Who is the superior audience when it comes to the dating/love niche?

BA can take this approach. But it's harder for a new dating promoter.

You really want to niche-down your dating audience, and not just in terms of gender.

1. Gender.
2. Location.
3. Attraction Types.
4. Etc.

It's different to something like IM/ MMO.

In IM, I can write an e-book or publish a video about SEO or domain flipping or whatever and it will appeal to a broad audience: people who want to make money.

In dating? You can do that, but it takes a great deal more skill, and even despite skill, you'll be making more work for yourself than is necessary. Your audience? Looking for specifics.

1. A specific type of person.
2. Help for a specific type of person.
3. Specific location.
4. Upshot: very specific.

To add to that pile, the majority of dating offers have specific target audiences. A dating site offer, for instance, may pay out $10 but will scrub any leads unless they're from men who are over 35 and from American, UK, Canada, and Australia.

Upshot: if BA is new to dating, he can certainly take the broad approach, but he/ she will be making unnecessary work.

The first rule of dating promotion? If you're new - go niche.

Cheers,

Tom

Glad to help, BA.

Enough Room.

This is the deal.

Short answer: yes.

Longer answer: online dating, in its entirety, is competitive.

Most people are familiar with the three basic human needs: food, shelter, clothing. Those impact physical well-being. But in psychology, and in terms of a person's emotional well-being, we expand that list to encompass what Maslow called d-needs (or deficiency needs); one of which is belonging and love.

Without burrowing too deep into psychology, this is the long and short of it: the average person needs companionship.

Now let's turn to online marketing.

When you combine a fundamental consumer need with the opportunity, for the marketer, to satisfy that need efficiently and, in turn, receive acceptable levels of reward, then you will always have a situation of competition in the market.

Is dating competitive? Yes.

Should that scare you off? Hell no.

Some marketers actually seek out competitive markets because they understand that competition means the potential for high reward. That won't hold true all the time - if you have a short street with 3 Pizza Huts next to each other, it probably isn't a good idea to open up a fourth in that street - but the sheer size of the dating market (and all related off-shoot markets) means, in my experience, that there is more than enough room for new entrants.

Going back to your question, then: self-help in dating is crowded, yes, but due to the size of the market and the weak penetration points, there are no barriers to entry for any marketer seeking to run an efficient business.

You'll rarely find a marketer on a forum like WF who is willing to talk about one of his or her niches (outside the niches they are known, locally, to work in; such as IM/ MMO).

Reason being, they worry about saturation.

Point is, the fact that I'm talking so openly about one of my own niches, in public, and have published a book that partly deals with dating promotion, should hopefully assure you that I could care less about new entrants.

The online dating market is more than big enough for more marketers.

Those Needs.

Time for a crash course on how to approach online dating.

1. Figure out who you want to help.

2. Figure out what they need.

As I mentioned above, in reply to Steve's post, you can enter dating and cover the broad market. Should you do that? No. Not if you're new, no. And, as also mentioned, even if you are new, there are easier ways to participate in the market.

The trick - especially when you're new - is to adopt a narrow focus.

This is partly to limit your exposure to competition, but it's mostly aimed at removing barriers between what the consumer needs and what you offer to satisfy those needs.

What do I mean by that?

Let's say I forget all about narrow focus and, instead, I put together a digital venture that aims to help everyone in the market.

To achieve that end, I first need to know their needs, right?

Well, let me give you a handful of those needs (these won't even scratch the surface; I could write for the next 10 hours and not finish the list):

1. Dates.
2. Romance.
3. Love.
4. Marriage.
5. One-Night Stands.
6. Overcoming Shyness.
7. Better Health.
8. Better Nutrition.
9. Talking to Potential Companions.
10. Getting Out of the Friend Zone.

If you adopt this approach, you effectively seek to help Joe and Jane Consumer of every category. Your audience, then, amounts to Joe in NYC who wants a one-nighter, Jane in London who wants to overcome shyness, Joe in Manchester who wants a bride, Jane in San Francisco who's 84 and wants a companion.

Nutshell? You, as the person aiming to satisfy those needs, will find yourself in a situation where, to be a good supplier of solutions, you need to offer solutions across the board. Furthermore - the other side of the coin - the consumers coming to your business (all those different categories of Joe and Jane Consumer) must wade through all of your solutions in order to find (if they exist) the specific solutions that solve their needs.

Our 84 year-old Jane from SF would arrive at your digital entity (your online magazine, your Facebook Page, your Whatever) and would find herself presented with an overwhelming catalogue of information. Most of that information would be unhelpful to Jane. So we can consider those "walls" that get in the way of Jane solving her need. To solve her need, she would have to wade through all of those walls.

The kicker? The more walls you put up (of that nature) the less chance you have of Joe or Jane bothering to wade through and find the solutions you offer to give them what they need. And - from your perspective - this translates to a state of inefficiency. You lose money, hand over fist. Only an expert can overcome the issue; which is why I suggest newbies adopt the narrow approach to dating promotion.

Narrow Focus.

The absolute easiest and most profitable way for a newbie to enter dating promotion - in my own experience, having been at this for around two decades - is to promote dating services to a narrowly-focused target audience. (Randall was only half-joking, I suspect, with his post.) What this achieves is to remove many of those mentioned walls.

Two words: dating sites.

The average Joe and Jane will, at some stage, use some form of dating site in order to satisfy their need for getting dates, romance, marriage, or one-night stands. As a marketer, you can do very well for yourself by being the person who sends them to such services. You need to target the Joe and Janes who are ready to use the services. And you need to promote quality dating services.

In terms of affiliate promotion, you have 3 options:

1. PPL (pay per lead). These are free to Joe and Jane. It costs them nothing to register at the dating sites and you can earn anywhere from $1 to $10 or $15 for simply referring free memberships that take all of a few seconds for Joe and Jane to complete.

2. PPS (pay per signup). Joe and Jane, in this case, are referred to dating sites where they must immediately pay for membership in order to enjoy the services. Affiliate commissions are higher here - anywhere from $25 and over $100.

3. Rev-Share (percentage commissions). This is the same as option 2 for Joe and Jane, but the affiliate here will earn an ongoing percentage of whatever Joe and Jane spend in terms of dating memberships and renewals.

That's the easier route.

Nutshell: if you have an audience pool of 100,000 Joes, all of whom want to date a Jane, your job is to send them to dating services where they can meet their Janes; and, in the process, earn your affiliate commissions. I say this is easier because - primarily - you have the fewest number of walls.

But before you take this route? Decide - specifically - which categories of Joe or Janes you intend to help.

1. Is it Joe from NYC who wants to date larger ladies?
2. How about Jane from Oxford looking for the marrying type?
3. Or maybe Jane from LA who likes men in their 40s?
4. Joe from wherever who just wants a nice guy?
5. Jane from Liverpool who wants to settle down with another Jane?
6. And so on.

Most dating promoters keep it simple. And you can do that, too. They tend to target men who are looking for a specific type of woman. That's the norm. (Reason being: it's pretty easy.) You can start that way, too, or you can adopt an even narrower focus and carve out an authority entity in your chosen sub-niche.

That - in a nutshell, and overall - is the easier route.

Having said all that, you can certainly specialise in the self-help niches, and even use self-help content (through content marketing) to push not only self-help products but also dating services.

It's a big market. You can promote the dating sites or the services that help Joe and Jane get what they need beyond those dating services. Whichever route you take, start out nice and simple:

1. Figure out who you want to help.

2. Figure out what they need.

To get yourself earning money sooner than later, figure out which are the good offers to promote, figure out how you'll promote them, and figure out where you'll get the traffic.

Start small. Grow towards big.

Cheers,

Tom

I want to do affiliate marketing. Maybe after building a few assets and become an authority in my niche i will go ahead and build a product, but for now i really prefer to do marketing

Replace them.

Cheers,

Tom