What is DATING and how to promote dating offers – with expert advice from Cpamatica.com

There are verticals that come and go, some are seasonal and only popular during certain periods of the year, some become saturated and impossible to make profits with after a while … and then there are some, that are always working to some extent, no matter what – Let’s call them the evergreens 🙂

Dating is one of such evergreen verticals, it has it’s ups and downs, but it keeps on converting year after year. I’m not gonna lie to you, even this vertical is harder to make money with than it was couple years ago … but it’s not because people are not interesting into dating anymore, it’s because of the competition.

Since Dating is actually one of my favorite verticals, I decided to write a full article about it. I will tell you what kind of dating offers there are, how it all works, what are the payout options you can work with, how dating sites make money, how to promote these offers …

To make it more interesting, I invited an affiliate network that specializes in dating, “Cpamatica.com”, to provide us with some insights from a networks side too. I sent them quite a few questions, so we get a better understanding of the vertical, how much big affiliates are making, what type of offers makes the most $$$ for them, what GEOs are hot at the moment … all the information I like to get from affiliate networks.

I always love to get info directly from the “horses mouth” so to speak, since that’s as accurate as it gets. You will notice several “quotes” from Evgeniy Prima, CEO of Cpamatica, throughout the article and a rather large Question/Answer part, later in the text. Enjoy 🙂

Now dating takes nearly 60% of our offers. Despite the fact that it is the most disputed vertical for the past few years, it still remains to be one of those immortal niches that’s going to stay up for a long time.

Evgeniy, Cpamatica.com

WHAT IS DATING ABOUT ACTUALLY?

First of all, we need to define the online dating business itself… It’s a no-brainer really, dating is for people who want to ehm… date online 🙂 These people visit either Dating Sites or use Dating Apps on their SmartPhones. Dating is one of the businesses that are still growing, with more and more people moving online and using the internet to connect with others.

Since every dating site/app is about the users, pretty much all of them have affiliate programs and gladly accept new members from whoever can send them … which creates a great opportunity for us, the affiliates. Dating site without members is useless, and they know this very well … that’s why many dating sites utilize BOTs to simulate human activity, until they get enough members.

Some sites/apps take it too far and pretty much any activity on their sites is BOT driven, which is obviously not something that potential paying members want. Here is a rather funny story for you if you want to read about it more, a dating site in Japan had only 1 real female member … out of 2.7 million total members 🙂 Source : http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3116784/Dating-site-2-7-million-members-one-woman-Bosses-online-scam-arrested-Japan.html

Every single dating site or app has a similar user conversion flow: get the users to register, motivate them to make a profile and if possible, have them become paying members. That’s how dating sites make money – pretty much all of them limit the functionality in some way, until you become a paying member.

HOW CAN WE MAKE MONEY BY PROMOTING DATING OFFERS?

As I already mentioned, every single dating site wants MORE members. And they are willing to pay for that. The logic is simple, send members, get paid … but there are several conversion flows that you can choose to work with, so let’s analyze them one by one.

NOTE: Not every dating offer accepts all the following models, but pretty much any affiliate networks will have some offers for any mentioned model.

1. SOI Leads (Single Opt In): This is the easiest conversion flow, the users just have to enter their email and that’s it, you got a conversion. Obviously, there will be some validity check involved, no dating site will pay for emails that look like “xxassdcsx@jihdfksjnhsdkl.com” for example.

SOI leads are very easy to make, and I would suggest to start with these, in case you are new with dating. As you could surely guess, SOI leads are also usually paid the least for. The easier something is to convert, the lower the payout usually is. Which is not a bad thing necessarily. Lower paying offers can actually make you more money, they are easier to test and require lower initial testing budget.

To name some CONS too, SOI leads are usually most prone to quality problems and advertisers are quite strict with initial caps … it’s simply the most risky model for them, that’s why they try to be careful.

2. DOI Leads (Double Opt In): This is the next step from SOI, one more action is required form the user – email verification. The standard flow is still simple : user enters the email address, waits for a confirmation email with a verification link, clicks it and that’s it, conversion finished.

The above described is the “original” DOI flow, these days you might see several variations of it too. The additional verification can also be a profile creation, the need to upload a photo, sending a message to someone or opening the mobile app …

One way or another, DOI offers always have somewhat worse conversion rates and not every SOI member actually converts into a DOI either.

The willingness of users to confirm their email depends on the overall picture of the audience you target for. And also on the offer type. You will always have a higher conversion rate on desktop offer, compared to mobile offers. For user it is easier to access the mailbox on the computer.

If to look in general. it’s pretty hard to estimate, but we expect 35-50% conversion rate from SOI to DOI at least.

Evgeniy, Cpamatica.com

On the other hand, DOI offers pay significantly more per conversion than SOI offers and it’s also less common to run into lead quality problems with DOI offers. In some GEOs, I always prefer to work with DOI, simply because they work better for me.

3. REVSHARE (Revenue Sharing): This is another payout model you can use with dating offers, the principle is very simple again, you get paid a certain % rate from every membership you can sell. This means, no matter how many SOI or DOI registrations you achieve, you will not get paid for them. You need to wait for the leads to convert into paying members, then you will receive 40%-80% (usually) of the monthly fee that they are paying.

The more memberships you can sell, the larger revenue share you can get. The better dating site you promote, the longer your members will keep on renewing, which means more revenue for you. Truth to be told, this model is the most complicated to work with for affiliates running paid traffic.

The reason is simple, you need to wait up to 6 months, if not longer, to see the full potential of the memberships that you sold, which is a large problem when optimizing your campaigns. You need to accept a hefty loss at the beginning … but in case of properly optimized campaigns, you can be making money from the members for many months or years – the longest running dating member I’ve ever referred to a site, kept on renewing for 56 months straight 🙂

Promoting revshare dating is usually recommended for advanced media buyers only, but I would definitely advice to explore this option too. It’s awesome to have recurring income from revshare campaigns, when everything else fails from some reason – it’s like insurance 🙂

You are very unlikely to face any quality problems with revshare dating offers, unless you commit some kind of fraud of course.

4. PPS (Pay Per Sale): This is the last popular payout model for dating offers, it’s similar to revshare in a way – you only get paid when some user becomes a paying member. However, in case of PPS, you get a flat rate per membership sold, instead of a %. Depending on GEO and site, these rates can go from $30 up to $150 or even more in rare cases.

The way it works is : dating site owners know the average life time value of their members and they use it to calculate the payout rate, that they can offer you. Just like with revshare, the more members you can send, the higher rate they will be willing to pay you – it’s simple economy of scale.

PPS is a bit easier to work with than revshare, so it’s still a good choice for media buyers … not saying that revshare is to be dumped for good, but it’s the most complicated. PPS is also very resistant to quality problems, credit card fraud and unusually short membership durations are the only posible problems basically.

SO, WHICH PAYOUT MODEL SHOULD WE CHOOSE ACTUALLY?

You need to realize one thing, when deciding about what route to take with the dating verticals, the site/app owners want to make money … whatever model you choose, they still want their share. Makes sense right?

SOI, DOI and PPS … these all pose some risk for them, SOI is the more risky, PPS not so much, but still, all 3 are based on some kind of averages that they see from ALL traffic. That’s why they need to use initial daily capping, starting with low payouts and trying to assess the quality of your leads as soon as possible.

With Revshare, they do not risk pretty much anything … they will just pay you a % of the overall business you bring them. This is the safest model for any dating site owner by far.

This being said : Revshare will always be the most honest, with the lowest amount of scrubbing … simply because they don’t need to do it. SOI will always be the most risky, with most quality problems, but also the easiest to test and optimize … DOI and PPS are something like the “golden middle”.

The fact that SOI, DOI and PPS are based on averages, is responsible for one interesting thing : properly optimized campaign with good quality traffic, will often make the same profits, no matter which of the 3 models you use.

For example you have same offer with 2 payment models (SOI – 1$ and DOI – 2$). You spent 100$ in your traffic source

1. In case with SOI you got 100 leads (100 leads * 1$ = 100$ of revenue). So, your revenue matches with your spend, and you have some info for optimization by banners/prelanders /landings).

2. In case with DOI you got 50 leads, cause 50% of users confirmed their emails. (50 leads * 2$ = 100$ of revenue). Again, your revenue matches with your spend, but you have less info for optimization).

The point is, that with our experience, EPC from SOI and DOI almost always match.

Evgeniy, Cpamatica.com

Revshare on the other hand can unfold the true profit potential of your campaigns, but it’s a bitch to optimize revshare offers with paid traffic.

My recommendation to whoever asks about what models to work with would be like this: Definitely start with SOI offers, those are the easiest to optimize and the perfect choice for testing. Move to DOI offers once you got the basics nailed down and learn how to work with them.

Advanced dating affiliates should start to work closely with their AMs and learn what methods produce the most paying members, focus on those and switch part of their traffic to PPS or Revshare once they know what traffic converts into paying members. If the users were willing to pay on the SOI/DOI model, there is not reasons for them to stop when sent directly through PPS/Revshare links.

WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CASUAL AND MAINSTREAM DATING?

There are basically two types of dating offers, CASUAL and MAINSTREAM, let’s take a look at each of them and go over the differences.

1. Mainstream Dating: People who are looking for a real life, long term partner, visit so called Mainstream dating sites/apps. The word mainstream is often used as the counterpart to casual, so don’t look for any conspiracy here 🙂

These sites are also often based around certain interests, life views, religious beliefs … some companies are taking it to the extreme and offer very NICHED mainstream dating sites. I’ve seen sites for dog lovers, hikers, athletes, christians, jews, tall people, short people … you name it …

Mainstream dating is a huge business, as it’s a widely accepted vertical with many A+ sources … Facebook is the only massive source that doesn’t really allow dating. Actually, they do allow it, but due to massive levels of fraud, you need to have a special agreement with dating advertisers in order to get “whitelisted” on FB to promote dating … which most of us don’t unfortunately.

Mainstream dating works very well with other smaller social networks, native ad networks, it converts targeted email traffic like a charm … it takes some effort, but there is a lot of money to be made there.

2. Casual Dating:  These sites/apps are usually about one thing only : casual sex 🙂 As you can guess, they attract mostly males of all ages and shapes … and where can we find such surfers in mass quantities … on adult/porn sites of course 🙂

Casual dating is still one of the most popular verticals to promote on adult traffic, it has been the case for years and I don’t think it’s about to change anytime soon. The adult industry decided to kill itself by giving away all content for free on the tube sites, so it’s virtually impossible to sell adult videos to adult surfers anymore. That’s why large % of the business moved to areas that are not “downloadable for free”, which dating certainly fits well.

Just like with mainstream dating, niches work well in casual dating too – there are sites for all the most popular fetishes, including the most awkward ones. The most revenue/volume is still made in the “vanilla” zone though, so niches like MILFs, BBW etc …

Casual dating is not for everyone, and I perfectly understand it, but in case yo decide to give it a go … pretty much any affiliate network has plenty of casual dating offers to choose from, in many cases the casual offers are more plentiful than mainstream.

NOTE: I guess you would like to know what is easier to run, mainstream or casual … and where is more $$$ actually. It’s very hard to say and I’d say the situation could be different from one network to the next. Check below for Cpamatica’s stand :

Casual is profitable, but we are still winning with mainstream offers. Because of our unique conditions with mainstream dating projects, many affiliates are working with them through us. If that wasn’t the case, I would suggest that casual is the more profitable one.

Evgeniy, Cpamatica.com

HOW SHOULD WE PROMOTE DATING OFFERS?

There are many traffic types that you can choose to promote dating offers with, and you can also build your funnels in several ways. The question is, how complicated setups you want to go into … are you looking for something simple to setup and get fast results… or are you looking for a sophisticated solution that will take a lot of time and effort to put together.

On one hand, you could simply buy some POP traffic from a traffic network and send it to a dating offer … this would be the simplest approach. On the other one, you could setup your own lead capture funnel, buy highly targeted adwords traffic, sort the users based on some questionnaire and then try to up-sell them to dating sites matching their profile.

The problem is, the first one (POP traffic) will most likely not work just like that … while the other one (lead capture funnel) will take a lot of tweaking and experience that you probably don’t have yet.

So, instead of confusing you even more, or giving you false hopes for fast and easy solutions … let me give you some advice or best practice tips, based on my own experience with promoting dating offers.

1. ANY traffic type can work with dating, but you ALWAYS need a Landing page. Sending traffic directly to the dating offers, will most likely result in poor numbers – unless you can target very precisely or pre-qualify the visits somehow.

POP traffic usually causes the most quality problems, banners and text links work the best. Email traffic is also awesome, but usually the most expensive.

But don’t take just my word for it:

POPs are not the best choice for dating (many advertisers forbid this traffic type, because quality is really bad.) For casualdating – banner is the best choice. Quality is good, and advertisers are usually happy with such traffic.

Evgeniy, Cpamatica.com

2. Dating is a “VISUAL” vertical that attracts more males than females. Good looking, attractive … but REAL looking females will work the best for any creative materials. Super models will do you no good, most man don’t feel secure enough to reach out to the hottest girls.

The right female on your banners and landing pages can literally make or break your campaigns. Every experienced dating affiliate understands the need to test large quantities of banners and landing pages, they tend to burn out pretty quickly – especially in casual dating.

3. ANGLE is everything: make sure you communicate clearly with your audience. Use angles that apply to your target audience, stay consistent with your funnels and don’t interrupt your angles in the middle of the flow. If you have Asian women on your banners, make sure there are Asian women also on the Landing Page and on the Offer itself, for example.

Point #2 is related to this one, the angle starts with the choice of the imagery. Keep that in mind!

Mainstream dating converts well by using reviews or classifieds-style Landing pages… Illustrated stories (erotic) can convert both mainstream and casual dating offers… Feel free to build your angles around this too.

4. Focus on Lead Quality: everyone want’s to make money, in order to stay on the offers for a long time, you need to make money for the advertisers too. I have an entire article on lead quality on the blog already, much of what’s written there applies to dating too, read it here : http://www.matuloo.com/how-to-improve-the-quality-of-your-leads/

But in a nutshell : Focus on older demographics, do not mislead your users, do not promise everything for FREE, explain the registration process and focus on quality traffic sources.

Whatever you do, you will still get kicked from some offers every now and then, it’s part of the game … don’t be devastated when that happens.

5. Test a lot of offers: having a good offer at your disposal is a large part of your success. In order to find some, you need to test a lot of various offers from a range of advertisers. This is one of the reasons why I always recommend new affiliates to start with affiliate networks, instead of trying to work with direct advertisers.

Every direct advertiser has a limited amount of offers, while an affiliate network can have literally hundreds of them to choose from. Feel free to work with direct advertisers too, later on, but definitely start with affiliate networks – the pros absolutely out-weight the cons in the beginning.

6. Do not start in the most competitive TIER-1 GEOs! This is an universal advice, not just for dating offers, it’s the same in any vertical. All the advanced affiliate with high budgets are targeting US or UK, if you step in, you will get burned.

I know it’s tempting to enter an English speaking market, since we all speak that language … but DO NOT DO IT. You will just burn money there and leave with no results. I addressed this topic in a separate article too, make sure you read it, it can safe you a ton of $$$ : http://www.matuloo.com/why-newbies-shouldnt-start-in-the-most-competitive-tier-1-geos/

Whoever you ask about this, the answer will be the same : focus on the new booming markets, stay away from the most competitive ones, when starting out … and attack them when your knowledge and experience level is high enough.

There are still a lot of tier-2, tier-3 countries with virgin online users who are excited to click that red button on the casual ad and sign up. Latam and Africa are the hot spots to target, where internet is developing, you have less competition and much more eager users there.

Evgeniy, Cpamatica.com

HOW MUCH MONEY CAN YOU MAKE IN DATING?

Everyone loves numbers and I’m pretty sure you’re no exception, so let’s take a look at that together, shall we? 🙂

Dating is definitely one of those verticals where media buyers can make HIGH $XXX – LOW $X.XXX per day in profit, it’s nothing unusual to reach such numbers and there are plenty of affiliates generating such sums with paid traffic.

When talking about HIGH $X.XXX profits, the situation becomes more complicated 🙂 There are still people who can make that kind of money, but we are usually talking about teams and not solo affiliates. $XX.XXX of daily profits is something that only larger teams can make. I don’t personally know any solo dating affiliate who would currently be making this kind of money.

Please note that I’m talking about PROFITS here, in terms of revenue, even a solo affiliate can reach HIGH $X.XXX per day, thou it’s the high league already and not something “standard”.

I guess you are also interested about the possible ROI 🙂 30% is something I already consider solid ROI, 50% is very good and whatever is above is awesome. Of course, there are campaigns with 100 or 200% ROI, but these are usually small in volume.

Many people also feel unsure when choosing a GEO to target with their dating campaigns. They are afraid that a smaller GEO cannot make a solid profit for them. This is quite wrong 🙂 In my experience, any GEO, even small ones, can generate $XXX per day in profits.

Generally speaking : A large dating affiliate generates mid $X.XXX per day in revenue, which should equal to lower $X.XXX per day in profit. Since a lot of offer testing is involved, it’s usually spread across 2-3 different affiliate networks and several GEOs.

Evgeniy pretty much confirms this :

If we talk about the large affiliates, they made $1.8-2.5k in a day. From time to time it depends, but we always try to keep them earning more, providing new landings, offers, bumps etc.

Evgeniy, Cpamatica.com

ADVICE : WORK CLOSELY WITH YOUR AFFILIATE NETWORKS.

The dating vertical is a very competitive one, just like any vertical that has been running stable for so many years. In order to succeed in such a competitive space, you need every advantage that you can get. One of the most obvious advantages that you can get, is having higher payouts than your competitors.

Every affiliate network has certain margin that they are working with and obviously, they can decide to sacrifice part of it and give it to their affiliates. And as you can guess, they will give it to their large affiliates, that they have good relationship with.

In order to become a valued affiliate, you need to send solid volume and basically act like a reasonable person. Treat your AM as a friend and not your slave, they will return the favor. Try to work closely with a limited amount of quality networks, instead of sending 1 lead to each of 20 networks that you have accounts with.

Definitely test more networks, but try to focus on a limited amount of them and show them you mean business. I’m doing just that, and whenever I start with a new offer with one of my friendly networks, they give me better payouts and better daily CAPs than they give to regular/new affiliates.

It’s absolutely understandable, they know I can send volume, they know I don’t require much assistance and they know I don’t pull tricks or commit fraud … form relationships like this too, it will help your affiliate marketing efforts a lot.

OK, NOW WHAT IS CPAMATICA.COM?

“Evgenyi Prima, CEO of Cpamatica”

You’ve surely noticed several quotes from Evgeniy Prima, who is the CEO of Cpamatica.com – which is an affiliate network with a heavy focus on dating, That’s why I’ve chosen them for this dating-guide. In case you want to test the dating vertical, feel free to register with them and test some of their offers.

Cpamatica.com is an established affiliate network and I’m not aware of any problems that some affiliate would report, when working with them. So I feel safe to recommend them here on my blog.

NOTE: As always, I asked for a bonus for my readers and they delivered. Any new affiliate that registers at Cpamatica, will get a 10% bonus on their first payout. Just make sure you mention my blog on the application, otherwise they won’t know you are coming from here. Details are at the end of the Q&A part that follows.

I prepared 15 questions for Evgeniy and would like to present you with the answers now, there is some solid info in them.

1. Dating is one of your strongest verticals, can you tell me how large % of your overall volume does it stand for? What are your strongest GEOs?

Besides, it was one of our first niches we started from 🙂 Being in big Genesis holding we have our own dating products to work with like praised by Facebook project Hitwe (former Flirchi), VictoriaBrides, Kismia. Now dating takes nearly 60% of our offers. Despite the fact that it is the most disputed vertical for the past few years, it still remains to be one of those immortal niches that’s going to stay up for a long time. Our strongest GEOs are USA, France, Netherlands, United Kingdom.

2. I love numbers, especially when they are related to one of my favorite verticals, so let me ask for some more 🙂 How much revenue (roughly) do your large dating affiliates make per day?

We don’t mind to tell numbers, without mentioning names 🙂 If we talk about the large affiliates, they make $1.8-2.5k in a day. From time to time it depends, but we always try to keep them earning more, providing new landings, offers, bumps etc.

3. There are two sides to dating, regular “mainstream” dating where people look for “real” relationship and then there is “casual” dating that attracts the more adventurous types of people looking for sexual relationship. Where do you see your affiliates making more volume – mainstream or casual dating?

Casualis profitable, but we are still winning with mainstream offers. Because of our unique conditions with dating projects, many affiliates are working with them through us. In other situation, I would suggest that casual is the most profitable.

At first, mainstream dating is kinda harder to work with. Nowadays, users have a variety of free dating apps, much popular and trustful, than some small websites. There is way less motivation to use hardly known dating app and to pay for it. So you are always in the search for new sources. Also, if you use adult traffic source for mainstream offers, most of advertisers will easily ban you. That’s why you need to look for channels where mainstream dating is allowed: social networks, blogs, emails. So you are always on the line.

At second, sex sells, it’s not a secret. Besides, users purchase exactly what they ask for, that’s why we consider it as one of the “honest” sectors. Actually, adult industry in some way took part in the development of live-streams, credit card processing, and even in the development of affiliate marketing at overall. Adult existed for a long time before mainstream Internet giants had appeared. Casual niche isn’t as easy as it once was due to competition, but there’s still much money to be made.

4. Dating is usually working with 4 payout models – SOI (Single Opt In) Leads, DOI (Double Opt In) Leads, PPS (Pay Per Sale) and Revenue Share. Which ones is the most popular with your affiliates?

SOI/DOI leads are the leaders. Those are 80% of our offers. You can’t be fully responsible for the whole funnel (in case of PPS), so if advertiser has some problems on his end (for example problems with payment processing) – you will lose money. You depend on the quality of the product. But PPS could be a great option when you already know the advertiser’s flow, their ability to monetize user and they DO like the quality of your traffic.

5. SOI is usually the easiest to convert, but it’s also the most prone to lead quality problems. DOI’s are harder to convert but it’s easier to get payout bumps with them. Such is my experience, can you confirm that?

So true. But it all depends on the budgets you have and ready to spent. In the end DOI’s are just more safe for the advertiser. The tricky thing is you still earn approximately the same money in both cases.

For example you have same offer with 2 payment models (SOI – 1$ and DOI – 2$). You spent 100$ in your traffic source

1. In case with SOI you got 100 leads (100 leads * 1$ = 100$ of revenue). So, your revenue matches with your spend, and you have some info for optimization by banners/prelanders /landings).

2. In case with DOI you got 50 leads, cause 50% of users confirmed their emails. (50 leads * 2$ = 100$ of revenue). Again, your revenue matches with your spend, but you have less info for optimization).

The point is, that with our experience, EPC from SOI and DOI almost always match.

6. What is a standard conversion rate from SOI to DOI leads, so out of 10 SOI email submits, how many will actually confirm their emails? Is it even possible to set an average or do the numbers vary too much from one GEO to the next?

Figures vary from offers, GEO’s, platforms (web,mob) and much more. The willingness of users to confirm their email depends on the overall picture of the audience you target for. And also on the offer type. You will always have a higher conversion rate on desktop offer, comparing to mobile offers. For user it is easily to access the mailbox on the computer. If to look in general. it’s pretty hard to estimate, but we expect 35-50% conversion rate from SOI to DOI at least.

7. Try to imagine that you’re a newbie affiliate, who want’s to start promoting dating offers, what payout model would you choose and why?

Depends on what goals you try to reach and what budget you have. If you want a huge list of leads, choose the SOI model. If you aim to get the most quality list, try some DOI. Among the words, with DOI you will get a good reputation from advertisers and a chance to have higher payout or bump.

But for a newbie I would recommend to split test, looking at EPC. DOI offers have lower conversion rate, but can bring you more profit if the audience is correct. I would not recommend revshare for new affiliates, cause it’s more long term thing, and according to our tests, it’s not the best model to work with (if we’re talking about dating).

8. When I started pushing dating offers, the party was going on in English speaking GEOs, mainly USA. These days, the situation looks a bit different, especially in casual dating. I see different offers dominating some large placements in US, would you say that dating is on a decline in this GEO or it’s just related to some placements/sites only?

Tier-1 countries have always been very competitive. Because most affiliates are more comfortable with promoting in English-speaking countries, because payouts are higher, and because most of the top affiliates give the most time and attention to those.

There is decline in adult, because of the rise of competition in Tier-1 geos. In order to earn more, affiliates promote adult related offers, like adult games, nutrition supplements or adult subscriptions, but not the offers that they already saw hundred times. That’s why you could saw male enhancement products, adult games etc.

Situation with casual niche also depends on GEO and tube. If you would research few biggest tubes on USA, you would see that for example on pornhub, dating is still dominating, especially on some keywords.

There are still a lot of tier-2, tier-3 countries with virgin online users who are exciting to click that red button on the adult ad and sign up. Latam and Africa are the hot spots to target, where internet is developing, you have less competition and much more eager users.

Dating is not as good as it was some time ago, but it can be. The niche is alive. You just need to find fresh ideas, use flat rates on small tubes and scale on tier-2 GEOs.

9. I see a lot of action going on in Asia, Latam or Eastern Europe lately, across several verticals, these markets are booming and bringing a ton of business for many affiliates. Do you see the same with dating?

These markets bring a ton of business not only for affiliates, but for advertisers also. The reason why these countries became so popular right now is because advertisers entered these markets not so long time ago. Among such booming countries are Japan, South Korea, Singapore. Current situation with Latam is a bit harder because of processing issues between banks and advertisers..

10. Payouts in Asia or Latam are often very low, even below $1 for a SOI lead, does it even make sense for affiliates to promote these offers?

But what do you plan to achieve? You can set up a campaign for Czech Republic spending 100$ daily with 100% ROI. Or you can set up a campaign for USA with 30% ROI, spending $3k in a day. In the end you should take into attention if it benefits for you or not, how much budget do you have and how much profit you expect to get.

It’s hard to talk about conversion rates, ‘cause it depends from the offer, GEO, creatives etc. On the screen below you can see the difference in payouts between GEO’s. Canada costs 5x more than Spain.

Comparing casual offers, the situation pretty much the same. India and Argentina are the cheapest.

11. Ok, let’s say I’m a new affiliate and I’m having a hard time picking a GEO for my dating promotions. What countries would you suggest to me? Where do you see a lot of action lately and what do you think will the future bring?

For a newbie I would suggest to start from small countries like New Zealand, Czech Republic. Maybe Mexico can work for you too. You can easily reach there $хх-ххх daily. If you have experience in dating, keep an eye on France, Germany, UK.

12. What traffic type do you think works the best with dating offers – banner clicks, POPs, search … any other type? And for what type do you generally see the least quality problems?

POPs are not the best choice for dating (many advertisers forbid this traffic type, because quality is really bad.). You know that native traffic is hot right now, but it doesn’t apply to dating, because quality is not great. Actually it’s hard to find the sweet spot between affiliate and advertiser. But with deep integration (if you would pass widget.id to an advertiser) your chances to make something big could increase).

For casual dating – banner is the best choice. Quality is good, and advertisers usually happy with such traffic. Of course it depends on tube and banner (some banners bring sales, other – don’t) So you can test it, by passing banner_id to an advertisers.

13. Is it possible to promote dating without a Landing Page? I would say it’s not, but maybe you have a different experience. There is also one thing that’s bugging me, I see pretty much the same Landers used for dating campaigns for YEARS… how is it possible that they still work?

In 99% of cases Landing pages are a must. Direct link don’t motivate user to go further and subscribe/register. They just lead you to a register form and that’s it. Landing pages work much better. You can make a small survey for a user or just intrigue him with tricky questions that will make him sure that he needs to register there.

Old landings don’t burn out because little changes can make them work again. You can change the picture of the one girl and “boom” it looks different. Change the color of the background or the form of the button and it will work even better. It takes not much time but changes the game over and over again.

14. How newbie friendly is your network? What should the readers of my blog do in case to get accepted into your network? Quite a lot of networks make it rather complicated for new affiliates and deny their applications. What’s the position of cpamatica.com ?

Well we don’t build any walls, barricades or ask to sign a contract with blood 🙂 Our online registration form is simple. We don’t require a phone call. Just ask few questions about the experience and future plans. This is made in order to help affiliate in further actions, suggest him appropriate offers for his traffic source and tell some tips.

In case with your readers, people who assume so much information from your blog will be easily approved on unique conditions. And those who have read to this part of the article will get a bonus 10% to the first payment 🙂

15. Affiliates are often concerned about speedy payouts, what are the terms at cpamatica.com? If you think there is something where you stand out, mention it now please 🙂

Sure! 🙂 We pay every week on Thursdays, or twice a week for partners with volumes more than $2k weekly. Regular payment is one of our strongest rules, since we understand the importance of keeping campaigns smooth and ongoing.

For newbies we pay by NET-15 model, cause we just have to be sure in the quality of their traffic.

Anyway, your readers can assure by themselves in benefits of working with us. More than 10000 affiliates made it already. So see you soon!

“Evgenyi Prima, CEO of Cpamatica”

CONCLUSION

Whoever is still reading this, thanks for making it this far… this was my longest article so far indeed 🙂 I hope that I helped you understand the Dating vertical better as I’m pretty positive that all the basics have been covered more than enough.

You know how it goes, action is king, so stop reading now and try to put the knowledge to some good use.

Let me thank Cpamatica’s Evgeniy for answering all of my questions, hopefully his answers helped you guys too. And don’t forget to take him up on the offer and claim the 10% bonus, in case you decide to test them out 🙂

Visit CPAMATICA.COM by clicking here.

Thanks for reading! Comments are welcome as always 🙂

Matej.

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