Focusing your advertising efforts on one niche is crucial for affiliate marketers, especially when starting out; you can expand into other verticals once you have mastered your first. Although it may be overused, there is truth to the phrase ‘find your niche’. Marketers are much better off specializing in one concentrated area, than to try and advertise everything and achieve mediocre results.
If you are looking to begin your career in affiliate marketing, one of the first steps is to narrow down your niche. In order to help you differentiate between the industry’s verticals, we have narrowed down some of the large verticals that are still going strong in 2018.
Affiliate offers are generally categorized as either white hat (clean) or black hat (dirty). The lines can be blurred for certain verticals as it really depends on the angle and claims you make when promoting the product.
That said, we recommend sticking to the verticals which are primarily white hat if you are brand new the affiliate marketing, as you have a smaller chance of getting advertising accounts disabled for policy violations and also there’s generally less pieces to the puzzle (you don’t need to concern yourself with things such as traffic cloaking).
Vertical | Whitehat | Blackhat |
Nutra | x | |
Crypto/Casino | x | |
Dating | x | x |
Sweepstakes | x | x |
E-commerce | x | |
Lead Generation | x |
Nutra
Nutra is one of the biggest verticals in affiliate marketing, and for good reason – There is a lot of potential to make great money by promoting beauty, health and wellness products. In this niche, the most popular subcategories include:
- Skin
- Diet
- Muscle
- Erectile Dysfunction
- CBD
A lot of consumers are looking for these products, so the target audience is huge and has a large potential to scale. In the health and beauty area, many brand new products become extremely popular for a short period of time. Advertising them when they begin to pick up popularity online is a great way to make money very quickly. For example, green coffee bean extract became popular over night a few years ago, and it took over our social media pages for months – millions of dollars were made. In cases like this, it is good to jump on the trend quickly.
While Nutra has been one of the largest niches in the affiliate marketing space for years, times are especially tough right now.
Thousands of trial MIDS (in the USA) have been cut-off, and therefore, tens of millions of dollars in advertisers’ funds are currently frozen. They have no merchant processing available to take new orders and they are struggling to continue to bill existing subscriptions. This has a trickle down effect to the networks and affiliates. In some cases, they are simply not getting paid.
That being said, trials are not the only option available in this niche. Straight Sale and COD (Cash-on-delivery) are bigger than ever, which is a great option in certain geos where payment methods are more limited or where trials aren’t currently an option.
Finally, CBD is becoming an increasingly popular sub-vertical. Although it is currently difficult to get cap on a trial offer (because it’s facing the same MID issue as other Nutra verticals), there are various straight sale options still available that are performing well.
New offers are launching at an increasing pace, and depending on your angle there are offers available for CBD Oil, CBD Tablets, CBD Gummies and more.
Online Dating and Adult
In the digital age, most of our interactions with others happen online. Life is busy, which can pose a challenge when it comes to dating. Given the importance we place on online social interactions, it comes to no surprise that online dating is one of the biggest niches. Many people are willing to spend hundreds of dollars per year on dating site memberships. There is a vast amount of subcategories within the online dating vertical. The following presents a few examples of different areas in which you can advertise:
- Sexual orientation
- Job type
- Religious views
- Gender
- Relationship type (long-term, short-term, etc.)
- Age
Although the online dating niche can be tough to break into due to intense competition, it is a growing and constantly evolving niche. This means that there are new websites emerging all the time, and new companies are willing to compensate generously for traffic. Additionally, online dating has a global market, which offers affiliates ample opportunity to advertise in different geographic locations.
Adult
Similar to online dating, Adult is all about promoting products and services that revolve around romantic online interactions. However, it is much less PG than the online dating vertical. For example, the ads you see online that say “meet sexy singles near you” or “there are 5 hot women waiting to meet you” are promoting adult offers. While the adult niche may be more mature, there are many lucrative opportunities for affiliate marketers.
The adult industry is worth approximately $100 billion, which means it requires a ton of advertising. Although the vertical is competitive, the potential pay out is great.
Make money online –Cryptocurrency, Casino
Cryptocurrency
There is no better time than the present to become a cryptocurrency affiliate. Recently, cryptocurrencies have really taken off due to all the media attention the have been receiving, and are widely regarded as the ‘next big thing’. Capitalizing on recent trends and news has always been one of the main ways that affiliates keep their advertising angles fresh.
These crypto-currency offers are all positioned in the same way, and are essentially marketed as ‘get rich quick’ schemes. They use the same backend that binary offers used (before most of them got shut down) and often promise some state of the art trading software.
Casino
Online casinos have become one of the most popular sources of global entertainment, and a way for individuals to make money. Online gambling is a great vertical for affiliates to push for several reasons. For one, there are a ton of very high paying offers that you can promote in almost every country. Although, promoting casino offers can be challenging due to advertising restrictions. Affiliates constantly have to work around Facebook disabling their advertising accounts due to policy violations. However, with high paying offers (often over $200 per deposit), affiliates do not need to make many sales to earn big.
Another advantage is that it allows affiliates can promote offers from big names in the online gambling industry, Ladbrokes and William Hill are good examples of this in the United Kingdom. It can be more effective to promote your offers through reputable brands that users are familiar with.
By 2020, the online gambling market is expected to reach a worth of $66 billion. It is a growing market, with many offers for you to convert traffic.
Cryptocurrency and Casino are similar niches, targeting a very similar audience. Often the same traffic and angles can be used for both of them with a few small changes to the affiliates landing page. To make money in this vertical is tricky though, for the same reason as the other black hat verticals. Facebook is clamping down hard on affiliates making large and extravagant claims, which is often what you have to do to turn a profit in these verticals.
E-commerce/physical products
People do most of their shopping online, which makes e-commerce offers easy to promote. Consumers see product advertised all over their social media accounts and various websites all the time. With e-commerce, affiliates work on a CPS model, whereby they make a commission from each sale of the product they’re promotion. Affiliate offers now exist for a huge range of products, ranging from flashlights and spy cameras, all the way to the millions of dollars of black face masks sold in the latest craze.
The great thing about promoting physical products as an affiliate is that there is you don’t need to hold inventory or worry about customer service, the advertiser deals with these issues. Affiliates are solely responsible for the referrals.
Finally, another great thing about promoting e-commerce offers is that they are also generally white hat (Facebook-friendly). Since the ads for e-commerce are less aggressive, you can avoid Facebook banning your account, which is a common issue affiliates are faced with when promoting other black hat verticals.
Lead Generation
Lead generation involves gathering personal information from users who are interested in a product or service. Lead generation is one of the biggest industries for affiliates. Subcategories within this vertical include:
- Insurance (auto, home, life, etc.)
- Legal help
- Mortgage and real estate
- Online education
Companies are willing to pay a lot of money to affiliates who can provide them with quality leads. Advertisers are often willing to assess your leads, and adjust your payout accordingly. So if you can prove to them that you have a large percentage of quality leads, you’ll often get the higher payouts.
Some offers in this vertical have “filters” or qualifying conditions. Make sure to clarify this with your advertiser. They may for example not pay for leads that have poor credit scores. They can probably help you out with some broad targeting guidelines.
Sweepstakes
People love to win, especially when the prize is a new iPhone, or an exotic vacation. With sweepstakes offers, users have a chance to win an amazing prize in exchange for a couple personal details about themselves. Given how appealing sweepstakes are to online consumers, it is easy to get several users to sign-up and provide their information and the conversion rate is usually very high.
Sweepstake offers work through a sign-up flow. To complete the conversion, users input their email, and perhaps a few additional details about themselves. In turn, the advertiser pays the affiliate for the information that was collected when the user signed up.
One of the advantages about sweepstakes is that you can promote these offers all over the world. They are not limited to certain geos and you can usually find offers in even the most obscure of countries. In addition, there low payout usually means that you can have a smaller test budget for each angle / offer before determining whether to cut if or it’s a winner.
The Bottom Line
Before you can explore with different verticals, it is important that you become an expert in one of them. The verticals we have outlined for you in this article should give you a sense of where to start when you are new to affiliate marketing. Based on several factors, such as whether a niche is primarily white or black hat, and what the challenges and opportunities are within them, you can decide which vertical is right for you.
dating is a big crime & casino
As for me, peerfly, mostCPA, maxbounty is more enough to reach my goals.
but as they said, without good budget, vps hosting plan, good written landing page and testing ads, you ‘ll loose your time & effort.
thank you for your awesome article and list.