Millions of students start their studies in high school, colleges, and universities every year. Hundreds of thousands of them will resort to research paper writing services at one point or another. Such services offer to write any kind of academic paper, such as an essay, coursework, or dissertation, on time and according to all the possible requirements for a reasonable price. The main audience is working students and non-native English-speakers who struggle with producing quality essays and papers.

Affiliate network Edu-Money was launched back in 2016 with a single purpose in mind: to monetize student traffic. It enables webmasters and affiliates to earn money by attracting high school and university students to its in-house offers based on RevShare and CPL. So, the demand for such services is high, and there are authors willing to write quality research papers. Now, let’s discuss the characteristic features and nuances of the niche.

Niche specifics 

The target audience is high school, college, and university students. Webmasters should focus on those who don’t have enough time to study, are unable to understand the academic subject matter, lack English-language skills, or are simply too lazy to write lengthy papers. The age group is mostly 18 to 24 and 25 to 34 years. As for the gender of the target audience, they are 50% male and 50% female.

The education niche is seasonal. There are two high seasons in an academic year: the spring — from mid-February to early June, and the fall — from mid-September to mid-December. In the middle of the schooling year, students usually order shorter academic works such as essays, research papers, and term papers. When the demand for essays falls down, students start ordering more labor-intensive papers, such as dissertations, theses, Capstone projects or projects on a business history of brewing in America (the last one is a real order). Such papers are lengthier and therefore, more costly. They are enjoying increased popularity among students in the off-season.

Before moving on to advertising models, we would like to focus on traffic sources. The most profitable ones are Google Ads, SEO, and doorways.

The RevShare model

In a RevShare deal, a webmaster gets a percentage of sales from traffic they refer to a site. This model allows you to earn a commission on all sales and rebills for life.

The potential to get an ongoing passive income from every sale is one of the strongest arguments in favor of RevShare. When the user you have sent registers on the platform, they get attached to you automatically, and you don’t have to worry about cookies. From now on, you will get a commission from every purchase made by the referred customer. Your RevShare percentage will account for over 50% for the first order placed by your user. This makes customer retention the main objective of the platform.

A great thing would be to attract a client who will start reselling research paper writing services through their account, i.e. a broker. Such users can generate up to 300 orders a month. 

As compared to CPL, it is more difficult to calculate your potential RevShare income. There are too many variables that can affect traffic quality, but this is outweighed by the opportunity to earn a passive income for several years in a row.

Another plus point is that this model accepts all traffic types from all GEOs, which gives you more room for maneuver and allows you to reduce your traffic costs.

The education niche is rather competitive, and webmasters often redirect traffic from review sites. Such resources review different education services to develop the website’s semantics and drive SEO traffic to larger brands. Moreover, you can attract target traffic from small blogs focusing on a particular subject matter, GEO, or audience. Another factor you should also pay attention to is optimization of key search queries. Informational queries (how to?) produce a lower conversion rate than transactional ones (buy, order). Below, you will find analytics from one of Edu-Money partners who runs SEO traffic.

Here are the stats from one of Edu-Money partners working with doorways.

The CPL model 

CPL is a pricing model in which the advertiser pays a fixed price for each lead generated. Once the user signs up on the website, an affiliate will get their commission provided that all traffic source requirements have been met. These can vary from filling in 10 form fields with correct data only or just gathering emails. So, this pricing model implies that you earn for collecting certain data, while all the rest is done by an affiliate network. There are two types of CPL offers: SOI and DOI.

SOI (single opt-in)

The user doesn’t need to verify their email address after they sign up, and so the lead quality can suffer. However, many affiliate networks still use this advertising model to simplify the sign-up funnel. 

DOI (double opt-in) 

The user must confirm their email address once they sign up on the platform. On the affiliate network side, this model is more reliable. However, it adds more steps to the funnel. In this advertising model, the user has to perform two target actions instead of one for it to qualify as a conversion.

NB: When working with CPL offers, be sure to test out your landing pages. The users are only going to share their contact information when they see your landing page as trustworthy. It is a must to use sub_ids to find the one that will produce the highest conversion rate. This will allow you to optimize your campaign and make the most out of your traffic. Below is an example of a pre-lander provided by the affiliate network to help you get your campaign approved by social media platforms.

Paid advertising, such as contextual, social, and email traffic is a perfect match for CPL offers. To work with such traffic sources, you need to accurately calculate your profitability and get commissions quickly to reinvest the money into your campaigns. As for contextual advertising, note that the essay niche belongs to the grey area of online advertising. To make money successfully, it is necessary to cloak your ad campaigns.

Also, the CPL model is a great option for those who are only starting in the essay niche, as it allows affiliates to check traffic quality and calculate possible earnings. As opposed to RevShare, you will get your payout after a short hold period depending on your traffic quality.

One of Edu-Money partners shared their stats on Facebook traffic (the cost per lead is $15).

Conclusions 

The growth of the research paper market is attributed to an ever-increasing number of students among both younger and older people studying for their second degree. This is evidenced by a longer high season, the increased percentage of foreign students in the most popular GEO in the niche (USA) and Google Trends graphs. One of these is given below.

One of the highest EPCs among such traditional niches as gambling, pharma products, dating, and microfinance — almost $9 for all the time — also confirms the profitability of the vertical.

So, the only thing left to do is choose the right pricing model. If you struggle at doing it, we recommend splitting your traffic.

If you need more data or promo materials, you can always reach out to the support team. The guys will be happy to provide you with detailed information by country, university, and research paper types.

If you want to step up your game in the education niche, you can sign up here to start making money!