Affiliate marketing trends are constantly changing and evolving. Competition increases as more people find a gold mine niche, and eventually, the mine runs out. Now and then, we get new ad formats to explore. New products and niches emerge. Trends in different countries change, and occasionally, we even get hit by a global pandemic.
After all, that's what markets are. They evolve and sometimes wholly revamp. To succeed, affiliate marketers need to stay up with current market trends and ways of making money online. By reading so far, you've already taken the first step.
Below you can find a list of the most profitable and trending niches in 2022. You might say that there are many other good niches out there as well, but in this list, we are showcasing the ones that are owning the market at the moment.
Travel and Tourism
With a 130% increase in the number of global tourists in January, this sector started out very strongly. This is because with covid restrictions elevating, many took the chance to enjoy a nice vacation, perhaps you did too.
Travel and tourism is the hottest you shouldn't miss out on trend in 2022, whether you're new to affiliate marketing or have been in the business for long. The 2022 World Cup takes place in the final months of the year. Coupled with the record-breaking interest in traveling, this is a once-in-a-decade chance to monetize on.
A great example of a blog making money writing about traveling, as you’re reading this, is Living the Dream blog. According to their latest income report from May 2022, they have made more than $8K+ on average in a month using CPM ads and affiliate marketing. A look at their stats since they started the blog shows the downfall during 2020 and the rise and stabilization in 2022.
Luckily, it is still not late, and actually, it’s pretty much the time for you to follow this path if you like this niche.
Fitness
Regular exercise is linked to better divergent and convergent thinking, which are two parts of creative thinking. You need to hit the gym or take walks to get the creative juices flowing. But fitness has more to offer you than just that.
The fitness market is worth more than $87 billion around the world. This is the combined value of all gyms, fitness clubs, and fitness centers, all of which are available to affiliate marketers in a multitude of ways. This is because more and more people are going to the gym and taking care of their health.
One of the best that lies in the fitness niche is the ability to promote gym subscriptions. Nowadays, there are many gyms that work on a subscription basis. These are perfect chances for affiliates to promote.
The reason why fitness can be the second best niche to promote is that you can also promote coaching programs and if you know how to coach, then that opens up even more doors for you. After the pandemic, many people want to spend time at home and workout inside instead of going to the gym, so you will not have a hard time finding people who need a personal coach.
Sports
Covid-19 had a major impact on sports worldwide. The Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo and UEFA EURO Championship were postponed. Stadiums became empty and fans were devastated. But 2022 hosts the perfect opportunity for affiliate marketers and these fans to celebrate the return of the biggest sporting events in the world.
These opportunities include promoting sports betting products, websites, and programs. Sports in all forms and shapes are now in, and who wouldn’t want some of that dopamine in 2022, seeing all their favorite teams back.
But there's more. You definitely remember cryptocurrency and how everyone talks about it. Well, NFTs and fan tokens became a trend in sports towards the end of 2021, one which you can expect to continue. Blockchain-enabled innovations have a chance to open entirely new markets and options for fans beyond simple collectibles.
Green Products
People buy green/eco-friendly products despite the higher prices. Take a look at the chart below. It shows the growth of organic food in the US from 2017 to 2022 and the predicted increase in the industry value by 2027. You won’t have a hard time selling anything in this niche because almost everyone is already convinced that this is a healthier lifestyle.
In 2022, people will prefer to eat ready-made organic food, and the ever-growing number of organic food startups and businesses will allow you to have many products to promote for a long while.
Besides, staying healthy and taking care of the mother earth is no dying trend. Many businesses are going green, giving affiliate marketers a chance to accentuate this point. Remember how people pay higher prices for eco-friendly products? So what are the top green products to trend this year?
- Eco-friendly water bottles
- Restaurants, shops, and organic market products
- Online stores that sell organic material or packages for cooking
- Reusable dishes and straws
We have studied the case of the Imperfect Idealist blog run by Lily to find out the reason why this niche is now more than ever trendy. She mentioned in an income report at the end of 2021 in what ways she earns money, which you can see below. Most of her income comes from affiliate marketing. She managed to have an increasing income in 2021 from almost $1 000 all the way to nearly $2 600 in December, and she is still writing about sustainability and the vegan lifestyle.
It is pretty self-explanatory that in 2022, her profits will only begin to increase. There is no excuse for you not to hop on this trend right away if you actually like to help the planet.
Review Blogs or Channels
Everybody searches online for the things they want: “best budget coffee maker”, “best pressure cooker”, and so on. But how often do we actually end up buying a product that we find on Amazon just like that? Almost nobody purchases something they come across the first time, especially on the internet. And once again, after the pandemic, the online sales industry has experienced a huge growth, to the point that nowadays many people actually prefer to order something online and receive it at the post office.
However, the question that remains is, how do people decide to buy the things that they end up buying? You will soon think of an answer if you think about it. Reviewers! Many products have to be promoted by YouTubers or bloggers before people even hear of them. And you can’t deny the power of reviews. Most people look at the reviews before they even look at the price.
You can find blogs that are mainly and only writing reviews for various types of products. One of the best examples in ConsumerSearch. They review things that might be useful for their visitors in many categories: Kitchen, Fitness, Tech, and Gardening.
The number of such websites is so high that it would be hard mentioning each and every one of them. What this means for you is a world of opportunities. Plus, you might actually sometimes get to try some really cool products and introduce them to people.
Gambling and Betting
Gambling affiliate offers will almost never die. As long as humanity lives on, these networks will provide you with money. According to The Business Research, the betting and gambling market size is well on its way to reach more than $450 billion. Considering the fact that this industry suffered a huge dump in 2020 and rose to $200 billion in 2021, we can already see that it’s doubling up in 2022. The perfect time to stick to this niche.
Dating
The medal of the best ever-growing niche of affiliate marketing should definitely go to Dating. Due to the pandemic, this industry is now evolving more than ever, and as you can see in the graph below, it’s heading upwards.
With the growth and popularity of platforms like TikTok and Twitter, this niche is very ideal to promote at the moment. For some of the best dating affiliate tips, you should definitely consider checking this article out.
SaaS (Software as a Service)
What better trend to hop on than promoting Software as a Service offers. One of the biggest affiliate experts, Adam Enfroy, has started his affiliate career exactly with these types of offers. 2022 is the best time for this as well, since most companies and enterprises, including Google, Microsoft, and Apple are moving from all types of business models to subscription-based businesses. This enables the affiliate to earn commissions from every month or year of subscription.
Health and Beauty
Another ever-green niche is health and beauty. Right now, you can get up to 20% of commission per sale for promoting health and beauty products. You read that right, and considering the fact that most beauty networks have cookies up to 60 days, you are literally in luck. According to Statista, the market share of the beauty industry is said to increase by more than 12% up to $500 billion in the year 2022. If you are passionate about beauty and health, there has never been a better time to shine (and make lots of cash).
Top Traffic Sources in 2022
TikTok is the number one traffic source of 2022 according to both statistics and experts predictions (which have come true). This chart from Business of Apps shows how the number of TikTok users has been increasing evermore, not every year, but every quarter. This means that your audience is going to be much more than Instagram or Facebook, at least from the beginning of 2022.
One thing that makes TikTok a great competitor for Instagram and Facebook and other traffic sources is that your audience will find you thanks to the algorithm of TikTok. Creating content and sharing it on TikTok is super easy, and you are not limited to the ways of earning money. Besides affiliate marketing, you can get paid by TikTok and on live streams, so that is definitely a bonus.
Fortunately, TikTok videos are short and users find their interest in your videos pretty quickly. All you have to do is post consistently, have a branding and a story, and optimize your content to be found via search, such as using hashtags, etc.
YouTube has been around for a long time now, specifically for affiliates. However, there is one part of YouTube that we need to tackle, which would be YouTube shorts fully. Not only does YouTube pay you for YouTube Shorts videos now (just like the normal videos), but you can also do the same thing you were doing with TikTok on Shorts. There are many YouTubers who have managed to gain huge popularity in just a few months through YouTube shorts. Try to promote your products, review them, and gain an audience through YouTube shorts.
Remember that YouTube Shorts have 15 billion views on a daily basis and that most people nowadays use their phones to watch. Luckily, YouTube itself tries to promote YouTube shorts in a way that once the app is loaded, it’s filled with YouTube shorts ads and sections. Just look at the views in the screenshot below and you can get a pretty good idea of the opportunities waiting for you on YouTube this year.
It is never late to have a blog and start writing about your passion. As platforms become more and more powerful to offer better services and ways of optimization, blogging is becoming even easier than before. SEO, product reviews, and ads can all contribute to your income from blogs. Now, more than ever, you can take your blog across different platforms and even turn them into vlogs.
If you don’t have the budget for starting a blog, you can also do blogging without having an actual domain of your own. One of the best examples is blogging on Medium. In this article, you read more about that.
2022 Calendar for Affiliates
Each quarter and season offers opportunities for selling seasonal products. This year is the first year after the pandemic that many old habits have come back: sports events, shopping events, and community gatherings.
- The busiest quarters of the year are yet ahead. Back-to-school is the summer's largest affiliate marketing opportunity. After the covid-19 pandemic, 2022 may be the first year schools are open globally.
- A month later, the most profitable quarter of the year begins with Halloween. Halloween is a time to play out fantasies, scare loved ones, and eat goodies.
- The Christmas season begins in November. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas shopping are seasonal events. Despite inflation and the pandemic, US Christmas retail sales rose 14.1% to $886.7 billion last year. Retail sales are expected to rise this year, despite inflation.
- This year is the largest sporting event yet. Qatar hosts the 2022 World Cup from November 21 to December 18. Affiliate marketers can advertise sports betting, jersey sales, travel services, and Qatari enterprises.
Now let's deep in the trendy tech tips to excel at affiliate marketing this year.
Improve User Experience
As we learn more about how consumers utilize digital assets, we can improve the user experience. UX (User Experience) is important for marketing campaigns. Knowing user pain spots and habits is crucial. How can you make leads act? How can you help clients go from A to B? How do you keep them using your products?
- Facilitate conversions. Remember when you had to fill out long forms to join a social network or buy a subscription? Unlikely. Successful companies make their call-to-action easy to follow.
- Explain how to buy your product on landing pages. The current trend is to add some motion to your landing page. Static landings are now obsolete. Even your CTA button should move. Such a simple act improves user experience since it aligns with user expectations and improves flow. Try to grab the users’ attention when they first visit your landing with a witty call to action.
- Simplify. Whenever possible, shorten your copy. Use photos and infographics, since a photo is worth a thousand words.
- Adaptability. Smooth device transitions are needed. Apple prioritizes desktop and mobile adaptability.
- Accessibility. This year, many websites and landing pages are making their pages more accessible to the rest of the people who have started using mobile phones for shopping ever since the pandemic started. Throughout these three years, marketers have perfected what we knew of user accessibility, and now are adding features for people with dyslexia, allowing users to increase/decrease font size to read better, and customize the way they shop.
Nobody can deny the power of a landing page that leaves a great impact on the first visit. Take advantage of user experience tips and improve your landing. You can even benefit from pre-landing pages and take this a step further.
Use AIs to Facilitate Your Advertisement
Some networks sell their campaign automation technology with corporate language. Simple. Marketing automation sends customer campaigns when triggered. Some affiliate networks offer tools to help advertisers run ads easier and longer using AI.Campaign Automations let you define dynamic paths for contacts and leads based on their activities. If a contact fills out a form, you can email them and see if they click Link A or Link B. Send Link A clickers Email A, Link B clickers Email B.Finding your most interested customers is another use case. AI will rank your subscribers, awarding points for opening emails or using products. Once they exceed a threshold, you'll be notified. Smarter computers and more complicated instructions make optimization easier. AI follows your guidelines to optimize smartly.
Benefit from A/B Testing to Increase Conversion Rates
A/B testing is user experience research. As the name implies, it compares A with B to identify the best. It helps affiliate marketers locate winning creative. An effective campaign involves maximizing CTR and CR.
Without A/B testing, marketers rely on intuition to construct landing sites, call-to-actions, text, etc. Think Amazon or Netflix execs get a light bulb when they improve their services? Think again.
After A/B testing, these companies make modifications. Netflix's customizable homepage was optimized after much testing. Users' streaming history and choices determine how many rows and which shows/movies appear on the homepage. You learn more about doing proper A/B testing to increase your conversions in this article.
Cookie-Less Advertising
2022 is the year we must adjust to cookieless marketing, as Google plans to remove third-party cookies by 2023. Google is not alone however and other companies and browsers have also taken initiative:
- Apple's Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) blocks known trackers' cookies.
- Firefox ETP prevents third-party and first-party tracking cookies.
- Chrome 80 makes it easier to block and remove third-party cookies.
With cookie limits, monitoring consumer marketing and advertising interactions is harder, but not impossible. So what are the alternatives?
- Fingerprints: Fingerprint tracking can be used to supplement first-party cookies and cookieless tracking. This method matches a consumer's ad interaction to a conversion, such as a request for more information, using attributes like the device or browser used. It helps ensure nothing falls between the cracks with your deterministic tracking approaches, especially for the cross-device user activity.
- Server-to-Server: "Server-to-server" demands an advanced marketing measurement technology that can issue a unique identification to an anonymous consumer's interaction. In place of a cookie, a click ID or session ID is stored on the server or in the advertiser's first-party cookie until conversion. That's when the unique ID is used to link the consumer's click on the ad to their conversion.
- Javascript SDK Tracking: This approach is a hybrid of cookie and cookieless tracking and utilizes the unique ID mentioned in option #1 and a JavaScript SDK (an HTML conversion pixel), instead of a Postback URL. Though this option is easier to implement than server-to-server tracking using Postback URLs, it still requires the use of a first-party session cookie which is susceptible to browser restrictions. Also, note that it requires that you place a click pixel on the landing page of an offer in addition to the conversion pixel (JSSDK) on the thank-you page.
Predictions and Reality: What Actually Pays Now
First off, let’s talk about some of the predictions, and then, let’s check what is already working now that we are halfway into 2022 to make use of the remaining 6 months.
Traffic Sources Predictions
One of the most common predictions about traffic sources in 2022 was that TikTok will become more and more popular and Instagram will start to become less effective in gathering an audience. This has proven to be true in most cases, since TikTok has already experienced huge growth in the number of users in Q1 and Q2 of 2022.
Niche Predictions
According to most experts, including the CEOs of ZeroPark, RichAds, Adsterra, AffLift, and RollersAds, 2022 is the year of thriving in the niche of cryptocurrency and DeFi, VPN promotions, and gambling (sports betting).
Considering the fact that the market has experienced a bearish trend over the past few months of 2022, this emphasis on the cryptocurrency industry profits must be looked at with caution. It is true that a lot of money is to be made here in this niche, but it’s also important not to let go of the usual and ever-green affiliate verticals, such as gambling (especially because of the sports events in 2022), VPN promos, and SaaS.
Payment Model Predictions
As mentioned by Luke Kling from AffLift, CPA models are going to become bigger and bigger this year. This is already apparent from all the networks trying to switch to or add options for Cost-per-Action payments.
CPA is very effective compared to other methods because you don’t have to put as much money into it, and you will only pay when it actually converts and makes you money on the network you are using as well. So models like CPM might become obsolete in specific cases where CPM just results better.
Conclusion
This year, 2022, is the perfect time to follow anything that is somehow related to technology. People are recovering from the pandemic isolation, events are coming back, and people have also gotten used to using smartphones and computers. The good thing about it is that all the things from the digital world have come together with all the things in the natural world to create the best era of human advancements. It is definitely your time to shine, so use the chance well.
