Not long ago, one of the affiliates in our network asked our manager: "Is the dating niche still profitable in 2023? What should we focus on to get the best results?" To find out, we sat down with Max, an experienced affiliate who has tested various traffic sources for the dating space. He and his team tried out a few different approaches recently, so he's got some great insights to share.
In this interview, Max will reveal what's working now to drive traffic and conversions for dating offers in 2023. He'll cover which sources he's having the most success with, along with some tips and strategies to implement based on the latest trends. Whether you're new to the dating vertical or a seasoned pro, Max has actionable advice that can help take your earnings in this niche to the next level this year. So let's dive in and hear what Max has learned about the current dating affiliate marketing landscape from his recent tests.
Hi everyone, I'm Max. I have tested social networks like TikTok, Facebook, and ad formats like InPage Push, Popunder, and Native Ads in the dating vertical. I made this test so that I get to understand where it's easy to get cheap traffic that brings fairly stable profit for dating offers.
To jump ahead, I'll say right away: the results convinced me that any of these sources can be profitable.
For a clean experiment, we also selected alternative traffic sources - ad networks. Among them, we focused on InPage Push, Popunder, and Native Ads. An old friend recommended them, so we agreed.
On this platform, content popularity among users decides everything. Likes determine popularity. The more likes, the more likely the video gets included in the “For You” recommendations page and gets a good reach. Every day we uploaded 3–4 videos to each account, taking up those 8 hours.
After a week we saw real traction - profiles had approximately 1,000 subscribers and some initial leads. A few days after hitting that milestone, we added a landing page link to each account. We tested two tactics here that worked equally well:
With accounts created and cute girl photos uploaded, we explained the backstory to the team - you're former models who are over work and now want to meet someone.
Unlike TikTok, Facebook requires on-site activity for reach. So each day for 2.5-3 hours we:
We used an anti-detect browser and some universal proxies to warm up multiple accounts simultaneously, boosting efficiency.
Two weeks later, the first friend requests came in. We funneled those to a Telegram channel, safer than linking directly since that often led to bans. From Telegram, we'd send users to the dating offer.
After two more weeks, we finished up organic Facebook traffic with ~31% average ROI. Alongside traditional offers, we tried LGBT ones too. Way lower conversion at 5x less, but payouts were 4.7x higher at $1.91 instead of $0.40. The payment model was PPL DOI only - paying for email-confirmed registrations.
For a change of pace, we also experimented with driving Facebook Ads traffic to some dating apps. We ran ads to the mainstream dating apps for about a week, but we never managed to break even since the payouts were so low. We also gave some sketchy dating apps from CPA networks a try. But those didn't bring any conversions at all, and the ads kept getting rejected after a day or two. After a week of spending more than we were earning, resulting in negative profit across the board, we decided to cut our losses and stop these particular traffic tests altogether. While it was worth testing out Facebook Ads for dating apps, the low commissions and high rejection rate meant this method just wasn't profitable for us.
Dating lead payouts are traditionally low - it's evergreen, so advertisers would go broke overpaying. We needed an ad network with bare bottom CPCs, since this was just an experiment to evaluate the tool. And I wanted to avoid budget-stealing bots.
After some hunting, I narrowed it down to MyBid.
This network is fully managed, so a manager handles the ad campaigns. I simply provided creatives, a link, and coordinated the rate. But that wasn't the only appeal:
And here are more examples.
With those sweet numbers, I was pumped to launch Popunder and Native Ads campaigns too with the same MyBid manager. He really dug into our plan instead of just following orders. He even corrected some of our assumptions, steadily improving conversion.
Popunder: A week later we'd broken even. An affiliate manager suggested a different angle with new creatives, but we'd already reached our conclusions. I simply dropped this format since the others were profitable.
Native Ads: ROI typically hit 16%. Not bad for a week of testing, though we didn't have time to optimize. If we'd gone all in, the figures could've been much higher. Overall, we were stoked on the outcome.
TikTok drives tons of legit traffic, but you need to scale the system to capitalize - meaning more accounts. To hit real profits, you'll need to grow your team and costs appropriately.
For Facebook organic traffic, a basic system works - make accounts, do farming activities and promotion, reply to messages, and send users to your link. But it can only scale through new accounts. Yes, you can simplify registration and basic automation with software, but quality tools are rare. So this works best for technically-savvy arbitrage pros who can build their own solutions.
Popunder and Native Ads proved to be worthy competitors to Facebook and TikTok. Running campaigns with them is way cheaper than social. They excel if you've got a profit-focused manager to explain the nuances - like team from MyBid.
InPage Push delivered the strongest results by far. It's ripe for scaling up. These push notifications reach iPhone users, who make up 50%+ of mobile users in some Tier 1 countries. Do the math.
And that's a wrap on Max's story! He's looking to test more traffic sources and will share those findings later.
In this interview, Max will reveal what's working now to drive traffic and conversions for dating offers in 2023. He'll cover which sources he's having the most success with, along with some tips and strategies to implement based on the latest trends. Whether you're new to the dating vertical or a seasoned pro, Max has actionable advice that can help take your earnings in this niche to the next level this year. So let's dive in and hear what Max has learned about the current dating affiliate marketing landscape from his recent tests.
Hi everyone, I'm Max. I have tested social networks like TikTok, Facebook, and ad formats like InPage Push, Popunder, and Native Ads in the dating vertical. I made this test so that I get to understand where it's easy to get cheap traffic that brings fairly stable profit for dating offers.
To jump ahead, I'll say right away: the results convinced me that any of these sources can be profitable.
What traffic sources did you choose?
We decided to test Facebook and TikTok. From there we planned to drive organic traffic. Separately for Facebook, we also drove traffic from mobile apps. These sites previously had good conversion rates. That's why we chose them now.For a clean experiment, we also selected alternative traffic sources - ad networks. Among them, we focused on InPage Push, Popunder, and Native Ads. An old friend recommended them, so we agreed.
TikTok Approach
On TikTok we were catching up with organic traffic. For this, we registered over 90 accounts, and each uploaded 3-4 videos of pretty girls daily. We successfully copied content ideas for posts from Instagram. Even though we did everything while using the software, it took 8 hours every day because we had to manually select and upload everything.On this platform, content popularity among users decides everything. Likes determine popularity. The more likes, the more likely the video gets included in the “For You” recommendations page and gets a good reach. Every day we uploaded 3–4 videos to each account, taking up those 8 hours.
After a week we saw real traction - profiles had approximately 1,000 subscribers and some initial leads. A few days after hitting that milestone, we added a landing page link to each account. We tested two tactics here that worked equally well:
- Funneling people to a Telegram channel, warming them up with flirty pics, and sending them to an affiliate link from there.
- Directing leads to a custom domain first, then on to the offer link.
Facebook Approach
We created the Facebook accounts manually - the automation tools we tried ended up getting 85% of our accounts banned during warm up. Just wasted cash and stress. To avoid bans, accounts were linked to real phone numbers. We bought around 50 Ukrainian SIM cards for this.With accounts created and cute girl photos uploaded, we explained the backstory to the team - you're former models who are over work and now want to meet someone.
Unlike TikTok, Facebook requires on-site activity for reach. So each day for 2.5-3 hours we:
- Joined groups, capping at 20 per day
- Sent friend requests, up to 20 people
- Posted 1-2 new photos every couple days
- Scrolled feeds and watched videos for the rest of the time
We used an anti-detect browser and some universal proxies to warm up multiple accounts simultaneously, boosting efficiency.
Two weeks later, the first friend requests came in. We funneled those to a Telegram channel, safer than linking directly since that often led to bans. From Telegram, we'd send users to the dating offer.
After two more weeks, we finished up organic Facebook traffic with ~31% average ROI. Alongside traditional offers, we tried LGBT ones too. Way lower conversion at 5x less, but payouts were 4.7x higher at $1.91 instead of $0.40. The payment model was PPL DOI only - paying for email-confirmed registrations.
For a change of pace, we also experimented with driving Facebook Ads traffic to some dating apps. We ran ads to the mainstream dating apps for about a week, but we never managed to break even since the payouts were so low. We also gave some sketchy dating apps from CPA networks a try. But those didn't bring any conversions at all, and the ads kept getting rejected after a day or two. After a week of spending more than we were earning, resulting in negative profit across the board, we decided to cut our losses and stop these particular traffic tests altogether. While it was worth testing out Facebook Ads for dating apps, the low commissions and high rejection rate meant this method just wasn't profitable for us.
Our Tests with InPage Push, Popunder, and Native Ads
InPage Push: Regular push notifications don't reach iOS users, so we tried the InPage format. It subscribes users without permission, working across desktop, Android, iOS.Dating lead payouts are traditionally low - it's evergreen, so advertisers would go broke overpaying. We needed an ad network with bare bottom CPCs, since this was just an experiment to evaluate the tool. And I wanted to avoid budget-stealing bots.
After some hunting, I narrowed it down to MyBid.
This network is fully managed, so a manager handles the ad campaigns. I simply provided creatives, a link, and coordinated the rate. But that wasn't the only appeal:
- We drove traffic from with InPage Push traffic to a dating offer targeting the Ukraine geo. The CPCs on MyBid cost just $0.00015 for this geo. Which was way cheaper and effective compared to Facebook and Tiktok Ads CPC rates.
- They've got their own anti-fraud setup and ad platforms. This ensured our budget didn't vanish into the pockets of bot traffic operators.
And here are more examples.
With those sweet numbers, I was pumped to launch Popunder and Native Ads campaigns too with the same MyBid manager. He really dug into our plan instead of just following orders. He even corrected some of our assumptions, steadily improving conversion.
Popunder: A week later we'd broken even. An affiliate manager suggested a different angle with new creatives, but we'd already reached our conclusions. I simply dropped this format since the others were profitable.
Native Ads: ROI typically hit 16%. Not bad for a week of testing, though we didn't have time to optimize. If we'd gone all in, the figures could've been much higher. Overall, we were stoked on the outcome.
Results
Dating has been, still is, and always will be a thriving vertical. You can always turn a profit here. Max's experience shows that all the sources we looked at provide a steady flow of leads.TikTok drives tons of legit traffic, but you need to scale the system to capitalize - meaning more accounts. To hit real profits, you'll need to grow your team and costs appropriately.
For Facebook organic traffic, a basic system works - make accounts, do farming activities and promotion, reply to messages, and send users to your link. But it can only scale through new accounts. Yes, you can simplify registration and basic automation with software, but quality tools are rare. So this works best for technically-savvy arbitrage pros who can build their own solutions.
Popunder and Native Ads proved to be worthy competitors to Facebook and TikTok. Running campaigns with them is way cheaper than social. They excel if you've got a profit-focused manager to explain the nuances - like team from MyBid.
InPage Push delivered the strongest results by far. It's ripe for scaling up. These push notifications reach iPhone users, who make up 50%+ of mobile users in some Tier 1 countries. Do the math.
And that's a wrap on Max's story! He's looking to test more traffic sources and will share those findings later.
