We found Adobe’s Affiliate Program to be a bit cumbersome to set up and some of the help files outdated, so we created this ultimate guide to walk you through the steps of setting your website up as an Adobe Affiliate.

You’ll find all the steps included here (we update this on a regular basis) and we’ve also provided a free SOP Template that you can access by entering your email above. If you’d like to pass this task to a coworker or freelancer to have them set this up for you, send them the SOP.

PERKS OF BEING AN ADOBE AFFILIATE

You can find detailed information about the payouts for the Adobe Affiliate program in the HELP section of your affiliate account once you’ve applied, but here is a basic breakdown of what the program offers:

Commissions:

Month-to-Month subscription: 85.00% of the first month (yes, 85%!)

One Year, prepaid subscription: 8.33% of the first year payment

Cookie lifetime:

Post View: 3 Days

Post Click: 120 Days

Adobe has a massive range of products which makes it pretty easy to find a good match for your audience. These products are professional-grade and used to be very expensive, but Adobe has since switched up their pricing strategy. Users can now get subscriptions that are much more affordable, even for individuals and small businesses. For example, for 9.99USD/mo you can now get access to Photoshop and Lightroom as well as get 20GB of free storage on Adobe Cloud. This new pricing model makes it easier to sell Adobe products to your audience.

Regardless of your niche, your audience will likely find at least one of Adobe’s products useful and cost-effective for their business. Being familiar with Adobe products is key to offering the best solutions to your audience. Take some time now to take a look at what products Adobe is now offering and their price points.

HOW TO SIGN-UP FOR ADOBE’S AFFILIATE PROGRAM

Go to the Adobe Affiliate sign-up page and click the APPLY NOW button to create an affiliate account.

Fill out the required information and then click CREATE ACCOUNT. Below is a list of the information that you will need to complete this section. If you are delegating this task to a coworker or freelancer, be sure to add this information into the SOP template before passing it over to them.

A list of everything that you need to add to the SOP will be in the email we send you along with the SOP as both a PDF and DOCX file.

REQUIRED INFORMATION FOR BECOMING AN ADOBE AFFILIATE

When you create a new affiliate account with Adobe, they will ask you for the following information:

1. Country – where your business is located
2. Language – your preferred language
3. Business Type – choose from Individual, Organisation (non-taxable) and Company
4. First Name – business owner’s or account manager’s first name
5. Last Name – business owner’s or account manager’s last name
6. Email – email address that will be associated with the affiliate account
7. Username – create a username for your affiliate account
8. Password – create a password for your affiliate account
9. Your Website – provide your website’s URL

ACTIVATE YOUR ADOBE AFFILIATE ACCOUNT

Once you have filled out the information required by Adobe’s Affiliate program, check the inbox of the email address that you used to register. You should receive a welcome email from the Adobe Affiliate Team with an activation link. Click the link in the email within 15 minutes of applying.

HOW TO VERIFY YOUR WEBSITE

After activating your account, sign-in to your affiliate dashboard. (Note that adobe uses an affiliate network called TradeDoubler, so the style of the login page may sometimes look differently from typical Adobe web pages.)

Once you are logged-in you will see a big blue banner at the top of the page telling you to verify your site. You need to complete two steps in order to finalize the verification process. First, add your contact details by clicking the CONTACT INFORMATION link in the blue box.

Fill out the required information and click the SAVE button in the bottom-right corner of the screen.

Here is a list of the information that you need to provide in addition to the information you have already provided when signing up for the affiliate program:

1. Reporting currency – what currency would you like to appear on your affiliate reports
2. Address – including street address, postal code, country, etc.
3. Market – choose the area where the majority of your audience is located
4. Phone number

After you have saved your contact information, click the HOME button to return to the affiliate dashboard.

In the big blue box, you’ll now click the CLICK HERE link. You will see a list of your websites (at this point you will probably only have one site listed here).

Click the text that says NOT VERIFIED next to your website’s URL to see the instructions for verifying your site.

You will now see a set of instructions with two ways that you can verify your site for the Adobe Affiliate program.

WEBSITE VERIFICATION METHOD 1: ADD META TAG TO HOMEPAGE CODE

Using this method, you will copy the meta tag provided into the HTML code of your website under the <HEAD> tag of the code. TradeDoubler (the company that manages Adobe Affiliates) has provided this video with more detailed instructions. It is outdated, but you will still be able to figure out how to do this by watching it. Here is the instructional video: https://hst.tradedoubler.com/file/20649/tdpull/tdDomainVerification.htm

Once you have pasted the meta tag into the code and saved the updated version of your website, you can click the CLICK HERE TO VERIFY YOUR SITE button on the Site Info screen of the affiliate account. If you’ve accidentally navigated off of this page, you can get back to it by going to the homepage of your affiliate account and clicking the CLICK HERE button in the big blue box at the top of the page. From there, click the NOT VERIFIED text next to your website’s URL.

WEBSITE VERIFICATION METHOD 2: ADD FILE TO THE ROOT OF YOUR WEB SERVER

If you have already verified your site using the previous method, skip this step and move on to the next step. Here is an alternative method for verifying your site. Create an empty file and name it as the instructions say on this screen, example: 3018026.html. Then save this file in the root of your web server. You will need to access your hosting via your FTP or web browser to do this. If you’re unclear how to do this, you can find more detailed instructions here.

Once you saved the file and updated your site, click the CLICK HERE TO VERIFY YOUR SITE button on the Site Info screen of the affiliate account. You can get back to the Site Info screen by going to the homepage of your affiliate account and clicking the CLICK HERE button in the big blue box at the top of the page. From there, click the NOT VERIFIED text next to your website’s URL.

HOW TO COMPLY WITH ADOBE’S AFFILIATE PROGRAM CONTENT GUIDELINES

If you scroll down on the Site Info screen of your affiliate account, you will see a form with some information that you need to fill out about your site (yes, even more info!). Though it doesn’t explicitly say anywhere in the instructions, you need to fill out this information before you can get approved for the program.

This is the last set of information that you’ll need:

1. Site description – give a brief explanation describing your site’s purpose
2. Promotion type – choose from a list of options for how you’ll be offering the affiliate (we chose “Bloggers”)
3. Traffic size – select the range that matches how many unique visitors you get to your site per month (at the time that we applied, our site was in the lowest tier but we still got accepted)
4. Select website content – tick the boxes of different content types that match the content of your site
5. Site type – choose from PC/mobile/mobile app

Once you’ve filled in the information, make sure to tick the box at the bottom of the screen to assure that your site doesn’t include any content that goes against Adobe’s content guidelines. Click SAVE to complete this section.

HOW TO GET APPROVED FOR ADOBE’S AFFILIATE PROGRAM

At this point, you must wait for approval to get into the affiliate program. Initially we foolishly thought that once our website was verified, we were ready to go with adding Adobe links and ads to our site. This is not the case, and you will likely get frustrated (as we did!) trying to navigate the Affiliate Dashboard attempting to find links to add to your site. You’ll have to be a little patient as you won’t be able to take any action at this time.

We were not all that patient and decided to contact Adobe’s Affiliate Team after 24 hours of applying. We were approved pretty much immediately after doing so. It’s possible that we would have been approved that quickly anyway, but if you want to push things along, you could try sending them an email as we did.

This is the text from the email that we sent to Adobe:

Sent to: AdobeAffiliates@arvato.com

I have verified my website and see the different ads available for the affiliate program, but how do I apply for one so that I can put the ad on my site? My website: www.soptemplates.com

 

Thanks!

They replied the same day with an approval for our site to enter the program. Again, this might have been a coincidence, but it couldn’t hurt to try.

NAVIGATING ADOBE’S AFFILIATE DASHBOARD

While you are awaiting approval for your site, take the opportunity to get familiar with your new affiliate dashboard. Sign in to your affiliate dashboard using this link: http://reports.tradedoubler.com/pan/public?pvnId=1993633.

Once you are logged-in to your account, you can have a look around before you’ve been approved to join the program. The main dashboard gives you a snapshot for how your affiliate links and ads have been performing. You’ll be able to see your impressions, clicks, account balances and more, directly on the dashboard when you login to your account.

VIEWING AFFILIATE LINKS AND ADS FOR ADOBE OFFERS

Even if you haven’t been approved for the affiliate program yet, you can take a look at some of the links and ads that are available for you to put on your website. You won’t be able to get the affiliate code until you have approval, but you can use the time while you wait to decide which ads/links you want to add to your site.

Sidenote: The welcome email that you will have received from Adobe has some instructions for how to view/manage the ads available, but we found that it is not up to date. In fact, we got pretty lost trying to navigate the program, which is the whole point behind writing this article. In the end, it’s been worth it to figure it all out, because the program has great payouts. We hope these instructions help to make the whole process smoother.

To access the list of ads and links available in Adobe’s Affiliate Program, click the TRACKING dropdown menu from the main affiliate dashboard page and then select BANNERS & TEXT LINKS.

While you’re in the Banners & Text Links section, click the SEARCH button in the bottom-right corner of the screen. You can also make the search more specific by adding details here, but we found that seeing ALL the ads and links available was the best method for us to find the ones that would fit our website and audience.

Once you have tapped SEARCH, you’ll be able to see a list of all ads and links available through the Adobe Affiliate program. There are several pages of these ads and links, so make sure to page through everything that’s available.

Before your website is verified and before you have been accepted into the program, you can notice two things when viewing the ads on this screen. First, the box under “Adobe Affiliate Program” is blank. Second, you will see text that says “Not verified” on the right column of the table.

After your site is verified and you have been accepted into the program, this same screen will look like the image above. Now there are two links in the box below “Adobe Affiliate Program”. The first is where you’ll be able to get the code for the ad and the affiliate link. The second is a preview for what your audience will see when they click on the ad from your website.

Also note that in the rightmost column of this table, the text has changed from “Not verified” to “Accepted”. Once your table on this screen looks like the image above, you’re ready to start adding links and ads to your site.

If you are still waiting for approval, use this time to map out which ads will work best for your site and decide where you would like to add them into your content.

ADDING YOUR FIRST ADOBE AFFILIATE LINK TO YOUR WEBSITE

If you have verified your site and received an acceptance email from Adobe, you are now ready to begin adding ads/links to your site.

To insert a new ad into your content, go to the TRACKING dropdown menu and select MY ADS. You can filter the ads available by size or type or you can select LIST ALL AVAILABLE ADS to see a list of all the assets available to you through the program.

Next to the ad that you would like to put on your website, you will see a link that says SHOW CODE. (If you don’t see anything in this box, you have not yet been accepted into Adobe’s Affiliate program for that ad.) Click SHOW CODE to view the options that you have to add the ad or link to your website.

For our site, we chose the HTML link and copied the code into a widget on our sidebar. We recommend you make sure NEW WINDOW is selected in the “Open link in” section so that your audience is still on your website after they have finished visiting Adobe.

CREATING DEEP LINKS IN YOUR BLOG POST TEXT CONTENT

If you want to link to an Adobe product from within your blog post text, you can create a deep link to any page of Adobe’s website by clicking the CREATE DEEP LINK button on the My Ads page of your affiliate account. (Go to the TRACKING dropdown menu and select MY ADS to get to this page).

Steps to creating a custom deep link for your text content:

1. Switch from Full Anchor Tag to PLAIN URL
2. Paste the link on Adobe’s website where you want your audience to land from your text link
3. Copy the code that gets generated in the “Deep link code” box
4. Test your new deep link either by pasting the code into a browser window or by clicking the MY TEXT button

You can now paste your deep link as the hyperlink for text within your blog post. This can be a great way to lead your audience into making a purchase with Adobe in a more organic way. If your users click on your deep link and don’t make a purchase the first time around, like with the other Adobe ads, there will be a cookie that lasts 120 days in their browser which will track whether they make a purchase within that time window. If they do, Adobe will credit you a commission.

GETTING THE BEST RESULTS FROM YOUR AFFILIATE LINKS AND ADS

The best performing affiliate links are those that provide a relevant tool that your audience actually needs. If you go pasting ads in every possible space on your website, you will end up losing your audience’s trust. Remember that you’re not getting paid for impressions, only for actual purchases. Make sure each ad or link is carefully calculated with your audience’s best interests in mind.

You can put ads on any posts that contain relevant content, but we find that text links do especially well when used appropriately. Being honest with your audience that you collect a commission can be a powerful tool in gaining trust with your audience. If you decide to take that route, make sure to let your audience know that using your affiliate link will give you a commission without costing them anything extra.

DON’T FORGET THAT YOU CAN DELEGATE THIS TASK

We hope this post helps you start earning money with Adobe’s Affiliate program. If you struggled with any section or have questions, we’re eager to know what’s on your mind! Send us a message to: support@soptemplates.com

Remember to grab the SOP template if you’d like someone else to do the grunt work for you and want the delegating process to be as smooth as butter. Happy delegating!