How Photography Tips Makes Money

Now we get to look at the work of the quite famous Chris Guthrie – the guymaking a million dollars of Amazon affiliate sales a year, of which he keeps about 10%.

So believe it or not, but Photography Tips is just one of Chris’s dozens of niche sites.

I’m no Martin Scorsese, so I’d like cut the suspense and get straight into how this site makes money.

Given Chris is the Amazon guy, it shouldn’t surprise you that the Amazon Associates program (ie Amazon affiliate links) is one of the three big passive income streams for this site.

The other two are non-Amazon affiliate links and Google Adsense.

What makes this site so interesting is the niche he’s chosen and how he’s brought in the traffic.

So the site is all about teaching people how to take great photos, and importantly, how to choose the right equipment, with a ton of high quality product reviews to boot.  Really, the whole site is quality, both in content and design.

In fact Chris said that this was the major question he had to ask when he weighed up whether to go with this affiliate marketing idea; “Am I willing tomake a better quality site than the top three sites on Google, for this 30,000+ a month keyword?”.

ie he’s saying any niche is doable, IF you think you can make a better ‘product’ and thus generate more backlinks and SEO optimized content.

Now a very cool takeaway revolves around how Chris produced the content.  You see, although he may know his way around a Canon 500, he ain’t no uber guru on all things lens related.

So what Chris did was he teamed up with a friend who was a professional photographer.  Meaning Chris handled the technology/business side of things and his friend did the content itself.

This is a great idea, because it allows you to launch multiple niches, whilst drawing on the existing knowledge of friends and acquaintances.

Plus you open up a whole new world of possibilities as to what muses you can launch.

For example, I’ll be doing a site on brain teasers soon (for grad job interviews), but since I still can’t work out how many freaking tennis balls fit in the Empire State building, I’ll be getting a friend to do the content.  We’ll grab a few intense espressos, sit down like it were a real interview and then tease out his best answers.  That’ll then be all transcribed in the Philippines.

Bang!  A product, an idea, I could never have done by myself.  This friends & family strategy should be bringing up all kinds of crazy cool passive income ideas in your head right now!

Anyways, back to Chris.

So what makes the camera niche so freaking awesome?

Well, cameraphiles for a starter spend bigggggg on their hobby / business and are always looking for the latest and greatest.  With this kind of high propensity to spend, sites in this niche are likely to enjoy delicious click through rates to the respective Amazon pages.

Just whilst we’re on propensity to spend, make sure this is something you get right.  Don’t choose a target market that is cheap or only goes for free content etc.  So think business people, addicted hobbyists etc, as opposed to teenagers, entertainment seekers etc.

The camera niche also rules because all the related accessories (and there are a ton of them!) cost an equally insane amount of money.  Say hello to more high affiliate pay outs.

Think about the differences this niche makes to an affiliate site.  I mean,instead of getting $1 for a book sale, Chris will get anything from $30-$100 (and that’s just the camera).

Now a lot of you may be thinking of ditching this article right now to go register something on the tech niche, eg bambootabletreviews.net, but wait!

If you go down this road you have to realize the technology niche forces the creators of sites to be active, not passive.  That’s because as tech changes you need to be producing new articles, new reviews, new affiliate links.  Constantly.

That’s why following Chris’s move and teaming up with someone who loves this sheeeeet and is able to keep pumping out content is crucial.

Sure you leave 50% on the table, but hey, you ain’t desk bound 24/7 typing your ass off about the latest Canon DSLR thingymajigy!

Visit Photography Tips or check out Make Money On The Internet (Chris’s Blog) where case study originally spotted