Canva has become one of the preferred tools for basic design for a lot of people across the globe, whether that be influencers, marketers, or anyone looking to create nice graphics for their personal websites.
If you run a site about online tools that can make anyone’s life easier, you may want to consider a Canva affiliate. In today’s article, we’re looking at everything you should know about the Canva affiliate program, from how you can join it to how much money you can make. Read on to find out more!
The simplest way to describe what Canva is would be to call it a design too. However, it’s a little more complex than that because people can easily create graphics for a number of activities on the Internet, whether that be videos or editing pictures.
Canva has been around for close to ten years now, so a lot of people have at least heard of it before. That makes your job as an affiliate marketer a little easier, because you are not going to put in a lot of effort to recommend these services to your followers.
We will go into some amount of detail regarding a few alternatives to this program if for any reason you decide not to promote it on your platform. You can find that section toward the end of the article.
The best thing about Canva is that you can use it for a bunch of things, whether that be a professional logo, an infographic, an animated movie, or even creating your own business card.
The tool is also extremely helpful for things such as editing Instagram stories, so it also speaks to the needs of influencers and how they communicate with their following.
People can also utilize Canva from all over the world because it is cloud-based, so they can access it anywhere, even when they are traveling. The Canva app is also available for both iOS and Android devices in case users prefer using their mobile phones or tablets rather than reaching out for their laptops.
As for Canva affiliate marketing itself, there are roughly two versions of the service. One can use it completely for free, but the features are extremely limited. You can design anything but you are not going to be able to download the designs to your computer and sometimes they might also come with a watermark.
Free users have access to only 200.000 photos which can be a little funny because most of the time, that is more than enough. Anyone can try out the Pro plan for free for a month, so that also makes things very convenient for affiliate marketers since their referrals can test the product before deciding to commit to paying for a subscription.
Canva Pro now costs $119.99 per month for one person whereas the bigger plan would have to be Canva Teams, billed at $149.90 per year for more than two people (a maximum of five people).
In terms of how these two plans differ, with Pro, users can get anything from the ability to create scheduled social media posts to up to eight different platforms to removing the background of images with just one click. By the way, there are actually people who do this for money on platforms such as Fiverr, so that could be a potential income opportunity for some individuals.
The Teams plan comes with more features, such as cloud storage of up to 1TB, team reports, and a variety of team-specific perks such as workflows and collaboration tools.
One of the best things about this affiliate program is that it isn’t run directly by Canva. You can find it on the Impact Radius affiliate platform, which we have done a detailed review on in the past — so we suggest you give that article a read if you have the time.
Some affiliate marketers can have dozens of niche websites, so they will feel less inclined to join self-managed affiliate programs just because they can’t be bothered with checking their earnings on a regular basis in many different places.
Once you create your Impact account, you will be able to join the program simply by filling out a form, so the process is much easier when compared to the things you need to do to join other similar opportunities.
Just to give you a few ideas as to what questions you have to answer, you will be asked things such as your company name, the type of network you intend on promoting Canva (whether that be social media, your own site, or anything else), the exact kind of marketing you intend to use, and of course your domain and URL.
You have much better chances of being approved smoothly and quickly if you already have a massive following online or if you’re already using Impact with other programs and everything was great until now.
If you’re not getting enough traffic, don’t have too many followers, or your platform is completely irrelevant to design in general or Canva in particular, your chances of being approved are much lower.
The Canva affiliate program commission obviously matters very much when it comes to you deciding whether this is a good idea for you or not. The truth is that it depends on how successful you feel your marketing would be.
For any user that gets the Canva Pro plan for a whole year, you will be paid a commission of $36. Based on the info that we came across, this seems to be a recurring rate, so you can expect to make it for at least two years in a row.
The commission rate is lower for people who pay for their subscription every month. In this case, you would earn just 15% of whatever they are paying, which would be a smaller earning, but still decent enough when compared to other affiliate programs.
We have always debated the payment methods and thresholds of the affiliate programs that we have created reviews on, and the reason for that is that just one method is not enough for most affiliate marketers. Besides, thresholds such as $300 (we’re looking at you, Wix) can be downright ridiculous and can deter people from even wanting to become affiliates in the first place.
You’ll be happy to know that as a Canva affiliate, you can be paid both through PayPal and regular bank transfers. As for the threshold that we just mentioned, it’s incredible but if you make just $10 per month, that’s the amount of money you will receive in your account, whether that be your PayPal account or anything else. This is the limit that Canva uses.
It’s also worth noting that unlike many other companies, Canva does not use a Net60 or even a Net30 system. In fact, with this program, you will have to wait for just 15 days before your commissions are approved and they hit your account.
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The first and most notable advantage that you will get to benefit from if you decide to become a Canva Pro affiliate is the commission rate. Given that the service itself isn’t overly expensive, a rate of 15% for the whole year and 80% for the monthly subscription is quite impressive.
The cookie lasts for 30 days, so we wouldn’t say it’s a pro or a con, it’s pretty much the industry standard at this point. It’s a good thing that people can have a whole month at their disposal to decide whether they want to get Canva Pro or not, especially since they can also try it for free at first.
The minimum payment threshold is another reason to consider joining this program. Not a lot of other companies make transfers for as little as $10, not to mention the fact that your earnings are checked and approved in a record amount of time, just 15 days.
Another aspect that we have to add is that you get a variety of tools for marketing, whether that be banners, deep linking, video ads, or anything else that you might require.
And the fact that there’s also an affiliate manager to assist you in case you run into any issue is definitely reassuring. Finally, the tracking ensured by the Impact Radius platform is great to work with, so that’s one less thing to worry about.
In terms of cons, the approval rate really isn’t great with this one, so unless you have a massive following, you don’t have a lot of chances to recommend Canva Pro to your readers and actually make something out of it. We would have liked a higher commission and definitely a longer tracking cookie, but every program out there has some drawbacks.
Since the average that you can make with Canva ranges between $5 and $36 per month, you’ll have to make a significant effort to make up to $1,000 per month or more.
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You’ll be glad to know that you are allowed to promote your Canva affiliate link in pretty much any space online (with the exception of shady ones, of course).
For example, you can obviously use your own website to promote Canva Pro, whether it’s a blog or something else and whether you want to create detailed reviews about it.
You’re also allowed to promote Canva through your email marketing list and any type of social media, including YouTube. Pretty much anything related to design is accepted, so even if you’re an influencer only on Instagram and doing designs there, you can still promote Canva Pro there, too.
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If for any reason, you feel like becoming a Canva affiliate doesn’t make sense for you, whether that be the commission rate or the cookie length or anything else, here are a few alternatives you might want to look into.
This is a program that, when we first started researching it, we found info according to which you’re supposed to get 30% recurring in commissions — but the fact is that the rate was increased by the brand in the mean time, so now it’s 40%.
All of the conversions are tracked by a separate affiliate network/software, LeadDyno, which we have written about in the past. Payments are unfortunately sent only through PayPal, which can be a bit of a pain for some marketers. As for the cookie, it lasts for 30 days, so there are no surprises there.
As a Pixlr affiliate, you can earn a commission rate of up to 25% out of everything that your referrals spend on the site. On your first sale, you can also get a $10 sale, which isn’t bad at all.
But what makes this program slightly better when compared to the one managed by Canva is the fact that the cookie lasts for 60 days, not 30. Sure, Pixlr is perhaps less known compared to Canva, but it’s still decently known.
To make things even better, this program is managed by ShareASale, one of the largest affiliate platforms in the world (and one of the easiest to use, too).
In a nutshell
So, is the Canva affiliate program a good choice for you? We’d say that there are both benefits and drawbacks that you have to give a thought to before deciding whether or not you should become an affiliate, but that it does seem to be a decent earning opportunity.
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