Now it’s time to talk about verticals in affiliate marketing.
First of all, let’s define what vertical is. In affiliate marketing vertical is an industry or a niche to which the offer belongs. From e-commerce and legal to crypto and gambling, affiliate marketing covers most industries in the today’s world.
Below you can find definitions of the most common affiliate verticals.
Crypto and Forex affiliate programs
This vertical contains Crypto Investment, Exchanges, Forex and Binary trading platforms. As one of the most high-paying affiliate programs, Crypto and Forex vertical is a highly-competitive niche where one CPA conversion can bring up to $1300 and even more. Sounds like a fairy tale, but keep in mind that it is not about spending $10 per conversion, and the whole process of promotion of such offers is one of the hardest on the market. Affiliates face restrictions that must be circumvented, high traffic costs, and not even risks, but facts that bans are unavoidable.
This is why many partners team up, dividing up the responsibilities of each step between them. Someone prepares and warms up accounts, the other guy takes ads launch activities, and the third works on creatives, finance, etc.
Anyway, high profits bring high risk, but the tendency is that amount of crypto and forex affiliates increases every year.
Nutra & Beauty affiliate programs
This vertical contains an impressive amount of different goods and services, such as weight loss, skin care, blood pressure, pain relief, male and female enhancements, anti-parasite solutions, joint supplements, diet plans, and much more! You can bet that it is possible to find an affiliate offer covering almost any health or mental problem. Nutra affiliate programs are most commonly available in CPA, COD, and CPS variations.
Dating affiliate programs
Dating is considered one of the oldest verticals in online affiliate marketing. From mainstream dating to webcams and adult websites, this vertical covers services that are in high demand online. The most popular model for dating offers is CPL (both SOI and DOI), but there are CPA deals too.
Also, it is quite popular among affiliates to use dating smartlinks. These are special links, that contain dozens of offers covering wide GEOs simultaneously. The link understands the GEO of the user and sends to the appropriate offer. Such an approach helps to monetize several GEOs and send traffic in bulk.
Sweepstakes affiliate programs
The sweepstakes vertical is one of the most popular verticals among rookies in affiliate marketing. The main idea of a sweepstake is that lead needs to fill out a sign-up form to take part in a giveaway. For example, it may be a travel voucher, gift card, TV, or another valuable prize. Mainly there are several types of sweepstakes:
SOI - a single opt in. Users need to fill out a form with contact details, including email address.
DOI - double opt in. Quite the same story, but additionally a lead needs to verify the email address.
CC Trial - additionally user fills in credit card info, but no payments will be charged during the free trial period. The duration of the trial period is around 7-14 days. At the end of this period, the user will be charged unless they cancel their subscription by then.
СС submit - the user must enter their credit card details on the form and will be charged a small amount immediately after completing the form.
Finance & Legal affiliate programs
In this article, we’ve decided to unite Finance and Legal affiliate offers into one vertical. This solid vertical contains almost any offer model such as CPA, CPL, PPC, and Revenue Share. These may be Loans or microloans (personal, business, payday, mortgage), Credit/Debit cards issue or other banking services, Legal services (divorce, bankruptcy, mass trials), or Insurance (personal, home, pets). Considering the jurisdictions of banks and other financial institutes, there are pretty strict offer requirements and restrictions. For example, in some countries, you can promote offers only within several regions, your traffic should keep KPIs, or unavailability of certain keywords.
Anyway, Finance and Legal is a popular and high-paying affiliate vertical.
Gambling affiliate programs
It is no exaggeration to say that there are millions of online gambling addicts in the world. This allows affiliates to make some really impressive money in this niche. The most common types of offers are casinos, betting sites and lotteries, and the most popular models are CPA, CPL, and Revenue Share. Although CPA payout sizes in this vertical are quite impressive, affiliates with quality traffic often prefer the Revenue Share model. However, it is worth voicing some specific features here (they do not apply to all Offers, conditions may vary). Let's take a revenue share bookmaker's offer as an example. Each lost bet from your traffic will bring you a plus conversion by some certain percentage of the amount lost. However, you will get a minus conversion if the lead wins the bet. This fact may put many people off, but you and I know very well that casinos and betting houses are always on the winning side. A winning bet encourages the player to bet even more and more often, which, in the end, will lead to losses. In addition, an important advantage is that the commission from the players will go to the affiliate for a lifetime.
Astrology affiliate programs
We're willing to bet that every reader knows someone who believes in astrology, fortune-telling, and psychics. Some people simply cannot make any major decision without the help of psychics and predictions. Although the astrology vertical doesn't get a lot of media coverage, it is a lucrative and competitive vertical that allows you to monetize traffic from all over the world. The most common offer models are CPA and IVR.
E-commerce affiliate programs
E-commerce has long been an everyday part of modern life. Hundreds of thousands of products are available online, allowing you to shop from the comfort of your own home. In short, this vertical is about promoting online shops or products. You can work with local online shops as well as global giants such as Dior, Gucci, Nike, Adidas, etc. Most of the time, the offers are represented by a revenue share model. If with small shops you can get a decent percentage of sales, with global brands you have to make do with a lower percentage. Nevertheless, you will be selling branded goods that are popular all over the world.
Software affiliate programs
From browsers to VPNs and anti-viruses, the software vertical offers great CPA and CPI affiliate offers. The great thing about these offers is the huge number of potential customers out there. This, in turn, makes targeting easier. Tip: Don't target older people.
Thank you for reading to the end. You now know the most common verticals in affiliate marketing.
Stay tuned for more updates!