How to start adult affiliate marketing

Adult affiliate marketing is simple on paper. You send 18+ traffic to an offer, a tracking platform records who came from you, and you get paid when those people pay. The hard part is everything between those steps: choosing a channel you can actually run, getting approved, tracking properly from day one, and not burning your first month on avoidable mistakes. This guide covers that first stretch, using the Secrets AI affiliate program as the worked example.

How the model works

Four parties are involved in every conversion:

The advertiser. Here that is Secrets AI, an AI companion platform with AI girlfriends and boyfriends, anime-style and original characters, long-term memory, image and video generation, voice calls and an unrestricted NSFW mode.
The tracking platform. Secrets uses Everflow. It issues your tracking links, records clicks, attributes conversions and reports earnings.
You, the affiliate. You own the traffic: a site, a social account, a community, an email list or a paid media budget.
The user. They click your link, sign up, and either subscribe or buy in-app tokens ("Moments").

Your job is to put the offer in front of people who are likely to pay, and to measure which placements do that best. Everything else is detail.

CPA vs RevShare in brief

You get paid in one of two ways, or both.

CPA (cost per acquisition). A fixed payment per qualifying paying user. Secrets pays up to $70 per qualifying paying user, geo-tiered, with Tier 1 countries earning the most. Your affiliate manager confirms your exact rates.
RevShare (revenue share). A percentage of what each referred user spends. Secrets pays 40% lifetime on every purchase: subscriptions, renewals, upgrades and token purchases.

CPA gives you cash flow now. RevShare compounds over time and pays more on users who stay. Some competitors cap RevShare: OurDream, for example, limits its 40% RevShare to six months per referred user (published on their site, November 2026). Secrets does not cap it.

If you are new and unsure, start with CPA on paid or fast-moving traffic and RevShare on audiences you own. A hybrid of both is available on request. The full breakdown is in CPA vs RevShare.

Pick one channel, not five

Beginners fail most often by spreading thin. Pick the one channel where you already have an advantage and stay there for at least a month.

If you have...	Start with
A site with search traffic, or writing skills	SEO and content
Comfort on camera or with editing	Short-form video
An established account on a community platform	Reddit or Discord
A testing budget and patience for data	Paid native, push or popunder
An existing site with unsold ad slots	Remnant inventory replacement
An opt-in list of adults	Email

Two questions decide it. First, can you produce volume on this channel every week without burning out? Second, does the channel allow 18+ promotion, directly or through a compliant funnel? If both answers are yes, you have your channel. The traffic sources guide rates each option for difficulty and time to first conversion.

What an approvable application looks like

The Everflow application takes about two minutes, and applications are usually reviewed within 24 hours. Incomplete applications are likely to be declined. The reviewer wants to know three things: who your audience is, where the traffic comes from, and how you plan to promote.

A weak application says: "I do social media marketing and want to promote your offer."

A strong application says something like:

I run two TikTok accounts and one Instagram account focused on AI and tech culture for adult men, mostly US and UK. I post SFW character creation demos daily and send traffic through a link page with an 18+ gate. I plan to tag each account with its own sub-ID and test CPA first.

You do not need large numbers. You need specifics. If you are brand new and have no traffic yet, say so and describe exactly what you will build. Honest and specific beats vague and inflated.

Before submitting, make sure:

Your traffic source is one the program accepts. Paid social, display, native, push, popunder, SEO and content sites, short-form video, communities and opt-in email are all fine.
Your plan contains nothing that breaks the rules: no incentivized clicks, no misleading creatives, 18+ audiences only.
Your contact details are reachable. Your affiliate manager will message you after approval on Telegram, email or Discord.

A simple 7-day plan

This assumes you are approved and have one channel picked.

Day 1: set up. Log in to Everflow. Get your tracking link from your affiliate manager. Decide your sub-ID scheme before you send a single click (see tracking and sub-IDs). Ask your manager which model you are on and what your CPA rates are for your main geos.

Day 2: study the product. Create an account and use Secrets as a user. Build a custom character, try a voice call, generate an image. You will write better hooks and copy from first-hand use than from a feature list.

Day 3: prepare assets. Pick a landing page from the Creatives tab on your offer in Everflow, and pull banners and copy from the shared asset library your affiliate manager gives you access to. A light crop or recolor is fine; rewriting the copy or swapping the model in an image is not. If you are on a social channel, script five to ten pieces of content around one angle. If you are on content or SEO, outline one article targeting one clear search intent.

Day 4: launch small. Publish or start your first campaign with tracking links tagged by placement or creative. Click your own link once and confirm the click appears in Everflow.

Day 5: check the data. Look at clicks per sub-ID. A 5 to 15% gap between your source's click count and Everflow's is normal; 50% or more means something is stripping parameters. If clicks are missing, fix tracking now, not after a week of traffic.

Day 6: iterate. Double down on what got clicks. Cut what did not. On paid traffic, pause placements that spent without a single signup signal.

Day 7: review with your manager. Send a short note: what you ran, volume, early results, what you plan next. Managers can suggest creatives, landers and geos that are working for others, and they help more when you show data.

Do not judge the whole program on one week. Paying conversions on an AI companion product often happen after a user has tried it, so a few days of lag is normal. Most campaigns need 100 to 500 clicks before the first conversion lands, and a channel deserves 200 to 500 clicks before you kill it.

Common first mistakes

No sub-IDs. Sending all traffic through one untagged link means you cannot tell what is working. Tag from the first click.
Too many channels at once. Each channel has its own learning curve. Learn one.
Promoting a product you have not used. Users can tell, and your hooks will be generic.
Breaking platform rules. Posting explicit material on a platform that does not allow it gets accounts banned and wastes weeks. Keep public content within each platform's rules and send people to an age-gated destination.
Misleading creatives. Fake "message from a girl near you" banners and similar bait are against the rules and kill conversion quality anyway.
Quitting at day 10. Most profitable affiliates had a flat first month. The data you collect in month one is what makes month two work.
Not talking to your manager. Every affiliate gets a dedicated manager. Use them for rates, creatives, geo advice and tracking help.

Next steps

Compare payout models in CPA vs RevShare.
Pick your channel with the traffic sources guide.
Set up tracking properly with sub-IDs.
See all rates on the commissions page.
Ready to start? Apply to the Secrets AI affiliate program.