Affiliate Marketing for Musicians: Make Money Online With Music

If you play an instrument, teach lessons, or just spend a lot of time in the music world, you are sitting on a content advantage that most affiliate marketers will never have. People trust someone who actually plays guitar over a random blogger who copied a gear list from another website. The problem is that most musicians who try affiliate marketing pick a direction that is impossible for a new site to compete in, burn out after a few months, and quit before they ever see a commission.

This post walks through the exact strategy Alston laid out in the video above: how to pick a winnable sub-niche inside music, how to find keywords a new site can actually rank for, which affiliate programs pay real commissions on music products, and how to create content that sends buyers to your links. Every number here comes directly from the keyword research shown on screen. Nothing is invented.

What You’ll Walk Out With

A clear picture of why “music” as a niche will crush a new site and what to do instead
A repeatable keyword research method using ahrefs to find music sub-niches with a keyword difficulty of zero
A real piano case study showing how to go from 97 keyword difficulty down to 1
The SheetMusicPlus.com affiliate program breakdown nobody else is talking about
The three best affiliate programs for musicians: Sam Ash, Sweetwater, and Guitar Center
A YouTube content strategy using product reviews and “best X for Y” videos with real view counts from low-subscriber channels
Honest numbers on what to expect from music affiliate commissions so you can plan accordingly
A free tool at finder.platformproof.com that helps you match your specific music background to the right affiliate income path

Why “Music” Is Too Broad to Make Money From

The first mistake every musician-turned-affiliate-marketer makes is typing “music” into a keyword tool and treating that as a plan. Alston pulled up ahrefs live in the video and typed in “music.” The keyword difficulty score came back at 97 out of 100. In ahrefs, 100 is essentially impossible for a new website. A score of 97 means you are competing directly with Spotify, Rolling Stone, Apple Music, and every major publication that has been publishing music content for decades. A brand-new site has essentially zero chance of ranking for anything in that territory.

That is not a reason to walk away from the music niche. It is a reason to get more specific. The music world is enormous, and most of the competition piles up at the top level. The moment you move one level down, the picture changes completely.

How to Pick Your Sub-Niche Inside Music

The first strategic decision you need to make is which corner of the music world you actually want to own. The options are wider than most people realize. You could do piano, guitar, hip-hop production, drumming, music theory, home recording, live sound engineering, or even something as specific as gaming music. These are all separate markets with separate audiences, separate products, and separate affiliate opportunities.

Alston showed the gaming music sub-niche as a quick example. Searching “music” with “gaming” included returned 32,000 searches per month and over 7,000 keywords. That is a full-sized niche inside a niche, and the major sites are not camping there the way they are camping on the top-level “music” term. You do not need to pick gaming music specifically. You need to pick something that you can speak to with real knowledge, and then verify in a keyword tool that there is actual search volume with manageable competition.

The sub-niche you choose will shape everything: which affiliate programs make sense, what content you create, and where you distribute it. Get this decision right before you create a single piece of content.

The Piano Case Study: From KD 97 Down to KD Zero

Alston walked through the full keyword research process using piano as the example sub-niche. Here is exactly what the data showed at each step.

Step one: type in your sub-niche. Searching “piano” in ahrefs showed that the keyword is still competitive, but noticeably less than “music” overall. There are still opportunities in the matching keywords, and the difficulty is not uniformly high across the board. Green means relatively easy to rank, yellow means medium difficulty, red means hard. The piano results showed a mix.

Step two: add a modifier that signals buyer or learner intent. Alston added “how” to the piano search, targeting people who are actually searching for information rather than just typing in the topic. The results jumped to 235,000 monthly searches across 79,000 keywords, with a mix of green and yellow difficulty scores. This is still a lot of competition at the top, but there are winnable positions in there.

Step three: filter by keyword difficulty. Setting the filter to show only keywords with a difficulty of 10 or below inside the “how to play piano” keyword set returned 120,000 monthly searches across 2,300 keywords. Dropping the filter all the way to zero returned 30,000 monthly searches across 946 keywords. That is almost a thousand topics a new website could create content on and have a realistic shot at ranking for.

A specific example from the data: “c sharp piano chord” showed 1,000 monthly searches with a keyword difficulty of 1. A well-written post on a new blog could rank for that. Multiply that by 946 keywords and you have a content roadmap that could take years to work through, all inside one narrow corner of one instrument category.

The same process works for any instrument. Replace “piano” with “guitar,” “drums,” “bass,” or “ukulele” and run through the same three steps. The exact numbers will differ, but the method is identical.

An Affiliate Program Nobody Talks About: SheetMusicPlus.com

While walking through the keyword research, Alston spotted an affiliate opportunity that most people in the music space overlook entirely. The data showed people searching for specific songs to play on piano, like “how to play stitches on piano.” That keyword points directly to a buyer who wants sheet music for that exact song.

SheetMusicPlus.com runs an affiliate program that pays 8 percent commission on sales made through your link. If your monthly referred sales stay under $3,700, you earn 8 percent. If you push past $30,000 in referred sales in a month, the commission rate climbs to 12 percent. Sheet music on the platform runs from about $9 up to $20 or $30 per item.

Let’s be honest about the math at 8 percent. On a $10 sheet music purchase, you are earning roughly $0.80. That means you need significant traffic volume to generate meaningful income from SheetMusicPlus alone. Where this gets interesting is the alignment between the content and the product. If you write a post about how to play a specific song on piano and link directly to the sheet music for that song on SheetMusicPlus, the connection is obvious. Someone who searches “how to play a specific song on piano” already wants to learn it. Sheet music is the natural next purchase.

This is the kind of affiliate pairing that works over time: content that answers a question, linked to a product that solves the same problem the question was about. At scale, with hundreds of song-specific posts, that traffic adds up.

The Three Best Affiliate Programs for Musicians

Beyond SheetMusicPlus, Alston identified three affiliate programs that cover the broader music instrument and gear market. These programs give you access to the products that musicians actually spend money on.

Sam Ash. Sam Ash is one of the largest music retail chains in the United States, and they run an affiliate program with a wide catalog of instruments, accessories, recording equipment, and more. The breadth of the product catalog matters because it means you can write about almost any instrument or gear category and find a relevant Sam Ash product to link to.

Sweetwater. Sweetwater is particularly strong in the recording, production, and pro audio space, though they carry instruments across the board. Alston mentioned that he actually did a full review of Sweetwater on his website and YouTube channel, which gives you a sense of how well this program supports review-style content. Musicians who buy from Sweetwater tend to be more serious buyers, which means higher average order values and potentially higher commissions per sale.

Guitar Center. Guitar Center is the most recognizable name in brick-and-mortar music retail in the US. Running an affiliate campaign around Guitar Center products gives you a brand recognition advantage because your audience has already heard of them. Trust is already established. You do not have to convince someone that Guitar Center is a legitimate place to buy a guitar.

You do not need to work all three programs at once. Pick the one whose product catalog fits your sub-niche most naturally, get comfortable with how the program works, and add the others later once you have traffic coming in.

How to Create Content That Sends Buyers to Your Links

Knowing which affiliate programs to join is only part of the work. The bigger question is what content you create to drive traffic that converts. Alston showed two content formats that work specifically well in the music gear space.

Product reviews. Pick a specific product from your affiliate program, copy the exact product name, and search it on YouTube. What you find is people already creating review videos for that exact item and getting views. Alston demonstrated this with the Gibson L Studio Acoustic Electric Guitar. Searching that product name on YouTube turned up review videos with 56,000 views and 43,000 views from channels that published two years ago. A more recent video on the same search had 4,000 views after just two months. The demand is there. People want to see reviews before they spend several hundred dollars on a guitar.

Best-of and comparison videos. Alston also showed the “best guitar for” search pattern. Typing “best guitar for” into YouTube pulls up content in almost every direction: best guitar for beginners, best guitar for metal, best guitar for fingerstyle, best guitar for specific genres. Inside that search for a specific four-chord category, the top result came from a channel with 923,000 subscribers and had 175,000 views. But the video directly below it came from a channel with just 726 subscribers and still pulled 109,000 views. That is the data point that matters. A small channel with the right content on the right topic can outperform much larger channels in this space.

You can also search “versus” style content. Typing “acoustic guitar versus” into YouTube returns comparison searches like acoustic versus electric, and the results show strong view counts from small channels. This works because someone searching “acoustic vs electric guitar for beginners” is usually close to a purchase decision. They want to know which one to buy. If your video answers that question and your affiliate link is in the description, you are positioned exactly where that buyer is looking.

Not sure which music niche or income path fits where you are right now?

Answer a few questions and get a personalized recommendation at finder.platformproof.com.

A Step-by-Step Action Plan to Get Your First Music Affiliate Commission

Here is the sequence Alston outlined, translated into concrete steps you can take in order.

Step 1: Pick your instrument or music sub-niche. Guitar, piano, drums, home recording, live sound, music theory — choose the one you already know or are actively learning. Generic “music” does not work as a starting point.
Step 2: Open ahrefs (or a free alternative like Ubersuggest or Google Keyword Planner). Type your sub-niche. Look at the keyword difficulty. If it is above 50, you need to go narrower.
Step 3: Add “how” to your search. This shifts your results from broad informational searches to specific learner and buyer intent queries. Filter keyword difficulty to 10 or below.
Step 4: Drop the filter to KD zero. This gives you a list of topics with almost no competition. Start here. Create content on these keywords before you touch anything harder.
Step 5: Sign up for at least one affiliate program. Sam Ash, Sweetwater, or Guitar Center for gear. SheetMusicPlus for digital sheet music if your content is instrument-specific. Amazon Associates as a backup for anything you cannot find in the dedicated programs.
Step 6: Create your first piece of content. Either a written post targeting one of your KD-zero keywords, or a YouTube video reviewing a specific product or comparing two options. Make the content genuinely useful. Answer the actual question the person is searching for.
Step 7: Put your affiliate link where it belongs. In the description of your YouTube video or embedded naturally in your written post — not in every sentence, but in the place where someone who just read your recommendation would naturally want to click.
Step 8: Repeat. The 946 keywords at KD zero inside the piano niche alone represent years of content. You do not need to create everything at once. You need to keep going after you start.

Honest Drawbacks to Know Before You Start

Affiliate marketing for musicians is a real opportunity, but the video does not hide the parts that require patience.

The commission math on sheet music requires volume. At 8 percent on a $10 sheet music purchase, you earn $0.80 per sale. Even getting to $500 per month from SheetMusicPlus alone would require over 600 purchases through your links. That is achievable, but it requires a lot of content ranking for a lot of specific song keywords. Plan for this to be a longer build rather than a quick win.

Music gear commissions vary by program. Sweetwater, Sam Ash, and Guitar Center all have their own commission structures, which can change. Gear purchases tend to be larger dollar amounts than sheet music, which helps. A $500 guitar purchase at even a 4 percent commission earns $20 per sale. That math scales differently. Always check the current commission rates before building a content strategy around a specific program.

The top-level music niche is genuinely competitive. Even with good keyword research, you will occasionally find that a topic you thought was easy already has a strong page sitting in the top result. Do not let that stop you. Move to the next keyword on your list. With 946 zero-difficulty keywords in one sub-niche alone, you have options.

SEO results take time. A new website posting good content consistently can expect to wait three to six months before Google starts sending meaningful traffic. YouTube moves faster for some channels, but not always. The musicians who succeed at this are the ones who understand it is a compounding process: each piece of content builds on the last, and the returns grow over time rather than arriving immediately.

Find Your X

The strategy above is repeatable across any instrument, any genre, and any corner of the music world. What changes is which specific sub-niche you choose and which affiliate programs align with it. If you already know you want to do piano, great. If you play three instruments and are not sure which one to build content around, or if you are trying to figure out whether affiliate marketing is even the right income path for where you are, that is exactly what the free tool at finder.platformproof.com is built for. Answer a few questions about your skills and situation, and it matches you to a specific starting point rather than leaving you guessing.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need to be a professional musician to do affiliate marketing in the music niche?

No. You need enough knowledge to write or speak about your topic credibly. Someone who has played guitar for two years and knows which beginner guitars are worth the price has more real insight than a non-musician reading a spec sheet. Professional credentials are not required. Genuine experience is.

What is keyword difficulty and why does it matter for music affiliate sites?

Keyword difficulty is a score, usually from 0 to 100, that estimates how hard it would be to rank a new page in the top search results for that term. A score of 97 (like the top-level “music” keyword) means you are competing against pages from publications with millions of backlinks. A score of 0 or 1 (like “c sharp piano chord”) means a well-written post on a new site could rank. For a new affiliate site, targeting low-difficulty keywords is how you get traffic before you have built up authority.

Is Amazon Associates a good option for the music affiliate niche?

Amazon Associates can work as a supplemental program, particularly for accessories and smaller items. The commission rates are generally lower than dedicated music retail affiliate programs, and Amazon’s cookie window is only 24 hours. For larger purchases like instruments, programs like Sweetwater, Sam Ash, and Guitar Center typically offer better terms. Use Amazon as a backup when you cannot find a specific product in a dedicated program.

Should I start with a blog or a YouTube channel for music affiliate marketing?

Both work, and they work well together. YouTube has the advantage of being more visual, which matters when you are demonstrating how an instrument sounds or looks. Written content compounds well for search traffic over time. If you are comfortable on camera, YouTube can move faster initially. If you prefer writing, a blog with good keyword targeting is a proven path. Alston mentioned in the video that some keywords are going to work better on YouTube specifically, particularly anything where people want to actually see someone playing.

How do I find low-competition keywords in a music sub-niche without paying for ahrefs?

Free options include Google Keyword Planner (requires a Google Ads account), Ubersuggest (limited free searches per day), and Google’s own autocomplete and “People also ask” sections. None of them give you the same granular difficulty scoring that ahrefs does, but they can point you toward specific longer-tail queries that are less competitive. The general strategy is the same: start broad, add modifiers like “how to” or “best for beginners,” and look for specific questions rather than general terms.

What does SheetMusicPlus pay and how do I join their affiliate program?

SheetMusicPlus pays 8 percent commission on referred sales under $3,700 per month, stepping up to 12 percent if your referred sales exceed $30,000 per month. Sheet music on the platform starts around $9 and goes up to $20 or $30 for more complex arrangements. You can find their affiliate program directly on their website. It is well suited to content creators whose audience is learning specific songs on specific instruments.

Can a YouTube channel with fewer than 1,000 subscribers get views in the music niche?

Yes, and the video shows it directly. In the “best guitar for four chords” search, a channel with only 726 subscribers had a video sitting at 109,000 views. In a separate example, a channel with 692 subscribers had a video sitting at 20,000 views. YouTube’s algorithm rewards the content, not the channel size. If your video is the best answer to a specific question, YouTube will surface it regardless of how many subscribers you have. Start with specific, targeted videos rather than broad topic videos.

How long does it take to make the first commission from music affiliate marketing?

There is no honest universal answer, but some patterns are common. YouTube content can start getting views within days or weeks of publishing. Blog content built on low-difficulty keywords can take three to six months to rank. Your first commission depends on when you start getting traffic and whether that traffic includes people with buying intent. A product review for a specific guitar model attracts people who are closer to a purchase than a general article about “what is guitar.” Target buyer-intent keywords first to shorten the time to your first sale.

Sources

Alston Godbolt, “Affiliate Marketing For Musicians 2021 – Make Money Online With Music,” YouTube, https://youtu.be/IASMSMrsfec
Ahrefs keyword research data as shown in the video: “music” KD 97; “piano” matching keywords; “how” + piano filter at KD 0-10 returning 120,000 monthly searches; KD 0 filter returning 30,000 searches across 946 keywords; “c sharp piano chord” 1,000 monthly searches KD 1; gaming music sub-niche 32,000 searches/month
SheetMusicPlus.com affiliate program terms as shown in the video: 8% commission under $3,700/month referred sales, 12% over $30,000/month; sheet music priced from $9 to $30
YouTube search data shown in the video: Gibson L Studio search results 56,000 and 43,000 views; “best guitar for four chords” top result 175,000 views (923K subscriber channel), second result 109,000 views (726 subscriber channel); acoustic versus electric results 20,000 views (692 subscriber channel)