Eugene_Trafficsourcer
New Member
In one of the comments I promised to share my experiences here on the forum. Today I want to touch on a profitable subniche that many people don't even notice. I'm talking about LGBT.
According to The Washington Post, in 2016, 67% of gay couples came about as a result of websites and applications for online dating. For comparison, only about 22% of heterosexual couples met online.
Apart from that, according to a study conducted by professors of economics Jose Ortega of the University of Essex and Philippe Hergowitsch of the University of Vienna in Austria, more than a third of marriages are performed online. Most of these marriages are those of non-traditional sexual orientation.
All of this says that affiliate marketers and webmasters need to pay attention not only to mainstream dating and adult, but also explore more niche areas. One of these is gay dating. Let’s examine whether this segment is worth running ads to and how to get the most out of it.
Based on this data one can determine the Internet platforms that an audience prefers to hook up.
Data from Statista and the Spartacus portal states that offers aimed at gays can result in high ROI in the US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, Latin America, European countries (especially Spain, Malta and Portugal). On the other hand, Russia, the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia aren’t likely to yield good results. You could try driving ads to India, hoping that the large traffic volumes will make you a profit.
Just as with the regular dating and adult verticals, the creatives that had a maximally concise and simple approach converted the best. You can imitate a message from a specific man in a popular app for LGBTQ audience.
Plain old nude images also converted well.
That said, the TA wasn’t only interested in young athletic men, but unshaven, brutal older men of 40-45+ with beer bellies, too. The more open, the better.
Another approach was aimed at gays that had a taste for finer things, the ones that dreamed of romantic relationships and building a family. This is more of a mainstream story (if you can call it that). The creatives feature images and videos from weddings of famous gays. For example, these could be photos and videos from “Wednesday”-star Hunter Doohan’s wedding, featuring a call to action to find one’s own “buddy” on a specific website or app and create a happy family.
According to The Washington Post, in 2016, 67% of gay couples came about as a result of websites and applications for online dating. For comparison, only about 22% of heterosexual couples met online.
Apart from that, according to a study conducted by professors of economics Jose Ortega of the University of Essex and Philippe Hergowitsch of the University of Vienna in Austria, more than a third of marriages are performed online. Most of these marriages are those of non-traditional sexual orientation.
All of this says that affiliate marketers and webmasters need to pay attention not only to mainstream dating and adult, but also explore more niche areas. One of these is gay dating. Let’s examine whether this segment is worth running ads to and how to get the most out of it.
Target audience
It’s difficult to state the exact number of members of non-traditional sexual orientation groups, but the average indicators, based on numerous research, say that it’s ~5-7% of the global population. In affiliate marketing, we usually take the lowest number as the base indicator. Also, women are also part of this category, as well as non-binary people. Pornhub's statistics say that men aged 18- 45+ are more interested in this topic, and the number goes up as the age increases and forms over 10% of the total views. However, unlike older age groups, the younger generations prefer using the Internet for real dating and the engagement goes off the charts on websites and apps that focus on gays, lesbians, bi and transsexuals.
Based on this data one can determine the Internet platforms that an audience prefers to hook up.
Profitable and unloyal GEOs
The reason for this level of popularity of websites and apps for gay dating is the fact that even today, in most GEOs the institute of family and relationships is regarded as something traditional. Gays, unlike heterosexual men, can’t hook up on the street or other public places, revealing their sexuality so openly.Data from Statista and the Spartacus portal states that offers aimed at gays can result in high ROI in the US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, Latin America, European countries (especially Spain, Malta and Portugal). On the other hand, Russia, the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia aren’t likely to yield good results. You could try driving ads to India, hoping that the large traffic volumes will make you a profit.
Sources and creatives for gay dating
Just like with hetero-offers, you can try acquiring SEO traffic. Or, you could try running ads to Facebook, along with constant bans. However, one of the best traffic sources in the dating and adult niches are ad networks that work with push, InPage, Pops and native ad formats. Webmasters that want to test niche areas while working with adult traffic are advised to do more than just leave all the assumptions and bias behind to avoid wasting the budget. My own experience showed that it would be best to leave setting up the AC to the personal manager of the MyBid fully managed ad network from the get go. The manager knows which platforms and creos will yield better conversion on your offer. I sent him the link and off we went.Just as with the regular dating and adult verticals, the creatives that had a maximally concise and simple approach converted the best. You can imitate a message from a specific man in a popular app for LGBTQ audience.
Plain old nude images also converted well.
That said, the TA wasn’t only interested in young athletic men, but unshaven, brutal older men of 40-45+ with beer bellies, too. The more open, the better.
Another approach was aimed at gays that had a taste for finer things, the ones that dreamed of romantic relationships and building a family. This is more of a mainstream story (if you can call it that). The creatives feature images and videos from weddings of famous gays. For example, these could be photos and videos from “Wednesday”-star Hunter Doohan’s wedding, featuring a call to action to find one’s own “buddy” on a specific website or app and create a happy family.
Summary
Each year affiliate marketing observes a growing trend in niche areas. Most Tier 1 and Tier 2 countries are more and more tolerant to minorities and members of the LGBT and queer communities. But, gays are the ones that show the most engagement on dating websites and applications. To be among the first to dig into the gravy train, affiliate marketers and webmasters need to use push, native and pops when launching at least a test ad campaign.
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