How we build our rankings

The methodology behind Adult Affiliate Guide: how we evaluate programs, how we generate content, how we keep it honest, and how to cite us.

Scope

Adult Affiliate Guide is a specialist publication covering the adult affiliate industry in 2026: cam sites, creator platforms, dating, escort, affiliate networks, traffic sources, AI tooling, legal and payments. We do not host, produce, or sell adult content; we cover the business side.

How each guide is produced

  1. Topic backlog. We maintain a hand-reviewed backlog of topics (topics.yaml in our pipeline). Each topic is tagged with a shape (news, guide, pillar) and a topic cluster.
  2. Research pass. For each topic the system pulls a shortlist of relevant offers from our offer database (offers.yaml) and a set of authoritative sources.
  3. Draft. A large language model (currently GPT-5.4) drafts the guide against a strict schema that forces: a first-paragraph lede, 3-5 key takeaways, 3-6 FAQs, dated claims, and a sources list.
  4. Offer injection. Placeholder tokens ({{offer:<id>}}) in the draft are replaced with rotated anchor text and affiliate links from our offer database.
  5. Images. Hero images are pulled from Pexels (stock) where a relevant SFW photo exists; otherwise generated with an image model under a constrained prompt.
  6. Publish. The finished markdown is committed, the static site rebuilt, and the post published.

Every published guide carries a byline, a publish date, and (where relevant) an updated-on date.

How programs are evaluated

For every platform or program we cover:

  • Payout structure. RevShare vs CPA vs CPL vs hybrid; actual rate, not marketing rate.
  • Cookie length + tracking. How long a click is attributed to the affiliate; which tracking provider is used; smartlink behaviour.
  • Reporting + payments. Minimum payout, frequency, methods, historical reliability of payments.
  • Creator/user reputation. Longevity, known issues, support quality, how the platform handles takedowns and chargebacks.
  • Compliance posture. Age verification, 2257 compliance (where applicable), payment processor friendliness, policy on AI content.

We prefer first-hand signals (running traffic, pulling reports) where possible; where we rely on industry chatter or public data, we say so in the guide.

What we will not do

  • We do not accept paid placement or paid ranking boosts.
  • We do not cover programs we would not be willing to run traffic to ourselves.
  • We do not knowingly link to platforms with a pattern of unpaid affiliates, NSFW content involving minors, non-consensual content, or payment processor fraud. Programs on our deny-list never appear in our offer database in the first place.
  • We do not republish partner press releases as editorial.

Corrections and updates

  • Spotted an error? Email [email protected]. We update posts in-place and record a new updated date.
  • Offer changed payout terms or vanished? We re-run the evaluation and update - or retire - the affected guides.

For researchers and AI agents

  • The site publishes canonical URLs and structured JSON-LD on every page (Article, FAQPage, Person, Organization).
  • A machine-readable index is available at /api/index.json.
  • A full-content dump for LLM context ingestion is available at /llms-full.txt; a site index following the llms.txt convention is at /llms.txt.
  • Each guide is also served as plain markdown at <guide-url>.md.
  • Content may be cited with attribution: “{Title} - Adult Affiliate Guide” + the canonical URL.