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About Dating, Push Traffic and Quality Issues (40)

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Very often we get asked if push traffic is good for SOI dating offers and just as often we say that it´s not the best choice.

With this combination the problem is not that dating is not converting on push traffic.
It´s rather the opposite, there are many good offers that convert on push traffic.

And here we come to the crux: How do we define if a offer is good?

Let´s check it from the perspective of affiliates and from the perspective of offer owners.

For affiliates the most important factor if an offer is good or not is if they can make make profit from that offer.
For offer owners the most important factor if an offer is good or not is if they can make make profit from that offer.

The problem however is that just because an offer is making good profits for an affiliate it doesn´t mean that it also makes good profits for the offer owner and vice versa.

In general we should define that a good offer is an offer that´s making profit for both, the affiliate and the offer owner.

When it only makes profit for the offer owner but the affiliates promoting the offer are running on loss they will stop pushing it.
When it only makes profit for the affiliate but the offer owner is making losses he will ask you to stop sending traffic.

And this is exactly what happens rather often when you promote dating offers on push traffic.

There are many dating offers out there that convert very good on push traffic but only for affiliates and not that much for the offer owner.

For other verticals like sweepstakes the offer owners make money from SOI offers by selling the leads and/or sending them promotional emails.
There basically the users details are the "currency" and make money already when they get sold but the users don´t sign up for a website, they rather just opt-in to use their details for further promotion.
The advantage is that such users are easier to monetize, the downside is that these leads mostly don´t have such high LTV that good dating users can have.

With dating it´s a bit different, there the user itself is the currency and the users not just give away their details but they also sign up to a dating website.
Usually the offer owners don´t have a fixed revenue per user and the offers are not like a one off sale, here the money is made longterm through recurring purchases..
Here the advantage is that a good user can make lots of money, the downside is that many other users won´t make you any money at all.

I know it´s a little bit rough explanation but should be good enough to point out the differences a bit

Most of the dating websites let the users sign up for free and then have some kind of messaging system where users can buy credits in some way to chat with the girls on the platform.

Some user buy credits very often and also for very long time, these users are what an offer owner is looking for.
But there are also many users who just sign up for free and then never buy any credits at all.

With enough data the offer owner can calculate the average LTV for the users and can set an appropriate SOI payout.

Then he pays affiliates not only for the good users that are buying lots credits, he´s also paying for users that only sign up but never spend any money on the platform.

In other words: He´s losing money on such leads.

Here it´s all about the balance between buying users and free users that decides if the affiliate is profitable for the offer owner or not.

On push traffic it´s very easy to get sign ups but many of these users don´t spend money so that you often run into quality issues then.

To demonstrate it a bit better I ran some traffic to Rev Share dating offers so that you can see how much I spent, how many SOI conversions I made and how many of these users converted into buyers.

This gives us the chance to see it not only from the affiliate perspective but also from an offer owners perspective so that we can understand a bit better why it´s common to get paused from dating offers on push traffic.

For the offers I used TrafficPartner because I already worked with the company in 2006 or so and I know that their offers can be very lucrative when you can attract good users that are willing to spend money there.

When I promoted their affaire.com offer (under the Sexmoney brand) I had some users buying credits again and again, sometimes for several years so that you could make $xxx revenue per user.

I started with 5 different offers but ended up with 2 of them because they converted best and I also used a good WL for it.

As geos I chose Italy, France, Argentina, Turkey, Nigeria, Mexico and Brazil.
That way I had a mix of good geos like IT or FR and lower tier geos with high volume.

Now let´s check the results of the test...

Total push clicks: 5726
Total leads: 214
Runtime: 04/10/2021



The SOI conversion rate was really nice but the stats are still completely red so let´s also check the other side, the affiliate network.



As you can see the 214 SOI signups resulted in only only 2 paying users, one from MX and one from TR.

Total revenue from these 214 SOI conversions is €2.51, that´s roughly $2.99.

I spent $95.33 on these campaigns so total loss was about $-92.34.



When I would run these campaigns with good SOI offers I would have much better stats but the offer owner would make losses.

99% of these conversions happened on only one day, the rest are late conversions.

Now imagine you are an offer owner and few thousand affiliates promote your offer and end up with such results.

As an offer owner you just have to be stricter in terms of quality, otherwise you risk to lose lots of money on sign ups that will never spend any money at all on the dating website.

In the end it´s not even that much about dating as vertical itself, it´s rather about how the users are monetized.

Of course it´s still possible to run dating on push and when you get it working it can be very profitable but more often you have to deal with quality issues so I hope it helps a bit to understand better why dating on push often leads to quality issues.

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Excellent post, thanks for sharing

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Thanks for this twinaxe!

It confirms my experience with dating and push traffic to the T. Very easy to get SOI leads, but the quality mostly sucks.

Based on the info I have from affiliate networks, this is the biggest problem with the dating vertical.

I'm wondering why it's the case... maybe the notifications with a hot lady included are too tempting and users signup like crazy, then when they realize they ended up on a dating sites, they lose interest.

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I guess it´s somewhat similar to what happened to pay sites.

Nowadays users are just used to get everything for free.

Most users who sign up on dating websites are probably not even interested in real meetings, maybe they wouldn´t even dare to meet a real girl.

They probably just want some chats with hot girls to boost their self esteem or they want hot pics from girls.

When they realize that they have to pay for any of these they just leave the platform.

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Actually, I think that the main reason that kept dating sites afloat is the "live" factor. All the adult content that's been pre-recorded is available for free on the net, in one form or another. But you cannot really record a live experience, talking to someone or meeting in real life... that's why live cams still generate a lot of revenue too. The reason will be somewhere else, especially since this isn't the case with all the traffic types out there, push seems to suffer from this the most.

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Great post Twinaxe, thanks for sharing!

Sending quality traffic as an affiliate running dating campaigns can be challenging. It's always about finding the magical combination between what is working for the affiliate and what is working for the advertiser in the backend.

However, there can be quite a difference in push traffic that is 1. bought from generic push sources and 2. push traffic that is gathered on an adult related pre-lander or landing page.
In the first case, the users can't be targeted on gender and the chance that they have genuine interest in finding a partner is a lot smaller.
In the second case, there is a big chance that the users already showed interest in adult related content or clicked on a banner saying: ''Find hot girls in your area'', before they opt-in to the push database. This will create a database with a majority of male users, that are actually looking for a partner.

If you are an affiliate running dating and you build a push database that you are re-targeting on a later moment, there is a bigger chance that the quality actually works out in the backend of the advertiser.

As Matuloo mentioned, the notifications are mostly triggering messages that get pushed in your face to get the CTR up. Once the user goes through the flow, finds himself in the platform and notices that they need to pay, they will lose interest. If the push messages are actually saying what the product is about, there is a bigger chance that the quality in the backend will increase. However, it will certainly decrease the CTR on the push notifications and with that the campaign performance for the affiliate.

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Yup, I was always a huge believer in sites like affaire.com, MDH, Amateurcommunity and so on because users can be in contact with the girls there and even request own = unique stuff.

BigBazookaJoe: "Hey babe, can you write my nick on your tits and make a pussyshot with a note of my nick?"
DrippingBunny69: "Sure honey, can do it for xxx credits :*"

Yes, it´s really strange especially since push usually is good for a huge variety of verticals and also good for CPS offers.

Also strange is that on porn tubes banners for dating websites are still doing strong and although the banners are on free tubes the quality is still pretty good for the dating sites later.

Completely agree with it.

Maybe it would also be a nice topic for a case study, promoting dating offers on mainstream push sources with some adult inventory vs push siurces focused only on adult.

I also have a little stats update for all of you.

As I already said, good users can bring money for very long time so when you run rev share you can´t judge solely by the initial performance.

Most users will never buy anything on the websites but the ones who buy often do it over a longer timeframe so that after some time the stats can change quite a bit.

And that´s why I want to share the update with you.



I had one paying user in TR and this one user had 3 recurring purchases now that result in €15.88.

The user signed up to the dating website on 04/10 and did nothing for few days.

Then starting on Tuesday he bought credits or whatever for 4 days in a row.



You see, he first bought 2 cheaper packets, then 2 more expensive ones.

I wouldn´t be surprised when I see another sale later today as well.

These are the users the offer owners (and of course we affiliates as well) want to have.

Unluckily it´s only 1 user out of 216 conversions.

Few more of such users would already be enough to bring pretty different stats but unluckily you never know if or when you can get such paying users so that you would have to pay lots of upfront money without any guarantee to earn it back longterm.

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Should just setup chat bots, aka like Ashley Madison.

Golden post @twinaxe, really appreciate the experiment.

I've conducted similar but for a different vertical, and once you build trust you can ask for the backend sales to also be passed back. Little tip for building lasting campaigns

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One more update.

As I already said I wouldn´t be surprised when I see another sale later today as well.

Guess what, it´s not only one more sale from that user but three new sales.



That´s €32.94 revenue already from only one paying user.

This is also a pretty good example why rev share can be very rewarding when you can get more of such users.

But again, by far most of the users won´t be that good so you need to compensate many non paying users with the paying users and when you can´t bring good enough quality = less free users/more paying users it mostly won´t work.

Unluckily one these lucky hits here and there are not enough for a real winning campaign.

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Nice, this one user can possibly pay for the whole experiment

I have seen all kinds of "hardcore spenders" on revshare. Some people can get really wild on live cams for example. But even with standard subscription based paid membership sites, some users stay for years and keep on renewing. I've seen users stay for years, I think the longest recurring member I have ever referred kept on renewing for almost 6 years, $15 commission per month for me, so that one user made me about $1000 ... if only I knew how to get more of these users

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It would be interesting to have a case study like that indeed!

Yeah indeed, that's the million dollar question, one big whale can make up for the whole campaign. It can be a gamble to optimise campaigns for the advertiser side. If they have an average value per buyer of €100, then they would like to see at least 1 buyer for every €100 spent for example. Then they have some form of security that the traffic sent is converting in the backend and, based on historical data, will work for them.

However, one whale of €1000 can be enough to make up for 10 buyers with a value of €100, so why not take more risk and go for the one buyer per €1000 spent. As we all know data is key and hoping for the whale to come in with a traffic source that is new for an advertiser is a gamble most of them don't want to take and that makes sense. That's why some advertisers are really strict, mainly because they are more risk averse. The more data an advertiser will have from a partner the easier it will be to decide on the payout increase/decrease or pause, because the advertiser will have more certainty about the future outcome.

If you are willing to take more risk, have enough budget and you know the value of your traffic is good and consistent, then revshare can be worth it. If not, then we would recommend to focus on SOI/DOI campaigns and build a good reputation on a brand to get the best payouts.

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We´ll see although this would be actually pretty funny

Yep, had few of these users at Livejasmin and MyDirtyHobby.

After some time their spendings dropped down but from time to time they still bought credits or whatever.

Exactly that´s it.

Setting the promotional cost based on significant stats is calculated risk.
Running with open budget in hopes that you catch some of these whales is pure gambling.

Definitely it can, this thread is not at all about rev share being bad or so.

When you have good traffic and a good offer then rev share can be one of the best payment models but for sure it takes more money to get it running properly.

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Thank you for this @twinaxe. Your content is always interesting!

I had similar situations where I knew that the advertiser was not going to be happy with the quality.
These are some strategies I've tried in the past with success:
- Run the campaign with very low volume so it won't raise a red flag to the advertiser.
- Send also some traffic from good sources (like Google Ads high intent traffic if it's possible to advertise there, or email)
- Be up-front with the advertiser and negotiate a lower CPL. Tell them that your quality won't be the best and negotiate to adjust the CPL to the performance of your traffic.

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Which one worked best for you?

If you can still make the campaign work with option three, that would be the way to go I guess. Especially, if you are looking to build a long-term relationship with an advertiser. Else you go for the crash and burn, but it can be exhausting in the long run haha.

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Thank you

I also think a really important factor here is the affiliates goal.

Longterm thinking: Eat some losses in the beginning, work close together with the advertiser, reap benefits later for long time.
Shortterm thinking: Run all SOI offers you can find, make profit as long as it lasts, when you get booted for low quality move on to next offer.

The second approach can also work for some time but the problem is that you not only risk to get paused from offers again and again.
When it happens too often you also risk that specific advertisers block you from running any of their offers or that the CPA networks tells you it´s better when you stop running specific verticals.

Btw, my turkish homie did it again



With this guy the whole thread runs in a completely different direction than it was intended but it´s great to have a prime example then to show why rev share can be one of the most rewarding payment models.

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Thanks for the useful information and for sharing the case!

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One guy in Turkey seems to have lots of fun on MilfFinder, 3 more sales since my last post

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So he has basically paid for the entire test at this point?

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Nice, couple more purchases and the test has been paid for. It might be a good idea to run this for some more to see if you can catch a few more guys like this one

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And one more

Unluckily no

I did run some more traffic to TR but didn´t get a paying user again.

Although this kind of user is a wet dream when running rev share it´s also pure gambling when you try to catch more of these.

It´s definitely a lucky hit but unluckily it´s not the norm, better would be to have ongoing influx of paying users with lower LTV than this one but therefor more stable.

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Interesting thread, we also sell a ton of push dating traffic and find typically it's more profitable to sell this traffic on a SOI basis but the age all question... "will it back out for the buyer".

I think $100 is really not enough to make any lasting decisions on if this is a make or break campaign. More data would be helpful :-)

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Yep, that´s what I mean with this "And here we come to the crux: How do we define if a offer is good?".

I also prefer to run dating on SOI and when I see it just from my side there are many great offers out there.

But just because it´s good for me it´s not necessarily good for the advertiser as well.

Well, it was never meant to be an ongoing campaign.

The goal was just to show why SOI dating offers often result in quality issues for exactly the reason above: Good for affiliate, bad for advertiser.

It´s not that much about the money spent on the test but rather to show how many conversions you can generate without any benefit for the advertiser.

Let´s forget the $100 budget and let´s also forget my Turkish dude for a moment, you can´t really calculate with such users because they happen pretty random.

Then we are left with 228 leads that result in €0.24 affiliate revenue, at 50% rev share that´s only €0.48 for the advertiser.

Nonetheless he would have to pay us 228 leads when we would run on SOI and with such stats it´s just understandable to get paused from offers.

And here´s a little update from my premium user:

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Im telling you, this guy is going to pay the costs this test in full

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He´s coming closer to it, 3 more purchases

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Hehe nice, that's about $80 in commissions for you so far, am I right?

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Matej my friend, you were right and he really did it

All the time I forgot that the revenue is in €.

He did one more purchase today



And now the alltime stats for the test are

Revenue: €90.97 = $110.03
Cost: $102.18
Profit: $7.85

Seriously, I didn´t expect at all that the thread takes this direction.

It´s pretty funny that such a poweruser shows up because now we can see why adult on push often results in quality issues but at the same time we can also see why rev share can be very rewarding when you have the right traffic.

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LOL this is golden! I was kinda hoping this would happen, but I wasn't really convinced about it )

Run some more dating campaigns in Turkey!

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Hahah that is great news, congrats!

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He took a break for one day, probably because of swollen hands or whatever, but now he´s back

Same here, I didn´t expect it at all to take such turn

Tempting, when there would be more paying users with less spend I would test more but 1 paying user out of 34 sign ups is just too low.

It´s amazing that this one user then spends so much but one lucky shot is not enough to count on ongoing good performance.

Thanks

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Hehe, so he still didn't have enough? I wonder how much this dude is going to spend in total

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I guess the spending will stop when the dude realizes that it´s real money that he blows away

Then there will probably be some occasional purchases here and there when there is an evening alone at home

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Any new credit purchases?

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Indeed there are few more



Curious to see if it continues or if it stops because it´s new month and the guy realized that he spend much money for whatever.

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This is either a wealthy person who doesn't care about a few bucks or a stolen card that's getting abused

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It depends. The 3rd one can be the worst option if they are really looking for quality leads instead of cheap traffic, like in a call center where spending time calling people has a significant cost for them.
It's better to try to understand (or guess) what your client wants.

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Little update.

Since my last post the user generated another €145.68 revenue.

Not that bad, huh?



As you can see I also tested a bit more.

Got 279 new SOI leads and 17 DOI leads that resulted in only 1 new paying user from MX where my revenue was only €0.24.

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So whats the overall ROI of this campaing now? Seems like it was definitely worth the test

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Oh man this is just hilarious, thanks for the update @twinaxe

Makes me want to try revshare

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Check it out



But again, this was pure luck and nothing else so I don´t recommend it at all to try to replicate it
Rev share is really blessing and course at the same time.

Can be a total fail but when it works it can be very lucrative

For rev share it´s really important to have high quality traffic.

When you run leadgens then the risk it at the advertiser, you still get paid for non profitable traffic and the worst that can happen is to get booted from the offer.

With rev share the risk is at you and you only hurt yourself when you send low quality traffic.

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Indeed, scoring such a hardcore spender is not very common, but it does happen

Very true again, the right traffic can work wonders with revshare

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