Dating vertical in affiliate marketing ⚡️
Dating in affiliate marketing is one of the affiliate marketing verticals for making money. Monetization occurs through subscriptions, registrations, or other targeted user actions on dating sites, applications, and services. A huge plus of the vertical is that seasonality does not affect people’s needs for communication, building romantic relationships, sex, and creating a family.
In 2021, more than 65 million people used paid dating resources. According to a study by Statista, by 2027, the number of paid online dating users is expected to reach 85.7 million.
Research and forecast by Statista on the dating vertical
Dating site revenue is also growing annually, from $2.8 billion in 2021 to $2.86 in 2022, and is expected to rise to $3.41 billion by 2027.
Since dating services are so in demand among users and very profitable for advertisers, the vertical is suitable for beginners to work. To drive to mainstream offers, there is no need to master the technical side of cloaking and other methods of bypassing moderation. Having filled your hand, you can switch to more profitable and difficult-to-launch adult offers.
Payment models in dating 💵
Dating affiliates offer several payment models:
- PPL – Pay Per Lead. This model is divided into two types: SOI (Single Opt In) – payment for a single simple user action, for example, for registration, and DOI (Double Opt-In) – payment for two actions, for example, registration and confirmation of e-mail or registration and confirmation of the number phone via SMS. The DOI model requires more effort and time from the user but is paid higher than SOI.
- PPS – Pay Per Sale. For example, a user must buy a paid subscription or a premium account on a dating site.
- RevShare is a payment model in which the affiliate pays a certain percentage of the affiliate’s earnings from the user for a set period. For example, the affiliate receives money whenever a user renews a subscription or purchases an additional service.
The image below shows two offers. One has an SOI payment model, meaning the advertiser will pay for a simple targeted action (registrations). The second offer has a DOI payment model; the user will need confirmation by e-mail or SMS. Creatives, calls to action, and the funnel needs to be thought out based on the required target action from the offer.
Examples of SOI and DOI offers
Traffic sources 💰
To work with dating, you can use free and paid sources. Social networks, ad networks, contextual advertising, UAC, and SEO are considered effective sources.
Social networks
The most popular dating traffic affiliate marketing sources are Facebook and Tik Tok:
- Facebook has opportunities for narrow targeting, optimization tools, and analytics of advertising campaigns giving access to a broad audience in all geos. This social network is characterized by strict moderation, so many dating and adult offers will need cloaking to promote.
- TikTok is a source where the competition is lower than on Facebook, moderation is not as strict. A network of accounts of beautiful girls is being created on TikTok, subscribers are growing, likes, comments, and profiles are displayed in recommendations. To make accounts live longer, the link in the profile description leads to pre-landing. It can be an Instagram account, Telegram channel, website, pre-landing, or app.
To work with social networks, you need several accounts to scale the campaign and diversify the risks of blocking. When one account is blocked, there is no downtime in traffic: the rest of the profiles work.
Advertising networks
Ad networks offer several suitable ad formats for dating:
- Push notifications or pushes. The effectiveness is since pop-up notifications imitate messages in instant messengers and live communication. The user has a trigger that a real girl writes to him, whom he wants to answer.
- Teasers. The source of inexpensive traffic is easy to set up and has a high degree of moderation loyalty.
- Popunders, pops, clickanders. They show a good conversion, as the user sees them on thematic entertainment sites and is set to search for pleasure.
- Native advertising. The format helps to avoid “banner blindness” of users, can bypass ad blockers, and has viral potential.
When working with grids, you need to set the bid – the cost per click correctly. This determines the effectiveness of the advertising campaign. The cost per click affects the number of clicks and on which sites the ad will be shown.
Examples of different advertising formats in the advertising network for dating and adult Exoclick
Contextual advertising 🤑
You can merge traffic using Google Ads contextual advertising. Traffic from contextual advertising is valued by many affiliate programs. To work, you will need tools similar to the one needed for Facebook: cloaking, accounts, and maps. Preparing and warming up accounts needs to be streamlined, as Google moderator robots ban them pretty quickly. To successfully pass moderation, you need the most white trusted pre-lander with a first-level domain.
At the start, it is undesirable to set a large budget – Google may not like it. It is essential to specify a CPC limit so as not to drain all the money quickly. When payment details are entered, they must match the account’s geo.
You will also need to work out the keywords and negative keywords and compose the ads’ text. Google will offer options, or you can take parts of the text from competitors since moderation has already missed them. The advertising position in the issue is affected by CTR – click-through rate. It is better to fill in all the proposed fields and consider the most appropriate target settings to increase it.
UAC — Universal App Campaigns 💥
UAC is a universal advertising campaign for mobile applications. It is a difficult traffic source for many reasons:
- risks due to bans, mainly the peak of cleaning in app stores occurs in the spring;
- the need to understand the technical component: some experienced affiliates recommend uploading through applications as a team and not solo;
- there are a few excellent applications, a high probability of running into bugs, errors, and flaws.
However, UAC provides excellent features and benefits:
- a wide variety of creatives — text, images, videos, banners;
- flexible easy setup, automatic optimization of campaigns;
- high-quality rented applications can live up to 1.5 months and bring installs worth several thousand dollars at a rental price of $500;
- using UAC, uploading to dating offers is more accessible than using Facebook due to more loyal moderation;
- traffic is generally cheaper than on Facebook, but details depend on the specific geo.
SEO ✨
SEO or organic traffic is users coming from search engines. A person writes in Google search “how to meet a beautiful girl”, and the search results show him websites, blogs, and pages on social networks on this topic.
Google search query — where to meet a woman
For example, a site from the Top 1 search results for a query contains affiliate links, including those to dating resources.
A site from the Top 1 search results contains affiliate links, including dating resources
SEO is considered a shareware source of traffic. You will need investments for a domain, hosting, link building, and services of designers, copywriters, and SEO specialists. It takes a long time to develop your resource in time – it may take several months. But it is a good investment in the future:
- on a personal website, you can promote any offers, even those that are not moderated anywhere;
- you can make an independent design, manage the placement of advertising blocks;
- multiple monetization options;
- practically free targeted traffic: mostly “warm” clients who are purposefully looking for dating opportunities.
Types of offers in dating 😎
Dating offers are divided into two main types:
- Mainstream dating is the services of dating sites. Many sites are loyal to this type of offer, creatives are moderated.
- Adults are offers in the 18+ theme: sex dating sites, erotic games, webcams, and various products and drugs related to increasing sexual pleasure. Adult is a grayer niche than the mainstream, so you need to use cloaking to work with “adult” offers.
There are also narrow sub-niches within mainstream and adult dating, such as LGBT offers, BDSM, speed dating, MILF.
Where to send dating traffic 💎
Dating traffic can be sent to Smartlink or a specific offer:
- Smartlink is a link provided by an affiliate program. It analyzes traffic and redirects users from all geos to landing pages and offers that are more suitable for them. This saves time, and budget for tests, advertising settings, and landing pages do not need to be created from scratch.
- A specific offer is an offer with conditions for traffic, geo, and target audience characteristics. For example, an advertiser only accepts people between 35 and 45 years old. To work with such an offer, it is necessary to conduct tests, and determine the appropriate links “source – settings – creatives – landing pages”. For a specific offer, the affiliate program also provides a landing page, but it may need to be localized for the desired geo or make other adjustments.
How to choose a geo 🧨
You can work with any country, except for those where religious dogmas prevail, prohibiting the consumption of content related to dating and adult. The most profitable geos are Tier-1 countries, where the population has a high solvency. Examples: USA, UK, Canada, Germany, France, Sweden.
Tier-2 and Tier-3 countries are considered less competitive and are suitable for work if the budgets for tests and advertising are small. But the profit there is usually less. Examples: CIS countries, Latin America, India.
It is advisable to test several GEOs, analyze the results, optimize the campaign, and then start sending.
Top offers in dating 📈
We offer to consider the top offers of the Datify affiliate program:
1. Offer Adult Dating – Responsive (WAP+WEB)
Traffic type, geo, payment model: [WAP+WEB] Mybustybeauty [AU CA UK IE NZ US ZA] [DOI] — Inhouse
Payout: $3.36
2. Offer Adult Dating – Mobile (WAP)
Traffic type, geo, payment model: [WAP] Cheaters [DOI] [UK]
Payout: $3.12
3. Offer Adult Dating – Responsive (WAP+WEB)
Traffic type, geo, payment model: [WAP+WEB] CallsOfBooty [UK] [SOI]
Payout: $2.00
4. Offer Adult Dating – Responsive (WAP+WEB)
Traffic type, geo, payment model: [WAP+WEB] CallsOfBooty [IT] [SOI]
Payout: $1.58
Conclusions
Working with the dating vertical provides opportunities for stable high earnings. The niche is not subject to seasonal fluctuations; even against various socio-political events, people are still interested in finding partners for relationships. The audience is growing yearly due to the high rhythm of life, and global digitalization. Today it is easier and faster to get acquainted on the Internet than offline.
Dating features smartlink offers, which makes the vertical comfortable for beginner affiliates. Having gained experience with mainstream dating and low-competitive geos, you can increase your income by moving to adult and Tier-1 ⚡️
