Online dating has become so popular over the last decade that more people in the USA actually search for their soul mate online than they do in person. Some of the leading dating websites boast of hundreds of marriages every single day from connections that the website is responsible for performing, which shows that people are using online dating to find serious relationships and not just simple dates. As a result, it is easy to understand why affiliates can make a lot of money by referring sales to these sites through their dating affiliate programs.
How Dating Affiliate Programs Pay
In general, affiliates can expect to get paid commissions for referring sales to paid memberships at these sites, although there are some dating affiliate programs that pay per lead and per sale. Pay-per-lead allows affiliates to promote a dating site that has free sign up, and the affiliate will actually receive a nice commission for every free registration they refer.
Some of the highest paying dating affiliate programs do not pay per lead, but these programs are generally nationally recognized dating websites that are easily able to attract new members. Dating sites that are only paying per sale will often restrict the free members from accessing a lot of features on the site to encourage paid registration.
In addition to taking a look at the commission plans that a dating affiliate program can offer, it is also important for affiliates to be sure to use dating sites that are most likely to convert their traffic into sales. Since almost every traffic source has different interests and demographics, research into this area is a key strategy to succeed as a dating site affiliate.
Since many dating websites can be country based, affiliates will need to be sure they promote the right websites through the correct affiliate programs to be able to monetize traffic from specific countries. Many of the best networks will even have separate programs for affiliates in the USA or Canada and the UK.
Most dating sites charge their customers on a recurring billing payment plan, but affiliates generally do not receive recurring payments from referring those customers. Instead, dating sites offer a very large percentage of the initial payment amount from a referred customer. This allows commission rates to hit 100% for high performing affiliates in some networks.
Match.com
The original and still leading dating site is Match.com. Likewise, Match also offers one of the best dating affiliate programs in the industry. Although their actual commission payout may not be as high per sell as other programs, Match does offer the highest percentage based commission in the industry.
Affiliates who are able to refer at least 30 sales each month are eligible for a 100% commission payout, while standard affiliates will receive 75%. The earned commissions are limited to the initial sale that is referred. At the very least, over $26 will be earned and up to $101 could be earned from each sale that affiliates can refer to Match.com.
Affiliates interested in promoting Match.com have a choice of doing so through the Commission Junction or LinkShare affiliate networks. Both networks will accept US and Canada affiliates, although uk.Match.com does offer their own affiliate program through Commission Junction for UK affiliates.
eHarmony
Another one of the highest paying and most popular dating affiliate programs is eHarmony, which is based on the actual earnings that can be made from each referred sale. Up to $188 can be made from a single sale, although this means that the price for customers to join this site is higher than Match. In general, The members at eHarmony are typically looking to find serious relationships, so many of them are willing to pay extra to find similar people.
Their affiliate program is also managed by Commission Junction. They offer affiliates 65% of the initial subscription sale for a commission. This commission can also rise to 75% for affiliates who can refer more than 25 sales each month.
Similar to Match, affiliates interested in joining eHarmony will need to apply through different affiliate networks depending on their country. US and Canada affiliates can promote eHarmony through Commission Junction, and UK affiliates have a choice of using either the Affiliate Window or Trade Doubler affiliate networks.
Commission Junction
Even though Match and eHarmony are also available through Commission Junction, it is worth mentioning as another recommended dating affiliate program because of the variety of other dating websites that can be promoted through their network. This is especially important for affiliates who may want to promote more specific dating niches than Match and eHarmony offer.
Although there are some other good general dating websites in Commission Junction’s network, like Chemistry.com, there are numerous high targeted niche dating websites as well. Depending on the audience that an affiliate can advertise to, this variety of niches may be able to offer better sales conversions than other dating sites. There are literally dating niches for almost anything these days. Affiliates will be able to promote sites like AfricaBeauties, AmoLatina, CatholicMatch, ChristianCafe and even MeetingMillionaires.
Spark Networks is another site worth mentioning in the Commission Junction network. They are actually a network of a variety of niche dating sites that cover a very wide variety of topics. They are also one of the better dating affiliate programs in this network that offers a decent pay per lead commission in addition to sales commissions.
I have always loved using match for dates.