When marketers of all kinds think of the beginning of this year… well. Nobody has quite expected what 2021 had in store for us. But this time we’re smarter, better prepared, and ready to act fast.
That’s why, for all those wondering how to begin in affiliate marketing, where to find the most profitable verticals, or how to meet the latest trends, we’ve prepared this ultimate list.
Read the blog post for the ranking of the most profitable affiliate marketing niches in 2022 and learn how to find them.
What is a niche in affiliate marketing?
If you’re looking for a definition of an affiliate marketing niche then knowing what niche marketing generally means can be helpful. Both terms refer to promoting a specific segment or group of products available on the market. Specific as in sharing common characteristics, for example answering the same needs, visitors’ preferences, demographics, geographics, or price.
These shared characteristics can be identified through market research or trend analysis. And although it might seem like a complicated task, it’s not. It’s about understanding your target audience and/or listening to what’s the latest hype that’s about to go viral.
Why is identifying a marketing niche important?
Identifying marketing niches, meaning both a broader niche or a micro-niche, is the key to making money in the marketing business.
Can you imagine advertising tea and biscuits to Super Bowl fans around the NFL finals in the USA? Or, winter sports equipment to Australians during the Australian Open? Exactly, neither can you. If you want to profit from digital marketing, these are the basics that never change.
Think about how the Black Friday Cyber Monday campaigns work around the world. What people expect are deals and discounts made just for the occasion. Time-limited, and BFCM-themed. Even though various deals can be found all year round, it’s what people always want to get. And that’s why listening to your potential customers and responding to audiences’ needs is the ultimate solution for people in the affiliate marketing business.
You need to know what people desire, give them just that, exactly when and how they want it.
The ultimate list of evergreen niches and verticals.
As we all know, there’s a number of marketing trends that can go viral within split seconds (yes, we’re looking at you TikTok). And although these may be worth a shot, they also carry a risk of being a short-lived and high-competition niche.
On the other side of that stick are the evergreen verticals, by many considered to be the best niches in affiliate marketing. What makes them so valuable, highly-regarded, long-lived, and well… evergreen?
Online marketing is a very broad subject and almost all products marketed online can fall into that field. That makes the topic of affiliate marketing niches a broad one, too. But the best affiliate niches are the ones that require minimum effort with maximum gain. Simply put, the easiest to optimize for positive ROI — the evergreen ones.
It’s worth noting that these niches aren’t evergreen solely because they belong to specific categories — like the health niche, dating, or car niche. In fact, these three examples are quite profitable and likely to make it to the evergreen group but for different reasons.
The main characteristics of an evergreen niche:
- wide and/or global reach,
- year-round relevance,
- product universality (allowing for micro-niches to exist within),
- responsive target audience,
- monetization potential.
Simply put, what counts is how many people you’re able to reach, and how easily you’re able to persuade them to your affiliate products — ultimately bringing you a conversion.
Some of the niches that can be identified as evergreen affiliate marketing niches or verticals can be found below.
Evergreen verticals in affiliate marketing:
✔︎ Surveys & Sweepstakes
✔︎ Gambling (including Casino and Sports Betting)
✔︎ Gaming
✔︎ Dating (mainstream and adult)
✔︎ Finance (also Trading, Binary, and Crypto)
✔︎ Health & Beauty (including Nutra)
✔︎ E-commerce
Naturally, these are general niches and a micro niche can be found for many of them. Still, if we were to recommend the best niches for a newbie affiliate marketer, these would be the best choices and the safest way to make money in affiliate marketing. Here’s more detailed information about the affiliate marketing classics.
If you want to learn more about the gambling and casino vertical, click here and read an article discussing one of the best niches every smart affiliate marketer should take a look at.
Looking for this year’s trends?
Check out 2022 affiliate marketing trends here!
What are the best niche ideas for coronavirus times?
As the last couple of years have shown, nothing should be taken for granted. The best example would be the travel niche, which would surely have made the above list back in 2019. Hopefully, we’ll be able to move it upwards as 2022 continues.
That’s why, for those interested in the best marketing niches and affiliate marketing trends for the COVID-19 pandemic, here are some of the industry findings we analyzed once the pandemic struck. So far, 2020 & 2021 have proven that there’s a group of verticals that either remained unaffected by the COVID-19 pandemic, experienced a significant surge in traffic, or after initial turbulences, have quickly recovered and performed both stable and well for the rest of the year.
These verticals can be categorized into three niches: universal a.k.a evergreen verticals, entertainment traffic/WFH, or lockdown-related niche.
1. Evergreen verticals performing well during coronavirus times:
- Surveys & Sweepstakes
- Gambling (mostly online casino and poker)
- Gaming
- Dating (mainstream and adult)
- Finance (also Trading, Binary, and Crypto)
- Health & Beauty
- E-commerce (Without the travel part for the moment, hopefully, to be back soon.)
2. Entertainment verticals with a surge in traffic due to COVID-19 pandemic:
- Gambling (mostly online casino and poker, also online roulette)
- iGaming (also eSports)
- Online dating
- Adult niche
- Streaming (VOD, eGaming, eSports, adult)
- Hobbies & Education
- Home entertainment
- Home appliances
- Sports Betting (Great comeback once the postponed season kicked off, not only for sports fans but for affiliate marketers, too.)
3. WFH-related marketing niches that emerged due to the COVID-19 lockdown:
- Utilities & VPN
- Antivirus
- App Downloads
- Hobbies & Education
- Crypto Offers
- Trading/Binary
- Food and grocery delivery
- E-commerce (back on track especially for the Q4 season!)
How to find profitable affiliate marketing niches?
Finding profitable affiliate marketing niches is the key to making money in this online business. What the best affiliate marketers usually do is combine both tried and tested verticals with currently trending niche ideas.
Where to get the inspiration from?
If you’re asking yourself that question, then following the general trends is generally a good idea to start with. If you want to get a lot of money out of it, then finding the best products and affiliate programs or affiliate networks should be your next step.
Next, think how much time and effort you’re willing to put into it. Will it be just PPC campaigns with an affiliate link? Will you run an affiliate marketing website or a blog? Are you going to collect all your visitors’ and readers’ email addresses? Will you include social media campaigns, too?
But even the best idea needs a precise plan on how to monetize it. An idea, affiliate links from programs or networks, and even first-hand knowledge of the niche isn’t enough to succeed. That’s why we recommend following a few tips we’ve gathered for those seeking help.
- Observe market trends — knowing what’s currently trending, going viral and what’s the latest hype can really equal hitting a jackpot. Even for a newbie, this may be the best way to discover the most lucrative affiliate niches. Social media, an authority site, or an industry blog post discussing the latest trend might be a great source of both information and inspiration, too.
- React, adapt, act — just like Black Friday is the ace of Q4, once a new season starts, another trend goes viral. Think of the health niche and what’s the latest craze and which health affiliate programs you can sign up for. Here’s a tip, weight loss might be just the thing as soon as the holiday season is over… especially we all might become just a bit rounder from them than we expected this year.
- Tap into various audiences — don’t base all of your marketing efforts on one product or audience only. Test a variety of angles before going full speed ahead for the one niche that turned out to be the most profitable.
- Find a common angle for various products — from video games, money blogging, pet niche, baby products, yoga products, makeup, skincare niche, or food delivery to real estate and solar power. These are all the rage right now with billions of people stuck at home, either training to make money out of it or simply find a solution to the monotony of daily life in quarantine.
- Engage with seasonal hypes — mind that each season is slightly different. For example, Q4 is often ruled by its own trends and patterns that can be observed year after year. Analyzing what’s worth investing in before a given season starts might save you a lot of effort.
- Give people what they want and what they need… NOW. Answering demand with supply at the exact moment of need is crucial if you want to succeed in affiliate marketing. The best way to explain why it matters may be the example of Amazon Prime day and the list of top-selling items last year. All of them being very much connected to the global lockdown and ways of improving our lives while still in the quarantine season.
And once all seems done and you’re about to get started with your affiliate marketing campaigns, there’s something we’d highly recommend trying.
Finding the most profitable niches – FAQ
The next step would be to see if your niche is still in demand or how much potential they hold for digital marketing. Asking even a single question listed below should definitely help you reach the best decision for your affiliate marketing business.
- Who’s your target audience?
- Who’s not in the target market?
- Who’s not a part of your audience yet, but might soon become interested?
- What are the general rules and regulations per given niche?
- What’s the compliance policy of your traffic sources?
- How many product categories does your affiliate marketing niche include?
- Is it an evergreen niche or a seasonal hype?
- Isn’t online marketing hindered by, for example, shipping difficulties?
- Is there a potential for the niche to be developed in the future?
- How much do you know about your online marketing niches?
Though many of these may be answered in the earlier phases of planning your marketing ventures, it’s always good to check if profitable niche ideas can really be turned into money. A lot of money preferably.
If you’re still not sure what affiliate niche to choose, here’s yet another tip. Affiliate programs and networks may be a great source of data about what offers get the most visitors. There are many a generous affiliate program out there, yes we’re looking at you antivirus, but don’t forget the fashion affiliate programs pay well too.
Other types of affiliate marketing software, like ad networks, spy tools, or trackers are also experts on the marketing audience and what contents work for the market, or what field of affiliate marketing can be especially worth investing your money. Just ask them a question!
Ranking of the most profitable affiliate marketing niches for 2022
The best affiliate marketing niches are the ones making money — hope we made it clear in this blog post. Now’s the time to see what affiliate niches are the crème de la crème of our industry for the upcoming year. And yes, we all keep our fingers crossed for 2022.
This ranking, though, isn’t going to rate particular niches but rather groups of niches based on their potential in the upcoming season. Stay tuned for this and related posts as we’re going to keep you updated throughout 2022. After all, the pandemic has taught us to never take things for granted.
Evergreen niches:
- Surveys & Sweepstakes
- Gambling/Casino niche
- Gaming niche
- Dating
- Finance (insurance and crypto niche)
- E-commerce
Lockdown niches:
- E-commerce shopping
- Home appliances
- Food and grocery delivery
- Weight loss
- Coffee
Entertainment:
- Hobbies
- DIY niche
- Electronics
- Online dating
- iGaming
- Gambling and casino
- VOD streaming
Adult niches:
- Adult cams
- Adult dating
- Adult content
Health niche:
- Women & Men health
- Children & Teens health
- Baby products
Self-care:
- Makeup niche
- Beauty products
- Vegan beauty products
Self-development:
- Self-help
- Self-motivation
- Online courses
- Yoga
Work From Home:
- Content marketing
- Money blogging
- Credit repair services
- Making money online
- Web hosting
Pet care industry:
- Pet care niche
- Pet owners
Verticals to come back in 2022:
- Sports betting
- Travel
It looks like the world may be opening up in some places and as we head toward the summer of 2022, that means these two popular verticals will return very soon. The sports events we are looking forward to are the much anticipated Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, the Champions League Final and the World Cup in Qatar, as this will not only be great entertainment, but also a chance to make some profit through the sports betting vertical.
And of course, as the world has stood still for more than a year and summer 2022 is an opportunity for everyone to see their friends in other countries and travel once again. This is not only an opportunity for long-distance friends and family to be reunited though but a chance to cash in on the travel vertical and travel affiliate programs which will have some of the biggest deals of the year this summer.
So, take your bets, prepare your landing page copy, and get ready for one hell of a profitable summer!
Conclusions
The best affiliate marketing niches and sub niches are the ones offering products people want. There is no golden list as to what these products are, there are only clues and observations as people’s desires tend to vary from season to season. The best affiliate advertisers in the industry are always prepared to promote new angles and products. Are you?
So, choose your niche and start affiliate marketing today.
2022 Is Full Of Opportunities
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