to their beauty and to the story of how that beauty was created in the first place. And one of the things I loved to do before (and would love to do again when time allows) was crafting.

I don’t know about you, but during my childhood days, especially on special occasions, I used to make custom gift cards, one-of-a-kind storage boxes, and all sorts of handmade souvenirs as gifts to my family and friends. I even earned money selling customized gift cards on holidays like Christmas and New Year’s!

This is just one of the perks that you get when you put your creativity and skills to good use. And as they always say, you can earn money doing what you love.

But what if you apply this to affiliate marketing? The good news is you do not have to acquire the same creativity and skills to earn money in the craft niche. What you need is information that can help you tap the right market and properly promote your site and products.

Let’s begin to analyze the niche more, shall we?

Niche Definition

What is crafting?

Google says, "The activity or hobby of making decorative articles by hand. 'Crafting has emerged as a fashionable form of self-expression.' " To keep everything simple, let us stick to Google’s description of crafting.

If you plan to put up a crafting affiliate website, it is better to check for example websites first, such as Frugal and Thriving and Craft Gossip, to learn what a crafting niche affiliate site looks like.

Frugal and Thriving is a more generalized site focused on budget-friendly topics. The website has a sub-page on crafting, which supports the main topic. If you have a website in a niche similar to this one, you may add crafting as a sub-topic.

But if you prefer to start with a sub-niche website, then you can look at Craft Gossip for ideas. It's focused on crafting topics only.

There is not much of a difference between a general niche website and a more targeted sub-niche website. In terms of income, both these sites have the potential to earn. Perhaps the only difference lies in the amount of effort and time you spend in building and promoting the site. A general, wide-topic website like Frugal and Thriving may take more time to build because of the number of different topics included. With a sub-niche site like Craft Gossip, the topics are more targeted and focused on one subject only.

Popularity

Is there an online demand for this market?

It is not enough to know the niche you are promoting. No matter how knowledgeable or skillful you are in that niche, you still need to consider demand. Remember to always mind your target market. Without a market and sufficient demand, you won’t succeed with the niche you’ve chosen.

For the craft supplies niche, let us see how the word “craft supplies” goes in terms of Internet popularity:

Google Trends

This is one of my favorite tools when it comes to checking the niche’s popularity on the Internet, simply because Google is the number-one traffic source online. For the keyword “craft supplies,” we can see interest has been highly consistent this year.

The top countries from which “craft supplies” is searched for are (in descending order) Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States. All these countries have high percentages of online buyers as well, which means that marketing wouldn’t be a problem for this niche.

BuzzSumo

Other than knowing the popularity of a niche in search engines, it is also a good idea to check whether the niche is a hot topic on social media platforms. An easy way to check this data is to head over to BuzzSumo to see the current topic trends for the niche. For “craft supplies,” we get the following data:

Surprisingly, “crafting supplies” does not return favorable results in social media shares BUT this does not mean the niche is not recommendable. Remember, you can always do extra research when the results are not favorable. Let's do another search using a different keyword, “crafting”:

Compared to the first search on BuzzSumo, the word “crafting” returned better social media shares. Additionally, we can see that Pinterest shares stand out from the rest of the social media channels, which tells us that Pinterest is the best place to market the crafting niche.

SimilarWeb

Another great tool for determining niche popularity. Compared to Google Trends and BuzzSumo, however, SimilarWeb is quite different.

This tool provides an analysis of the website you’ve entered. It supplies you with important info such as traffic data, marketing channels used, social media traffic, referrals and much more. You can use this tool to spy on similar websites and see how well the niche is performing.

As an example, I have entered Craft Gossip's URL in the search bar. Here is what I got:

The traffic data for the website is not bad at all. The monthly traffic is very high (348k per month), with equally high unique visits a month (169k per month). There is still a LOT more data that you can check in SimilarWeb, but the traffic overview for this competitor website is enough for us to tell that there is a market for the crafting niche. 

Keyword Research

How to search for crafting keyword ideas using AffiloTools

Doing keyword research can be a challenging task for beginners, but if you have a sleek tool like AffiloTools, then there’s no need to worry. Here is a good guide to doing your keyword research with AffiloTools.

All registered members in Affilorama can use the free version of AffiloTools. If you wish to upgrade to a paid account, you can refer to our price table here for the details.

Now back to the tool. There are many ways to do your keyword research in AffiloTools:

1. Do keyword research by simply entering the seed keywords in the search box.

Head to the keyword section and simply enter your seed keyword(s) to get more keyword ideas, as shown below:

You will be provided with results under both “Keyword match” and “Related keywords.” The results in the “Keyword match” section are keywords that have an exact match with the one you’ve entered. For example, if our seed keyword is “craft supplies,” the keyword match results are as follows:

Notice that you have the phrase “craft supplies” in all keywords. These are all the keywords that include the seed keyword.

As for the “related keywords” section, the results provided here are keywords that are similar to the seed keyword entered. So you should also expect, most of the time, that there will be more keyword suggestions here than in the keyword match section. For our seed keyword “craft supplies,” AffiloTools returned the following related keywords:

Also, when using AffiloTools, take note of the colors under the Competition column. Green means light competition, orange means moderate, and red means high. These colors help you easily spot keywords worth targeting.

2. Use the Scan URL button to find keywords.

I am referring to the feature below:

You can find this section under AffiloTools' keyword research section, just beside the keyword search box (easy!).

Enter the link of a similar website to find all the keywords that website is using. This is a cool feature that you can use to “scoop” your competitors' keywords.

3. Use the “Import File” section.

The Import File section is located just below the Scan URL button (as shown below). This is another feature you can utilize when you already have a list of keywords and you only want to know their competition levels.

Craft Affiliate Programs

Crafty ways to improve your income

This is yet another niche that does not have any affiliate programs on ClickBank. There are a handful of craft affiliate programs on the ClickBank Marketplace, but they belong to specific crafts, not the craft supplies niche.

So, as always, I went looking for craft supplies affiliate programs online. Now, these five options I think best represent the diversity of affiliate programs for this niche. But they are not the only ones, and they are not necessarily the only good options. There are plenty more out there, but the ones I've chosen are great ways to get your feet wet.

1. CreateForLess

CreateForLess has all the crafting supplies you need for your scrapbooking, sewing, quilting, and beading projects. It has a section for kid's crafts, too. Prices range from a few dollars to about $20 or so.

How much can I make?
Payment is as high as 10% on every sale.

How do I apply?
You can sign up here as a ShareASale affiliate.

2. Creativebug

Creativebug deviates from the norm for programs in this niche. It's not a craft supplies website. What the site does is create tutorials for various craft projects. For $4.95 each month, you have access to well-made tutorials on projects for a variety of crafts, from sewing, quilting and yarn work to paper crafting and jewelry making.

This is a great option to recommend to your followers who are just starting out. You can get tutorials and how-tos on YouTube, but the quality will not be as good as those in Creativebug's collection. The site also has specific projects that take you from beginner to advanced.

How much can I make?
75% commission for paid subscriptions. 30% on gift subscriptions.

How do I apply?
You can sign up here as a ShareASale affiliate.

3. SewandSo

SewandSo is everything CreateForLess is, but for UK crafters. The site primarily targets people who are interested in knitting and sewing.

How much can I make?
You can earn as high as 7% on every sale.

How do I apply?
You can sign up here as a LinkShare affiliate.

4. Annie's Craft Store

The website name says it all: Annie's Craft Store. Needlework, beading, painting, paper crafting and all kinds of other crafts. Annie's has the supplies for it all. The site also offers online classes.

How much can I make?
You can earn 20% commission on all sales and 30% if they sign up for classes.

How do I apply?
You can sign up through the CJ Affiliate website to promote this product.

5. MisterArt.com

If Ms. Annie doesn't have what you need for your projects, then maybe MisterArt has it! MisterArt.com claims to be "the largest online discount retailer for arts and crafts supplies worldwide." I have not seen any site with as comprehensive a collection of arts and crafts supplies, so maybe it really is what it claims to be.

How much can I make?
You can earn a 10% commission per sale.

How do I apply?
You can sign up through the CJ Affiliate website to promote this product.

Amazon offers craft and art supplies, too. The commission isn't all that great compared to the other craft supply stores that we've covered, but Amazon is such a big enterprise, and carries such a wide array of merchandise, that there's always that possibility of earning a higher commission. Be sure to look into the Amazon affiliate program along with the other options.

Marketing

Ways to promote your craft supplies website

You may not have your site up yet, but that's no excuse not to look into link-building and inbound marketing methods. Coming up with a good link-building plan now will prepare you for what you need to do once the site is up, rather than letting it sit idle while you decide which link-building tactic to try first.

Social media marketing

This comes as no surprise. Frequent readers of the Niche of the Week posts might accuse me of monotony, but I challenge you to find a better link-building method: one that builds links and allows to you to engage your target market, not to mention the side benefit of getting traffic outside of Google.

Social media marketing allows for all that, and works for most niches too. Is it any wonder why it's on nearly every Niche of the Week post?

In the case of the crafts niche, social media marketing is important because that's where all the sharing happens—especially on Pinterest. Share your projects there, recommend products and exchange ideas with fellow crafters. Share links to your site and share links to other sites. Always keep in mind that in this method, it's not all about you. It's about sharing engaging content with your followers, building your site's online presence and all that jazz.

Reverse engineering

There are plenty of established websites in this niche. Make them your friends: refer to them and link to them, and plug their domain names into SEO applications and check the sites they build their links on. Then build links on the same sites. Where links are concerned, the friend of your friend is your friend.

Past that sad attempt for humor is the undeniable reason for doing this: reverse engineering can help even out the competition. It doesn't get rid of it altogether, but building links on the same sites as your competitors takes away some of their edge.

Consider it widening your site's reach, too.

Amazon Kindle traffic

The craft niche is one especially suited to promotions through Amazon Kindle. There's plenty of interest in the niche, and there's a lot of information being shared within it. Creating a small e-book on paper crafts, or a guide on how beginners can knit a patterned sweater, won't be difficult. There's also a ready audience.

Have a page at the end with links to your recommended products and relevant pages to your site, then share it on Amazon Kindle. You can charge a fee for each download to make some easy cash (just keep the price low), or keep it free to get more downloads.

Craft Supplies Affiliate Programs

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How quickly we come to this question, but then, it is the driving question in each and every Niche of the Week article: Will this niche make me money?

I'm sure a lot of you would prefer a straightforward yes or no, but that is not the case. Most of the time, the answer involves a big "but." "Yes, you can, but..." "No, you can't, but..."

Strategy plays a big role in succeeding in your chosen niche. Don't go into anything blindly. Do your homework. Research. Take the time to look at the numbers and what's trending. While I am a big fan of going after niches that you're interested in or passionate about, you have to consider what the market wants, too.

As for the craft supplies affiliate niche, yes, you'll make money in this niche. It won't be a lot, considering the commission rates and how little these craft supplies go for. It'll take time, too, if you're just starting out. It helps to be genuinely interested in the niche.

If you already have a site about crafts, then it's time to make money off that website. Join any of the above affiliate programs and start promoting them.

There'll be competition, but you don't have to look at other craft sites as the enemy. These are new sites to visit and connect with, new people to exchange ideas with. It's a way to cross-promote and network with other potential authorities. And all the while, you're making a bit of dough on the side.

And with that ends this week's Niche of the Week. I hope you enjoyed it and found it informative! Pass the word on using the Share buttons below! Do you know of a craft supplies affiliate program that should have been featured here? Would you try your hand at making crafts and making money from them? Is there a niche you'd like us to investigate? Share your thoughts and leave a comment!

Want to learn how to spot a profitable niche? AffiloBlueprint will show you!