Making money with affiliate dating site

I don't have experience here, but I would simply suggest that you should stick with monthly membership plans. In order for people to want to pay for "vip" option, they have to see TONS of value, which most won't.

My site is free but there's a VIP option. Not many people buy the VIP option, mostly the site makes money from ads (i.e. like PoF).

I'm about to change my site so that members have to pay to contact certain other members (a bit like with Skout). I'll see if it works, but if it doesn't I can have a rethink.

When you say "affiliate" dating site - how does that differ from any other dating site. What platform do you use?

It is not going to be easy to make money from such a site as there are way too many sites like this. You need to try a different angle if you want to make money from this. Try getting into a very specific niche for a dating site. All the best. Regards

Ricardo is right, you need to go 'niche' there is still a lot of money to be made with niche dating websites

That depends on your quality of traffic. But i would suggest to split test different pricing and see which one converts better.

Monthly membership is the best option as you will continue getting paid over the period the subscriber continues to pay.

Better to have monthly / quarterly / 6 months / annual subscriptions instead of VIP option.
The good thing about monthly subscription etc is that it will bring you recurring payments. Some members will stay on your site for months [I have experience with members staying on recurring payments for more than 2 years] Recurring payments which is the beauty of dating sites will bring you more revenue. Good luck with your site.

The truth - Very few would opt for a VIP membership when all they need is available free of cost.

I'm a bit confused here about the type of affiliation you have, but irrespective of the type, if you have some traffic that's looking for freebies [read reluctant to upgrade to VIP membership], you can monetize the traffic as follows:

Join Cj.com

In the get links area look for dating offers.

There are a couple of pay per lead dating offers and all the customer has to do is sign up on the dating site for free.

For every free sign up you receive $5-$6 depending on the advertiser you choose.

So, if you can have 100 people to sign up for such offers you can easily make $500-$600.

Here's a little twist - since those are free sign ups, route your traffic to a page that list both the affiliate offers. Tell them to sign up with both and you are offering this EXCLUSIVE service to them so they have a more diverse experience and its your way of thanking them for being on your site.

Personal Experience:

Dating traffic converts well if you route them to free offers. So using this twist even you get 100 people to sign up you make $1100 flat!

Hope that helps.