opinion

Surveys Help Paysites Make Money, Drive Traffic

Surveys Help Paysites Make Money, Drive Traffic

It’s getting harder and more expensive to get members to adult paysites and dating programs.

Just three years ago, most paysites would never let you advertise in their members area unless there was some form of member swap involved.

Customers love to feel like they are part of your brand. They will willingly answer a few questions to have their opinion heard — especially if you promise them a reward.

Now, many programs offer up their members areas for banner ads and send out third-party offers to their email list in an effort to further monetize their member area traffic.

Enter surveys. You’ve seen them popping up on tube sites (literally) and appearing in banner ads more and more in the past couple of years. Surveys are another way of promoting offers with the idea being that a user will be rewarded for answering a small number of questions.

An example of a survey that has been running since 2014 is ThePornSurvey.com.

Program owners are embracing surveys because they:

  1. Engage their customers;
  2. Earn revenue;
  3. Give programs valuable info; and,
  4. Can drive traffic back to their sites as a reward on other surveys.

Customer Engagement

Customers love to feel like they are part of your brand. They will willingly answer a few questions to have their opinion heard — especially if you promise them a reward.

And the best part about engaging your users is that you can collect a lot of useful info from them. You can easily ask 10 questions, for example, and the majority of your users will happily answer them all. Our experience at CrakRevenue shows that longer surveys can increase conversion rates up to three times more.

The reason is simple: all thanks to a little thing called “sunk cost fallacy.” Once a user starts investing their time to answer a survey, the more they are unwilling to quit before the end.

Revenue

Typically, the rewards offered at the end of a survey will pay you a revshare, PPS or CPL payout for the free trial or discount on products and services.

In one test at CrakRevenue, a survey had accounted for 5.7 percent of a traffic source yet it generated 60.2 percent for the sales. Another test, a survey accounted for 31.6 percent of a traffic source and it generated 92.2 percent of sales.

Valuable Info

Here’s where things can get interesting.

Just a few years ago, it was difficult to get conversions on dating offers when buying traffic from tube sites without engaging the customers first by asking at least three questions. At the end of the day, the answers to those questions rarely played a factor in the selection of the dating offers presented as rewards to the user at the end. Most of the time, the offer presented had more to do with the users’ geo, connection type and device. This was not your typical survey-reward scenario.

These days, surveys are a lot more sophisticated. When implemented correctly, you can choose to ask users meaningful questions, and depending on the answers, you can either serve them rewards that are tailored to their answers, or learn what you can offer your members in the future.

Let’s take an example of an adult video-on-demand site that may ask a few questions to their members.

Normally, the first question is gender. From there, males are typically presented with different set of questions than that of females.

In this example, let’s assume you asked questions that help determine that you have a majority of males age 35-44, physically active, that like to spend time outdoors and are interested in exploring virtual reality.

You could immediately offer as a reward — a free trial on supplements, a discount on tactical flashlights and a free trial on virtual reality site. If you do this correctly, you may see that you can earn revenue on multiple offers to the same user.

You can even decide to email offers to your members with corresponding offers to their interests — and they do not have to be adult related.

Drive Traffic

Working with partners that create surveys can be rewarding for VOD sites and dating programs as well. If you can make a deal and offer your site as a reward in other surveys, you end up driving quality traffic back to your site.

Survey Delivery Methods

Most surveys are delivered as popunders. Occupying banner space and tabs in member area spots are just as popular and effective.

Optimization

As with all digital marketing, you need to constantly test each sales funnel. A/B test different headlines, questions, colors, etc. The payoffs are worth it.

In one of CrakRevenue’s A/B tests, adding one simple sentence at the end of the survey led to a 45 percent increase in conversions! The sentence? “Thank you for answering the survey! Register now to get your free access.” Really, that was it!

Conclusion

If you are an owner of a paysite, dating site or an affiliate, generating and promoting surveys should definitely be part of your marketing portfolio to earn revenue and drive traffic.

Offer owners should also look to partners that have surveys and explore how their products might be best promoted.

Nigel Williams handles business development for CrakRevenue. He has been working in both mainstream and adult digital marketing since 2005. He can be reached on skype at nwilliams_248 or via email at nwilliams@crakrevenue.com.

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