it's easier to promote SOI offers in dating, you run traffic thru your landing page, some people opt in, some people don't and that's the end of it.
But i have always wondered...what angle do advertisers use to promote CPS/high payout dating offers? do you they follow up with people via email marketing? how do they convince them to spend $100+ on dating app...or to buy something?
Is it even possible to do so using push traffic? Or solo emails/facebook wud be a better option?
First I wouldn´t try it on push traffic.
You could try member area traffic, should work much better.
PPS is just a payout option... whether you are paid per SOI or DOI lead or PPS, the advertisers uses the same monetization methods in the background, well most of the times anyways.
The advertisers use a number of options, for example:
- the membership fee itself
- ads in the members area
- ads in the emails they send to the members
- co-registration of the leads, so when they collect a lead they automatically subscribe the user to another (or several) dating websites/apps and get a payment for this from their partners
- extra credit purchases for chatting or whatever else.
etc...
Now the important part is to set the proper payouts, based on how much revenue the advertiser can actually generate from each member or lead.
Let me throw some random numbers up now.
Let's say that the advertiser knows that they can make $200 from a paying member on average. Some cancel after the first month, some stay for years... so they need to be running for a while to be able to set the real AVERAGE revenue per paying member. Now, depending on how much margin they want to keep for themselves, they would set the payout to something that makes sense for them. This could be the $100 you mentioned, which would leave them with $100 gross profit.
They need to use this number to set the PPL payouts too. Their data shows them how many SOI and DOI leads they need in order for one of them to become a paying member. Let's say 1 out of 20 SOI leads become a paying customer, so they can afford to pay you $100/20=$5 per SOI lead. DOI leads convert better, let's say 1 in 10 turns into paying customer, which comes down to $100/10=$10 per DOI lead.
An important thing to mention here is the reliability of the average data. With SOI leads, the risk of losing money is the biggest for the advertiser. SOI leads are easy to get, there is almost no verification taking place, they just get the email. This means that the average CVR from a lead to paid customer can vary a lot, from one affiliate to the next. That's why advertisers watch the quality of SOI leads very closely and that results in frequent quality problems for the affiliates.
DOI leads are better for the advertisers as a confirmation is required from the lead. This translates to more stable CVR from lead to paid and it's easier for the advertiser to set a reliable average. Hence, usually less quality problems for the advertiser.
PPS is the least risky payout option for the advertiser. In this case, they already have the credit card info, they know it's a real person signing up for their website. That's why they can offer such high payouts for these members. The advertiser knows that it's gonna take them several months to make the $100 back but based on their data, they know that CC verified members stay for some time on average, so they are willing to take the risk.
This is pretty much it, I hope this helped you to understand the process better. If you have more questions, just ask 
You can try to advertise dating services on quality sources like Google - first go for SOI leads and ask your affiliate manager what is the ratio leads:sales. When you have this data, you can easily do the math what is better for you to promote - leads or sales. Also, can try to make your own email list and build a trust with the subscribers (do not spam them with offers from day 1)