Dating is one of the evergreen niches in affiliate marketing. People have always wanted bread and circuses, as well as some personal happiness.

No surprise that despite the pandemic, dating services remain relevant. Audiences for mainstream and adult services have continued to grow.

Let’s figure out how to drive traffic to the Dating vertical in these times when pandemics are not going to end.

Dating in Affiliate Marketing: What it’s all about?

It is no longer a question of whether to swipe or not to swipe. During the height of the pandemic, namely March 29, 2020, more than 3 billion swipes per day were recorded on Tinder.

Even during a pandemic when many are wary of dating, the dating market is growing. This is nothing new: people actively use dating apps and websites during lockdowns because of the restrictions and loneliness.

And dating apps feel the need and actively update their functionality. Top services now have video chats, interactive series with discussions, and other goodies to know each other better without leaving the house.

At the same time, an interesting tendency occurs — demand for dating services has increased. Still, their users have begun to pay less for additional options and subscriptions that advertisers in affiliate marketing so much appreciate.

Affiliate marketers in the Dating niche face a new challenge: advertisers want better Dating traffic and offer CPA or CPS offers, while users want to register and swipe.

Well, let’s see if it’s worth driving traffic to Dating and how to do it.

Number of online dating users in the United States from 2017 to 2024

Types of Payout Models for Dating in Affiliate Marketing

Dating offers are an excellent opportunity for affiliates who value flexibility. Every marketer will find an option that suits their experience and needs.

The payout model will largely determine your strategy. Let’s find out how you can gain profit in the Dating vertical.

Affiliates can choose from several conversion flows:

  • SOI (Single Opt-In) means that the user needs to leave an email, then the conversion will be counted,
  • DOI (Double Opt-In) is the same as SOI with an added step. The email must be confirmed by clicking on the link in the letter.

Both options are simple and suitable for beginners. You won’t make a lot of money here, but you will gain experience. Furthermore, there are no caps on the number of users referred per day in such offers. Even a small payout can earn you extra cash if the offer works out.

  • CPA (Cost Per Action) or CPS (Cost Per Sale) offers are the most common options for promoting Dating. These Dating offers pay for the user’s registration and a certain action on his part (add a photo, fill out a profile, buy premium access, etc.).
  • RevShare (Revenue Share) offers means that a CPA network pays a percentage of the income from the referred user. This is the most difficult option. An affiliate should wait some time for the user to buy and renew a subscription. And, of course, they should have a budget to run campaigns all the time they wait for a payout.

How to Choose the Right Dating CPA Offer

The dating vertical can offer mainstream and adult categories of offers.

The main purpose of mainstream dating is to find a deep, long-lasting relationship. There is no need to explain that adult offers are aimed at people looking for fun (sex dating, webcams, 18+ chats, and more), not a life partner.

Mainstream dating offers are much easier to work with. A marketer can choose from a long list of available traffic sources, which adult offers cannot be said.

There are still a lot of mainstream players on the market that want to grow their audience. They have elaborate advertising strategies and a lot of advertising materials (creatives, landing pages). Affiliates can either launch them or choose smaller services. On this occasion, they can spy on ads of well-known brands and mimic their techniques in their own dating campaigns.

The dating niche in affiliate marketing in 2020 and 2021 was distinguished by the dominance of adult offers. The 3snet CPA network confirms that adult CPA marketing offers have increased strongly in 2020.

At the same time, the audience that previously was left behind becomes active. We are talking about the most solvent audience of 18-25 years old. Consider these facts by choosing CPA dating offers.

Anybody who promotes dating offers needs to remember about offers for the LGBT community. Unlike the others, this audience shows good results in making conversions from registration to payment. True, to find them, you need to tinker. Traffic from ad networks works great with LGBT offers. To start, choose an English-speaking or Scandinavian countries, Germany.

What are the Best Offers for a Newbie?

If you are just a beginner in affiliate marketing, consider Smartlink offers for dating. One of their peculiarities is that the system analyses which offers are best suited to a certain user.

The payouts are not very high, but this is a great option to learn the basics.

The Best Dating Affiliate Programs in 2021

There are many CPA networks through which one can earn money on Dating. Some dating CPA networks are completely geared towards such offers. Dating offers can be found in others as well.

In fact, it doesn’t matter at all which of them you take the offer. The main thing is that it works.

Here is a small list of affiliate networks where you can find Dating affiliate programs:

Remember that direct advertisers always have the best conditions for affiliates and online dating affiliate marketing. If you have experience and skills, you can always refer to them.

Top Geos for Making Money on Dating

Take a look at the top countries where online dating is the most profitable. There is someone who pays if they earn money.

141 Crucial Online Dating Statistics: 2021 Data Analysis & Market Share, FinancesOnline

Tier 1 countries have the best results, as you can see. There is no shortage of opportunities for affiliate marketers. Nevertheless, these countries are full of challenges as well. You should not meddle if you want to start a dating career from rich geo with no experience.

India is also on the list, which is good news. The country has a huge population, a variety of incomes, and a wide range of opportunities. In the spring of this year, some guys made money selling mobile dating subscriptions for a certain telecom operator using mobile phones with buttons. India is a place where everything is possible.

Japan is also worth mentioning. You probably didn’t know that there are more iPhones in Japan than in the US. When choosing traffic, take this into account, and ensure your creatives are localized. It’s surprising that even standard banners can drive traffic here. However, you need to use content tailored to the Japanese audience.

Tier 2 and 3 are good options for making money on dating, and the competition will be lower. Even a small country can be profitable.

Dating Traffic Sources in 2021

Traffic sources for mainstream dating offers

Mainstream offers are the easiest to promote. You can find their CPA dating traffic using social networks, email, SEO, and other free dating CPA methods (if you are patient and have the time).

Undoubtedly, Facebook is one of the largest sources for Dating. If you have experience and a good ad budget, Facebook is a good choice. However, you should still be aware of its limitations and be ready that ad accounts can be banned.

You can try to make money on Instagram if your budget is small. This, however, is much more problematic: mass creation of accounts of beautiful girls, spamming in communities, and adding friends takes a lot of time.

It is also possible to promote the Dating vertical with Google UAC (Universal App Campaign). Working with this source can be challenging. There are many restrictions, but there are also opportunities. We advise checking out Samsung, Huawei, and Amazon’s app stores.

Advertising networks are still the best options to run Dating. Their traffic is cheap, and moderation is loyal.

Dating still works great with advertising networks: teasers, native ads, push notifications, pop-ups, and push notifications are all on the table. Look closely at push notifications and popunders — both still convert. Push notifications have the advantage of imitating personal communications. Pops have high volumes and low prices. If you understand how to use them and communicate with the network manager, then you can get a whitelist for your offer.

Traffic sources for adult dating offers

Dating traffic sources for adult offers are more complicated to find, especially free dating traffic sources. In fact, things are not so rosy with the sources of traffic: it is prohibited to advertise this kind of offer on social networks and with Google Ads. Cloaking has not been canceled, but you should be prepared for bans. Adult advertising networks are the best option.

There are also the usual ones, where you can launch adult ad campaigns without any clocking tips. RichAds is one of the kinds of ad networks where you can launch adult ads. The best ad formats for Adult dating at RichAds are push and especially in-page push ads.

How to Earn on Dating

The next question is: how to earn on Dating? We will use push traffic to show you how. Push traffic is one of the most suitable sources.  It is a very simple process to create and approve a campaign, and there are not many restrictions. The campaign on push ads requires a relatively small budget to test the bundles, and that’s why it’s the best traffic source for dating offers.

The only “but” is that countries from Tier 1 need larger test budgets. You will have to search more carefully for a converting bundle there since the audience there is sophisticated.

If you start with push notifications, start with tests: try to use a landing page and direct link, divide the audience into streams using different creatives.

Examples of Dating creatives

Dating creatives for push ads are a great way to segment the audience by their dates’ ages and how they intend to date. Try different approaches to find the right audience.

Dating on push notifications is primarily for men. Develop different creatives for different types of audiences and different needs. The trend is to build different funnels for varying types of women (young and old, plump and thin, of different ages).

It isn’t uncommon for women to receive push notifications. It will not be superfluous for mainstream dating to create their women’s funnel, even though they make up a smaller share of the market than men.

As well as placing handsome men on creatives, romantic approaches can be used in dating campaigns as well.

Here are some ideas:

  • Refers to whether someone can be met,
  • When will you find a partner,
  • Stories of someone who has met on this site.

You can also test the general trends in dating campaigns by adding:

  • a TikTok logo on the main picture,
  • an icon to start video,
  • emojis with audio messages,
  • brands of popular dating apps.

Landing and pre-landing pages

Pre-landing pages influence conversion just as much as a creative.

Push notifications should always be tested with and without a pre-landing. Although there is no definitive answer to what works best, pre-landing pages tend to warm up the audience. Furthermore, they improve the quality of traffic itself, which is very important for push notifications.

Recently, small questionnaires are often placed on pre-landers to learn the goals and desires of clients.

Dating campaign launch

You should start with the broadest possible settings for push notifications. Once you’ve tested enough approaches, you can optimize your campaign based on data.

Are there any critical steps to take at the beginning? Don’t let the advertiser turn off your offer over the quality of traffic. Set up a postback and refer sub sources. It will be possible to disable only some sources if some won’t be suitable for the advertiser.

It sounds impossible, but we have a solution for you if you are determined to reduce testing costs. RichAds offers the option of selecting the best quality traffic for running tests.

After testing all the network traffic for several months, we divided it into four groups based on how it works. Traffic from Premium sources converts 61% better than traffic from Standard sources.

Start your tests with Premium traffic. You will quickly see the potential of the offer.

Check out our step-by-step guide for more details. Atilla O’Dree, a world-class expert, launches the dating campaign in it. He will demonstrate how to search for creatives in spy tools, how to setup a tracker, what campaign settings to use, and how to promote CPA dating offers.

The List of Dating Offers for 2022

Here is the list of the best Dating offers from AdsEmpire CPA network:

  • Treffegirls — BE — web $3.5 / mob $3
  • Soifdetoi — FR — web $3.5 / mob $3
  • Together2night — NZ — web $4.5 / mob $4
  • Buscarollos — ES — web $2.5 / mob $2.5
  • Otakuplay.jp — JP — web $5 / mob $5
  • Soloavventure — IT — web $2.75 / mob $2.5
  • Matchx2.com — SG — web $2.5 / mob $2.5
  • Gibsmir — AT — web $5 / mob $4.5