Millions of people seek life partners or one-night-stands online. In 2021, over 11 million people in the UK used online dating sites, and about 20% of Americans used dating services or apps. According to the latest reports, we expect this trend to gather pace in the coming years.
In their search, love-seekers may come across both free and paid dating sites and applications. Why do some dating platforms want them to pay? Unlike free dating sites and apps that are open to everyone, paid ones are considered to be of higher quality since they provide a wider range of handy features to their members, thus giving them a greater chance to succeed in dating.
The principle of traffic monetization on dating platforms is, of course, well-understood by affiliate marketers: they receive a commission for every lead (be it an SOI or DOI lead) or sale, when the client buys a subscription or a revenue share.
Now we want to provide insights into how it all works for users.
The two most frequently used models of traffic monetization are Freemium and Subscription. Let's go through both of them.
Freemium Model:
Assume a dating platform gets a lead conversion. As soon as a visitor turns into a user, they get 100 bonus coins, which they can use for chatting or sending virtual gifts to other members.
To start their dating experience on the platform, the user first completes their profile by adding a photo and some personal info. Some sites allow this at no cost, while others withdraw coins from the user’s profile.
Next, after finding a potential partner to chat with, the user can start sending messages to them, but every new chat will cost them 50 coins.
Soon after performing two or three actions, their balance will run out of the initial bonus coins:
In this case, and if they want to continue sending messages to the members they like, the user needs to buy a package of coins. They may either select the desired option each time they need to purchase some coins or opt to refill their balance automatically. By ticking the latter option, they won’t have to go through the same process each time.
Though there’s only a Visa payment option available in the given screenshot, more options are usually provided.
Using an internal currency like coins is just one of the ways to monetize traffic on dating sites.
Subscription Monetization Model:
The subscription model of traffic monetization has the following procedure: a visitor registers on the site for free, acquires access to limited functionality, and is asked to upgrade if they want to remove the limits, or gets a trial of the full version for several days. If they want to use all the site’s functionalities after the trial is over, the user must select a package and pay for it.
After signing up, users will be able to immediately start communicating with other members they like. Typically, they will have a few free chats, but to be able to read the received messages and flirt with more members, they will have to purchase a subscription.
In the screenshot below you can see various membership package options. It becomes quite obvious that buying a Full Membership for a longer period is the most cost-efficient decision.
However, the main income comes from recurrences – further debiting of funds from the card to automatically renew a membership. The user agrees to this when subscribing. However, they can unsubscribe from further automatic membership renewal in their account settings. Unless they do this, the site will charge the specified cost of package from the user’s card every month.
Other Payment Models
Some dating site users are married and share a bank account with their spouses, making it indiscreet to pay with the credit card their partner also uses. Luckily, this was taken into account by advertisers who have allowed for payment using Bitcoin, Ethereum, or other cryptocurrencies. Thus, cheating spouses can benefit from paid online dating sites’ features, and their beloveds will not suspect a thing.
Besides, there are some payment platforms, such as “Paymentwall”, that can provide full-fledged solutions to any dating site and grant the convenience of purchasing to their members.
It is common for dating websites to offer some exclusive features to their members, allowing them to increase their popularity, send virtual gifts, and enjoy other extra opportunities.
Since we are talking about the payment models that are common on dating sites, we should consider the issues of refunds and chargebacks. First of all, these two notions should be clearly distinguished.
So, let us clarify the difference between refunds and chargebacks: a refund comes directly from the merchant, and a chargeback happens when you are asking your credit issuer (or bank) to reverse your transaction.
Unfortunately, there will always be dissatisfied customers who will want their money back, so the task of all affiliates is to not mislead future customers.
Here are some tips on how to prevent this:
1. DO NOT promise anything for free – remove the word “free” from your ad copies and pre-sale pages. When the user sees it, they expect the service to be absolutely free when it is not. You’d be better off replacing it with “bonus”, e.g., “after subscribing, you will receive 100 coins as a bonus”.
2. Pre-qualify your visitors by age – for instance, you can try driving users at the age of 30+ to the offer, and those younger – to Smartlink. Normally, older users of dating sites are more willing to pay and use all the functionality.
3. Use pre-landing pages – adding your pre-sale page in the funnel and implementing the previous points will help you improve the quality of traffic you are driving to the affiliate network.
Why Both Payment Models Are Needed
On December 31, 2020, the EU issued a new regulation PS2D (Payment Services Directive 2). Its main provision refers to Strong Customer Authentication (SCA), a process that seeks to make online payments more secure and reduce fraud while increasing authorization rates.
In practice, this means that the financial institution which issued a credit card will ask the user to authenticate the payments they make, for example, by asking for a two-factor authentication code. Therefore, the standard subscription model could no longer exist since the use of recurring payments in countries where this directive was in force had become impossible.
That is why a new freemium model of traffic monetization was created to overcome that situation. If you want to try out our best subscription-based offers, please check these:
Flirttime.com and Naughtytime.com work perfectly in English-speaking GEOs:
AU – $6 web / $5.5 mob
UK – $3 web / $2.5 mob
CA – $3 web / $2.5 mob
NZ – $4.5 web / $4 mob
IR – $2.5 web / mob
What you should know before driving traffic to our offers:
1. We accept only males over 21 years.
2. We allow all kinds of legal traffic that doesn’t violate the corporate rules and policies of our advertisers.
3. Furthermore, we don’t accept any kind of fraudulent traffic, chat traffic, or incentive traffic.
4. Please note that traffic sources such as Email, SMS, Celebrity, Clickunder, or Popunders traffic are restricted by some advertisers. You must notify your account manager about such traffic beforehand. Otherwise, we reserve the right to withhold part or the entire sum of your traffic value.
Conclusions
We hope you’ve found this article helpful, and now you clearly understand how dating site traffic monetization works, both for marketers and users. Reap the benefits of our tips and start driving traffic to our offers if you’re interested!
This post was guest blogged by AdsEmpire.
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