What is an Essay, and How to Work With It?

Hello, community! In affiliate marketing, there are specific verticals characterized by their seasonality. On one hand, this deters affiliates who are accustomed to stability. On the other, the seasonality is compensated by higher payouts, which are certainly worth taking advantage of.

Today we’ll discuss a purely seasonal niche – the essay vertical. But before we start, we recommend that you familiarize yourself with another highly profitable vertical – nutra. We wrote about it here. Enjoy reading!

What is the Essay Vertical?

Some of the most profitable niches in affiliate marketing are those that appeal to human weaknesses. Gambling is based on the thrill of the game, allowing us to earn significant money by directing people who are eager for easy money. Nutra targets those who are extremely concerned about their appearance or even have certain complexes, ranging from baldness to small genital size.

The Essay niche also relies on a human weakness – laziness. Essay, or academic writing services, is a niche where affiliates need to drive traffic to specialized resources that handle the creation of scholarly, academic, or simply educational works, from simple essays to theses and dissertations.

Our main partners are mostly exchanges or even individual freelancers and educators who are happy to share their profit with us if we bring them clients. And we’re talking about substantial money, especially if it involves doctoral theses.

In terms of traffic monetization, you can encounter various models. The majority of offers pay traffic based on the CPA model. However, we recommend focusing on those that operate on a RevShare basis. After all, schooling or university is a long-term process. Thus, this model allows us to profit over a longer distance, making our campaign expenditures more liquid. We’re here for that, right?

Features of Working with the Essay Vertical

One of the key features is its conditional seasonality. Conditional because this term best describes what happens in the niche. Digging deeper, we see an uneven distribution of activity, not always directly tied to a specific season (although, inevitably, it depends on it, as the peak period is during the submission of final papers in higher education institutions and a certain period before it).

In terms of competition, it’s not as bad here as in other verticals. The advertising platforms’ attitude towards the niche is tolerant. So it’s safe to say that the essay service is a good choice for beginners in affiliate marketing.

This is also evidenced by the lack of need to puzzle over targeting. Here everything is more or less obvious. Our client is a young person, aged 17-25 years (sometimes older), who has finished school and enrolled in a higher education institution. However, even older people, who are obtaining a second education and doing it externally, are also our clients. Such individuals often don’t have enough time to write papers, so they opt to outsource, so to speak.

There are many GEOs that offer high conversion. But it’s important to understand how the educational sector works in each country. Especially if you’re trying to drive traffic from the United States market, where the system works differently than in European countries.

Even in Ukraine, the essay service can show good profit. So if you don’t know how to start working with the vertical, try to make connections with our market. This will allow you to gain initial experience.

Which Offers Will We Work With?

We’ve already emphasized that our key product is educational works of any category: from small essays or even homework assignments for schoolchildren, to scientific works required for dissertation defense. The complexity of the work directly affects its cost, and accordingly, our profit as well.

The main advertisers are both studios that professionally create scientific works and individual freelancers, teachers, tutors, etc. Almost everyone who can and has a knack for writing scientific works sooner or later wants to monetize this skill, and the best way to do this is by collaborating with affiliates who will find them clients. Indeed, these categories of advertisers will create offers for us.

The offers can be:

1. Course papers, which traditionally show the highest conversion. This is logical because they are in high demand, and the cost of writing a course paper is much lower than that of theses or dissertations. Moreover, course papers also involve rebills, as students have to submit them every year;
2. Theses and dissertations. While the latter are quite rare orders, the former are much more popular. However, it should be understood that a thesis is defended once or twice during the period of study, so the RevShare profit here will be significantly less, and it would be better to focus on CPA.
3. School works. This is a broad category that can include almost any school project: from small reports to retellings. The prices are not high, but this is compensated by high demand. Moreover, this category is not as seasonal as, for example, course papers, which become relevant only once a year.  
4. Services of tutors are not so common. The CLV of one lead here will be the largest, as the life cycle is longer. Thus, RevShare is the most optimal choice here.

In general, these are all the key categories. However, you might encounter more niche offers that can also demonstrate high profit. So, carefully study the offers in thematic affiliate networks.

How and Where to Drive Traffic?

Choosing the best traffic source should be based on the target audience. In the same way, we choose the direction of information delivery and creatives.

So, we have a target audience of young people who are studying in higher education institutions and most likely do not have time for studying or are unsure of their abilities and opt for outsourcing. It should be understood that they probably do not have much money, so in your campaigns, you can compare prices, emphasizing that your option is the most budget-friendly on the market.

Using memes is also an opportunity to boost CR and draw attention to the offer.

As for the direct sources, we focus on social networks:

• Facebook. Widely used by many students, mostly because here communication with older teachers, who have not yet mastered messengers like Telegram, takes place;
• Instagram. One of the most popular social networks actively used by the majority of young people;
• X (formerly Twitter). Mostly, this platform houses a more thoughtful audience (or those who consider themselves to be “more thoughtful”). Therefore, the conversion here is not that high, but ignoring this platform is still not advisable;
• TikTok. Currently, almost the most effective source to attract the TA we are dealing with;
• Discord. As we have already written about this traffic source. It also hosts a young audience, who due to playing Dota may not have time to prepare their course papers and theses, so these are our clients.

We also use ad networks. Teaser and targeted advertising are our helpers that will allow us to easily reach the TA. But the most important thing here is to do a quality job on the campaign, paying attention to the creatives, so you can reach your goal.

Search, or SEO traffic – a benchmark source, which although requires significant investment, will give you almost the highest conversion.

What you should not use are aggressive advertising tools. For example, pop-unders and other similar formats do not work in the essay service. No matter which GEO you work with. Therefore, it is better to spend the budget on more quality networks that will allow you not only to recoup costs but also to earn.

How Much Can You Earn in the Essay Vertical?

Your earnings will directly depend on how much the client pays for the work. The highest prices, of course, are in the West.

To specify this question, we suggest you familiarize yourself with the prices of EssayEdge – a fairly popular service that offers to prepare various student works for a fee.

Pay special attention not to the price from which the cost of work starts but a little below, where the terms of pricing are.

EssayEdge pays 10% of sales to its partners. Accordingly, on average, one conversion will bring us $15-20.

Of course, in Tier-2 and Tier-3 countries, we will not see such prices because then no one would buy those works. However, this will not prevent you from reaching high profit, as the smaller volume of commissions will be compensated by a larger number of leads. After all, in these GEOs, conversion and the demand for the essay service in general are much higher.

Conclusion

Well, it’s time to summarize. The Essay vertical is a cool niche that can even be recommended to beginner affiliates. Certainly, there are some difficulties here as well. But due to less significant competition, the absence of a need for cloaking, creating farms, and other complexities of our trade, the essay service allows you to work out the first budget and the first connections, to gain profit, and not to get banned during moderation. And that’s already a success!

In terms of prospects, students will always need help preparing their final papers. After all, young people are not only about studying but also about a vibrant life, which sometimes leaves no time for course papers and theses. Add to this laziness, which will never go anywhere. That’s why the essay service will work for a very long time, so it’s never too late to join the vertical.

What do you think about the essay service in terms of potential profit, working conditions, prospects? Have you worked with it? Share your experience in our Telegram community.

Respectfully, Your Geek!

What is an essay service, how to work with it FAQs