6 Affiliate Marketing Opportunities for 2022: Where the Money Actually Is

If you feel like you missed the TikTok wave, the YouTube Shorts wave, or any other platform that blew up before you had a chance to act, this post is for you. Affiliate marketer and internet entrepreneur Alston Godbolt laid out the six affiliate marketing opportunities he saw coming for 2022, and a few of them were hiding in plain sight.

Most people wait until an opportunity is already saturated before they decide to try it. What follows is a breakdown of exactly which platforms and strategies were worth betting on heading into 2022, and why getting in early on even one of them can change your income trajectory completely.

What You’ll Walk Out With

A clear look at six specific affiliate marketing opportunities heading into 2022
Why the metaverse, including metaverse ETFs, was worth watching even for non-crypto people
How to get in on Facebook Reels before the rest of the internet catches on
The right way to ride trending topics without spamming affiliate links everywhere
Why Pinterest Video Pins rank on Google and what that means for your traffic
How YouTube still lets you rank on both YouTube and Google for the same content
Why leaving room for the unknown may be the most profitable mindset shift you can make
Not sure which opportunity fits your skills? Find out free at finder.platformproof.com

Opportunity 1: The Metaverse

Alston named the metaverse as his top affiliate marketing opportunity heading into 2022, and he was not just talking about buying speculative virtual land. He laid out several concrete entry points for affiliate marketers, from creating content on platforms like Fiverr around metaverse-related skills to buying and promoting digital properties in virtual worlds like The Sandbox.

The approach Alston was personally researching at the time was metaverse ETFs, exchange-traded funds that track companies involved in building the metaverse. His reasoning was straightforward: stocks have been around forever and are specifically designed as wealth-building tools. While most people were chasing individual cryptocurrencies and altcoins, ETFs offered lower volatility exposure to metaverse growth without needing to become an expert in Bitcoin or any specific altcoin.

For affiliate marketers, the metaverse created content opportunities precisely because almost no one understood it yet. That gap between public confusion and actual utility is historically where affiliate marketers make the most money. If you can explain a new concept clearly, recommend tools or platforms that help people engage with it, and rank for search terms that have low competition but rising volume, you capture an audience before the established players do.

Alston covered this in more depth in a separate video uploaded the prior week, which walked through creating content on Fiverr around metaverse design and 3D skills, buying plots in virtual world platforms, and doing affiliate marketing within those digital property environments. The opportunity was wide open precisely because the mainstream had not yet decided what the metaverse even was. That kind of definitional uncertainty is where early movers win.

The core lesson from opportunity one is not about the metaverse specifically. It is about recognizing when a new category is forming and getting your content, your channel, or your recommendations in front of curious people before competition arrives. The metaverse was that category in 2022.

Opportunity 2: Facebook Reels

At the time Alston recorded this video, Facebook Reels was Facebook’s direct answer to Instagram Reels, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts. And almost nobody was talking about it. That combination of a platform actively pushing short-form video with almost no native creator content yet is exactly the kind of gap worth acting on.

The practical reality was striking. The only content showing up in the Facebook Reels feed at the time was cross-posted from Instagram. That means the native Facebook Reels feed was essentially empty from a creator standpoint. Getting in early meant the algorithm had very few creators competing for views in any given niche, which translates directly into faster growth for anyone willing to start publishing.

Alston also pointed to a practical advantage that Facebook Reels had over TikTok at that moment: fewer content restrictions. A significant number of TikTok creators were being shadow-banned or removed from the platform entirely, often with no clear explanation or meaningful appeal process. Facebook, with billions of active users already on the platform, did not have those same limitations in place for Reels content.

The audience size on Facebook also matters. TikTok skews younger. Instagram has a narrower demographic core. Facebook still spans nearly every adult age group in the United States and internationally. If your affiliate niche targets adults with purchasing power, the audience is already there. You just needed to be creating content in a format Facebook was actively promoting over others in the feed.

For affiliate marketers, the play was simple: if your target audience lives on Facebook, Facebook Reels gave you a way to reach them through short-form video without the fierce competition that already existed on TikTok or Instagram. You start creating now, while the feed is quiet, before thousands of other creators in your niche figure out the same thing.

Opportunity 3: Trending Topics

Trending topics as an affiliate strategy can sound vague, but Alston broke it into something very actionable. There are two distinct types of trending topics worth building a strategy around: the predictable ones and the unexpected ones. Both have real income potential, but they require different approaches.

Predictable trends are holidays and recurring seasonal events. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Black Friday, Valentine’s Day, Flag Day, every holiday that repeats on the same calendar every year. These happen on a completely knowable schedule, which means you can plan and publish affiliate content weeks or months in advance of the peak. Alston’s tool of choice for this was Google Trends at trends.google.com, which shows exactly when search volume for seasonal topics starts climbing each year.

You do not have to guess the timing. You look at the historical trend for “Christmas gift ideas for men,” see that searches start rising in early October, and you publish your affiliate content in September. You arrive before the audience does, which is how you capture traffic before the competition heats up and pushes your content off the first page.

Unexpected trends are harder to plan for but can be more explosive. Something goes viral on TikTok or Twitter, millions of people start searching for information about it within hours, and the affiliate marketer who shows up first with genuinely useful content can ride a wave of traffic that lasts weeks or months if the topic has search depth. Monitoring Twitter’s trending section and TikTok’s discover tab daily gives you a live pulse on what is starting to break through.

Alston was direct about the right approach to trending topic content: do not just blast affiliate links at hashtags. That gets you ignored at best and reported as spam at worst. The better path is to actually become part of the conversation. Use the trending hashtags. Reply to other people’s posts. Answer questions that people are already asking. Solve problems in the comments. Then, roughly one out of every five to ten posts you put out, include an affiliate link naturally within a piece of content that is already worth engaging with. That ratio keeps you credible while still allowing you to monetize the attention you are generating.

Opportunity 4: Pinterest Video Pins

Pinterest is not just a social platform. It is a search engine, and that distinction matters enormously for affiliate marketers. People come to Pinterest the same way they come to Google: with a problem they want to solve or a decision they are trying to make. They are actively looking for ideas, products, tutorials, and recommendations. That is the exact intent state you want your content in front of.

Video Pins specifically were getting a major algorithmic push from Pinterest at the time of this video. Static pins were losing engagement across the platform, and Pinterest was responding by giving video content more visibility in feeds and search results. That shift meant video pins were getting more reach than static images for the same keyword, which is a significant advantage for anyone willing to create video content.

The demographic on Pinterest is also worth understanding before you dismiss it. Pinterest users tend to have higher household incomes than average. When you are promoting products or services with meaningful price points, that demographic matters. Someone actively researching home renovation, wellness routines, or professional tools is more likely to follow through on a purchase recommendation than someone passively scrolling entertainment content.

Pinterest content also has the ability to rank in Google’s main search results because Pinterest’s domain authority is extremely high. You create a video pin targeting the right keyword, and it can appear not just in Pinterest searches but in standard Google results alongside written articles. That is two separate traffic sources from a single piece of content, which makes the effort-to-return ratio on Pinterest unusually good.

On the production side, Pinterest video pins do not require you to appear on camera. Alston mentioned Canva specifically as one of his favorite tools for creating screen-based video content. You can build animated slides, record a screen tutorial, or point your phone at your computer screen while walking through a product demonstration. None of those formats require a recognizable face, which removes one of the biggest barriers people cite for not starting video content.

One important best practice Alston shared: do not send Pinterest traffic directly to an affiliate offer. Instead, funnel people to your blog, your YouTube channel, or a landing page you own and control. If you lose the ability to promote a particular product, or the affiliate program updates its terms, hunting down every pin that points directly to a dead affiliate link becomes an enormous problem. Funneling through your own properties first means you can update one destination and every pin keeps working.

Not sure which of these six opportunities fits where you are right now?

Answer a few questions and get a personalized recommendation free at finder.platformproof.com.

Opportunity 5: YouTube

YouTube was not new in 2022, but Alston made a strong case that it was still one of the best affiliate marketing platforms available, specifically because of how deeply it integrates with Google. Google owns YouTube, and Google has been surfacing YouTube videos in standard search results for years. A well-optimized YouTube video can rank in Google’s main search results alongside written articles, and sometimes above them. That means one video can generate traffic from two separate search engines simultaneously.

YouTube had also proven that it could evolve with the market. The launch of YouTube Shorts was a direct response to TikTok’s growth, and it showed that the platform was actively investing in keeping creators and viewers on site through format innovation. For affiliate marketers, that matters because it means YouTube is not a legacy platform coasting on existing traffic. It is actively growing and adapting to where attention is moving.

The income streams available through a YouTube channel are also broader than most people realize when they are starting out. Beyond the YouTube Partner Program, which pays ad revenue after you reach 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in the past 12 months, Alston listed affiliate marketing, selling physical products, selling digital products, and group coaching as all viable income streams on the same channel. You do not have to pick one. A well-built YouTube channel can layer all of them over time.

Alston was direct that the key to YouTube working long term is doing it ethically and morally. That means creating content that genuinely helps people, being transparent about affiliate relationships, and building an audience that actually chooses to follow you because your content delivers real value. Channels built on that foundation tend to compound over time. They earn search rankings, recommendations from the algorithm, and subscriber loyalty that turns into consistent monthly income rather than spiky traffic from a single viral video.

Opportunity 6: The Unknown

This one is not a specific platform. It is a mindset, and Alston included it intentionally because he believed it was just as important as the five named opportunities above.

Nobody predicted TikTok. Nobody had the metaverse on their mainstream radar two years before it became a household word. Nobody had Bitcoin on their radar as a legitimate financial asset until it suddenly was one. These things emerged from outside the expected conversation and created enormous opportunities for the early movers who were watching and willing to act before most people understood what was happening.

Alston’s point was honest: in 2022, something was going to come out of left field and sweep the world, just like TikTok had done a year or two earlier. He did not know what it would be. He was transparent about that. But he was clear that the people who would benefit from it most would be the ones who had trained themselves to watch for early signals and act before the opportunity was confirmed and therefore crowded.

For affiliate marketers, staying open to the unknown is actually a core professional skill. Every platform that is now saturated was once open territory. Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok: each of them had a window where showing up consistently with useful content produced outsized returns because the competition had not arrived yet. The question is whether you will catch the next one early or look back two years from now and say you should have jumped when you first heard about it.

Alston’s advice on this was direct: do not dismiss something just because it looks like a fad at first glance. Maybe it is. But give it a real test before you write it off. The cost of trying a new platform for 30 focused days is low. The cost of missing the next major platform entirely, because you decided it was probably just a fad, is much higher.

Honest Drawbacks Worth Knowing

These six opportunities are real, but they each come with honest tradeoffs that are worth understanding before you commit to any one of them.

The metaverse opportunity required you to stay informed about a rapidly evolving space. ETFs are lower risk than individual crypto positions, but they are still market investments that can lose value. Creating affiliate content around metaverse topics worked best if you could explain the concepts clearly, which required ongoing research as the space shifted quickly and the definition of what the metaverse even was kept changing.

Facebook Reels had the low-competition advantage, but that also meant there was limited data on what formats and content styles worked best. You were experimenting without a well-established playbook. Organic reach on Facebook also is not guaranteed to your existing followers because of how the platform’s feed algorithm has prioritized content for years.

Trending topics require speed and consistent attention. You have to monitor platforms daily, sometimes multiple times per day, to catch something while the wave is still building. That pace does not work for everyone, and jumping on a trend that turns out to be sensitive or controversial without thinking it through can damage your credibility quickly if you misread the context.

Pinterest Video Pins build slowly. Unlike TikTok or YouTube Shorts where a single video can go wide within 24 hours, Pinterest is a slow-burn traffic source. It rewards consistency over months rather than overnight momentum. If you need fast results to stay motivated, Pinterest might frustrate you before it starts paying off in any meaningful way.

YouTube has a real upfront investment in time before it generates income. The Partner Program requires 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in the past 12 months. Building a YouTube channel from zero typically takes six months to over a year before you see meaningful monetization results. The long-term payoff can be substantial and compounding, but you need to be prepared for the runway.

And the unknown opportunity, by definition, requires a genuine tolerance for ambiguity and some risk. You will not know if the next big thing is actually the next big thing until after it already is, at which point some of the early-mover advantage is already gone. Acting early on the unknown means acting before you have certainty, which is uncomfortable for most people and requires a willingness to be wrong sometimes.

Find Your X

Six opportunities is a lot to choose from, and the right one for you depends heavily on where you are starting from, what skills you already have, and how you prefer to spend your time creating content. Someone who is comfortable on camera might go straight to YouTube or Facebook Reels. Someone who prefers research and writing might find Pinterest Video Pins and trending topics to be a more natural fit. A person with existing knowledge of financial markets might focus on the metaverse ETF and investment content angle.

If you want a clearer answer about which of these paths actually fits your specific situation, take the free quiz at finder.platformproof.com. It walks you through a few targeted questions about your skills, available time, and income goals, and gives you a personalized starting recommendation so you do not have to figure that out alone.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is affiliate marketing still worth starting in 2022?

Yes, but the platforms and strategies that produce results keep shifting. The underlying opportunity is real and not going away, but you have to match the platform to your audience and your skills rather than defaulting to whatever platform happened to be popular three years ago. Getting into an emerging platform early, the way Facebook Reels was early at this point in time, gives you a competitive advantage that shrinks the longer you wait.

How long does it take to make money with Pinterest Video Pins?

Pinterest traffic typically builds over weeks and months rather than days. Video pins optimized for the right keywords can start appearing in Pinterest search results within a few weeks, but compounding traffic results usually take three to six months of consistent publishing before you see meaningful numbers. The trade-off for the slower ramp is that Pinterest content has a much longer shelf life than posts on most social platforms, where content disappears from feeds within hours.

Do I need to show my face for Facebook Reels or Pinterest Video Pins?

No. Alston specifically mentioned Canva and screen recording as ways to create video content without appearing on camera. Canva lets you build animated slides and visual explainers. Pointing your phone at your computer screen while demonstrating a tool or process is another option. Both Facebook Reels and Pinterest reward useful, watchable content rather than requiring a recognizable personality in front of the camera.

Why should I link Pinterest pins to my blog or YouTube channel instead of directly to an affiliate offer?

Because affiliate offers change. Products get discontinued, programs update their commission terms, and direct affiliate links expire or get replaced. If you have pinned directly to an offer and that link goes dead, you may have dozens or hundreds of pins sending traffic to a broken destination with no easy way to fix them all. By routing traffic through your own blog or channel first, you can update the destination in one place and every pin continues working correctly.

How often can I include affiliate links in trending topic content without coming across as spammy?

Alston’s ratio was one in every five to ten posts. At that frequency, you are genuinely contributing to the conversation the majority of the time, which builds the kind of trust that makes people actually click your links when they do appear. Exceeding that ratio consistently, promoting on every other post for example, tends to erode credibility and can trigger platform filters that reduce the visibility of promotional content.

What tools can I use to find predictable trending topics before they peak?

Google Trends at trends.google.com is the primary tool Alston recommended for seasonal content planning. You can look up any holiday, recurring event, or product category and see exactly when search volume historically starts climbing each year, which tells you when to start publishing. For real-time trend monitoring, checking Twitter’s trending section and TikTok’s discover tab regularly gives you a live signal on what is starting to get traction before it has already peaked.

Can YouTube content really rank in Google search results?

Yes. Google owns YouTube and has been surfacing YouTube videos in standard search results for years. A well-optimized video targeting the right keyword can appear in Google’s main results alongside written articles, and in some cases above them, particularly for how-to and tutorial queries. This effectively gives you traffic from two separate search engines from a single piece of content, which is one of the strongest arguments for YouTube as a long-term affiliate marketing platform.

How do I know if a new platform is worth my time or just a short-term fad?

Honestly, you often cannot know with certainty until it either takes off or fizzles out. What you can do is limit your test investment. Give a new platform 30 days of genuine, consistent effort before deciding whether to lean in or move on. Track your engagement numbers and any traffic signals carefully. If you see organic growth in the early weeks, that is a signal to keep going. If nothing is moving after a real commitment of effort, document what you learned and redirect your time to something with more traction.

Sources

Alston Godbolt, “Affiliate Marketing Opportunities 2022 – 6 Opportunities For Passive Income in 2022” (YouTube, 2022)
Google Trends: trends.google.com
Canva visual design tool: canva.com
The Sandbox metaverse platform: sandbox.game
Pinterest for Creators: business.pinterest.com