Top Traffic Sources for Adult Dating Affiliates

Dating affiliate industry is one of those immortal businesses that will probably never be pushed aside. It’s expected to grow to $6.8 billion by 2021 and it’s not hard to unlock the reason behind its rising popularity. It has worldwide character and a high number of available countries included, as well as impressive volume and a wide offer. But because of the fact it’s associated with “easy money” (i.e. it’s got a reputation for being one of the best ways to generate great passive income in short time), this niche has become highly competitive.

When it comes to affiliate marketing, you know traffic is basically everything. The more people you attract to your site, the higher the chances for you to earn some money. But it’s not just any type of traffic on which you should be focusing.

Traffic is the lifeblood of every site and the absence of it can trigger a chain reaction with which digital entrepreneurs are (sadly) too familiar. Poor traffic means a low number of leads; a low number of leads means lousy conversions, and lousy conversions can mean a death sentence for your business.

You’ll have to use only intelligent traffic, i.e. the one that comes from visitors who are truly interested in your website and therefore are likely to convert. This is especially true for the dating industry as you need to tap into those channels where people seeking online dating services interact.

So, we’ve come to a tricky part: how do you reach your relevant prospects?

With so many adult dating affiliates online, rising above the noise has become a fairly hard task but not an impossible one. You should always think about your business from the perspective of users: why should they turn to you, when there are hundreds of thousands of websites that are dealing with the same business as you? What makes you so special?

This time, however; we’re not going to explain how to build brand consistency, engage your target audience, or uplevel your content marketing to lure new visitors and retain existing ones. What we are going to do is share with you some of the most effective traffic sources to which you can turn and take advantage of as an adult dating affiliate.

Acknowledge the Power of Email

Did you know that emails convert up to three times better than social media? In addition, people check their email once a day, on average. Imagine what you can do for your business if you succeed at hooking their attention during this time.

It seems that email has no standing rival when it comes to generating relevant traffic. It has nested as one of the most precious channels for marketers and not without a good reason.

For starters, the most effective campaigns are permission-based, as people willingly gave their consent (i.e. provided their email address) to you so you can share your content or offers. There are a few tricks on how to build an effective email list:

• Make the opt-in field as simple as possible (don’t include any additional steps or complicate the process of subscribing as it will turn people down; use simple and intuitive design and a one-sentence copy to gently push your users towards becoming subscribers);
• Don’t be afraid of pop-ups (it’s true – people have rated pop-ups as extremely annoying but only if they are spammy and irrelevant; make your pop-up eye-catching and engaging with an effective copy so as to motivate users to leave you their email);
• Offer special deals to make users leave their emails (rewarding them, even implicitly, can go a long way);
• Understand today’s consumer behavior (let them have control of what type of content they’ll receive by segmenting your email list or asking them directly via survey about their interests);
• Invite people to subscribe using your social media profiles and encourage them to spread the word or recommend your website to a friend (simultaneously, focus on making the newsletters engaging and valuable, with a call-to-action clearly displayed);
• Create a lead magnet (in the specific case of adult dating industry, you can write an eBook on a trendy topic in which you know your audience will be interested; publish one chapter that will intrigue them on your blog and leave them the famous “to unlock all chapters, type in your email” field; or implement an element of game and make an interactive love test for site visitors where they’ll receive results by email);

Basically, with your opt-in list, you already have a narrowed group of people who are genuinely interested in your services. As an adult dating affiliate, you have to be clever enough to constantly be fresh and intriguing so that your potential customers don’t fly away to some of your competitors – just because they are more entertaining or resonate better with what they need or expect.

The Almighty SEO

Being visible and recognizable online is the key to generating more revenue as an adult dating affiliate. That’s where search engine optimization steps in; the proven way to generate organic traffic to your website. Most webmasters choose to optimize for Google.

The main goal of Google is to bring the most relevant, valuable, and original results to users. And how do the search engine crawlers recognize the relevance of your content? You might be shocked to hear that there are over 200 ranking factors at play here.

When producing content for your affiliate site, you should make users your top priority, just like Google does, but also optimize your pages to make your content indexable. Some basic SEO techniques will do miracles for your website.

Start by doing a keyword research (use Keyword Planner) and brainstorm topics that you feel your audience will enjoy. Factors such as low exit rate and low bounce rate count, as well as social signals (i.e. endorsement and shares on social networks) play their role when it comes to building your domain authority and climbing up the SERP. Try using keywords naturally and avoid “over-optimizing” your posts.

In fact, many affiliates choose to turn to black hat SEO tricks. Take Facebook cloaking as an example: it is a technique used by spammers that implies showing one version of the website to search engine crawlers or content moderators, while users are exposed to tons of ads or scams. This way, spammers get around Facebook ad policies and rules, while still generating traffic to their sites. Right now, Facebook is joining forces with other tech companies to shut down spammers and ban them from messing with users this way.

Important lesson here: never try to trick search engines this way, as it will backfire sooner or later.

Google is like the sheriff of the Internet: he keeps everything in order, works for the people, rewards the good guys and punishes the bad ones. The algorithm goes through changes and is continuously updated so that the most relevant content of value is showed to the users. If you belong in the group of smart webmasters, you know the importance of obeying the set rules and letting Google know you share its mission.

There are plenty of approved SEO techniques you’re welcome to use, so it’s far better to invest your time and effort into perfecting them and being patient for the results to arrive, instead of taking a shortcut and risk getting penalized.

Here are some of the proven SEO practices:

• Include relevant keywords in title, headlines, and subheadlines;
• Use long-tail keywords (they are high-performing for both paid and organic search, attracting targeted, quality traffic);
• Link to relevant sources and avoid malicious practices (e.g. link farming or paid links);
• Make the most of your social media (use sponsored ads to reach wider audience, try interacting with your target group, spark a conversation in any way you can, encourage positive word of mouth);
• Work on distributing your content (what good does an awesome blog post make if nobody knows that it’s there?);
• Aim for a featured snippet (it can lead to 516% increased sessions);
• Repurpose your content (update your old blog posts or turn them into a new format such as video, infographics, or Slideshare presentation in order to widen your audience);

Getting the Most Out of Media Buying

Opposed to earned or owned media, media buying is paid and it plays a crucial role in marketing.

Simply put, you buy advertising on a relevant website or network for agreed time period and budget, usually in a form of a banner. There are some undeniable benefits of this, even when compared to Google Ads. However, as an affiliate, you still have a great challenge before you: designing a landing page that will motivate those users who clicked on the banner to convert. And you might find yourself in a pickle when it comes to finding the right traffic source.

To avoid spending a fortune without any tangible benefits, try these tips:

• Choose the network (or a publisher) that resonates with your niche (this means you need to pick a high-traffic website that has a narrowed, relevant audience of the similar demographic you’re trying to reach);
• Never spend your money all at once (rather spend little by little, embrace split testing to see what brings you results, start by covering a wide segment, then analyze your ROI and perform further segmentation to drive the biggest profit possible; never rely just on your hunch – analyze real performance);
• Aim for optimized websites (i.e. those belonging to your industry and ranking for similar keywords);
• Snoop around the competition (explore what your successful competitors are doing and pick up the patterns; if they invest time and money in placing a banner on a certain website for a significant period of time, follow their example)

Taking in mind all of this, it’s also important not to view media buying as a sure gain. Buying media is not a shortcut, but a campaign that requires strategic investment of time and money – sometimes even mind-blowing amounts of money (some webmasters charge up to $50.000 for advertising space on their sites). Focus on developing relationships with those who own important and well-visited channels, as you can benefit from connections more than you probably assume. When you find a satisfying website to place your banner, negotiate the price and conditions. It is almost an art to find the balance between the price you pay and the performance of the offer you’re looking to promote.

Bonus Tip: Measuring Your Results

All of the mentioned traffic sources are legit and can do wonders for your adult dating affiliate site. To see which ones bring you the most ROI, however; you can use tools such as Campaign URL Builder to understand where your traffic is coming from.

It’s a great tool if you’re used to investing time and money into meaningful promotion of the content you produce. In order to comprehend the results coming from distributing your blog posts (e.g. understanding extraordinary performance and significantly higher number of visitors for a certain post), you need to explore different traffic sources and see what works the best for your site. Use Google Analytics to perform a content audit and with the mentioned tool – identify where your most relevant traffic is coming from and amplify your efforts. With time, you’ll learn how to adjust your sails to the wind and change the type of content (or the way you are promoting it), so as to get the tone right and woo your relevant audience.

Final Takeaway

There are literally dozens of ways to attract new site visitors to your adult dating affiliate website. Whenever you start crafting marketing campaigns, ask yourself the following three questions: who are you trying to reach, where and how are they used to interacting online, and what is your end goal. Embrace the trial and error approach and try to be organized. Planning goes a long way.