Steal Pagan/DeAngelo's Empire?

I don't know if "stealing" is the right perspective or not.

Neil Strauss has himself quite a foothold in that market as well. As with any market, there's room for many "experts" simply because information presented by one person may not resonate with a particular client, whereas the identical information presented by someone else might click. Eben is a bit of a dry, straight to the point, direct guy. He's the Ben Stein of internet marketing. I don't personally like his style, even though he comes across as a fairly likeable person. I've been exposed to more of his business stuff with "Altitude" and "Wake Up Productive". While the info is awesome, well organized and comprehensive, for me it was a pretty hefty slog through the programs. He's just not an engaging guy on video.... to me. Someone else might think he's fantastic and love it.

Plus, think about your own buying habits in the areas of personal interest. Do you only settle on a single source of information and authority? Or do you buy more than one product and widen your breadth of knowledge?

I know that the world would be a pretty dysfunctional place if there were only one perspective and authority presentation on an individual topic.

I agree, "stealing" is definitely an inaccurate subject heading.

I've been in the dating niche for about 6 years (online, been offline for about 9) and have learned a thing or two about this market. We recently held fairly large focus groups to dig deeper into the minds of what men want and weren't surprised to hear from men ages 18 to 45 name off different dating coaches whom they admired. We heard the gambit: Style, Mystery, Jeff Allen, David DeAngelo, the Pickup 101 guys, Juggler, Tyler Durdon, and about 80 other names, many of whom we never heard of (don't you just love the Internet?).

This market is huge (it's bigger than the music industry in terms of sales) with dozens of new players joining every single day. When I first heard of some guy paying a match maker $35,000 to help him find a mate about a decade ago, I knew this was a market that had a lot of potential. However, most newcomers leave after a few days or weeks because in order to compete in a competitive niche like this one you have to do more than have a cute domain name and a brand. You need traffic and/or reach and you need to know how to convert that traffic, something a lot of marketers don't have the patience for in this niche.

You also need to know how to reach your propsects. Some do it using PPC, media buys, others use article marketing, while others use websites such as Match.com, AskMen.com, etc. to get exposure. One 7 figure player in this niche uses publicity from TV and radio and uses press releases extremely well. I could buy a domain name that has nothing to do with dating such as PurpleStapler.com and I could still make money in the dating niche because I know how to create marketing funnels and know which channels of distribution are the most profitable. It took a lot of time and investment to learn this. I learned a long time ago that no one is going to give you their profitable marketing mixes, so I went out and figured it out on my own. So I wouldn't lend too much weight to the domain name.

What Eben has been able to do is find a winning marketing formula, scale it up immensely, and then take that formula and apply it to other niches. The guy isn't just smart, he's incredibly organized and focused and pays very close attention to detail. If you want to get similar results be prepared to work your a$$ off.

@ Michael Hiles, your post was spot on. There's always room for one more expert since one person simply cannot appeal to everybody.

RoD

That is so true Rod
just a domin is worthless without the rest of the package.

you could sell the domain and make fat coin without doing any of the hard work ez$$

I agree with Rod. What's a domain name, really? It's not even the package. It the bow on the package. It doesn't get you traffic (most of the time) and certainly not sales.

Took me years to find out David D was Eben Pagan (I started out learning about women before internet marketing). I actually met him at a workshop and he says to me, "you know, David DeAngelo is actually my pen name." I was like, oh really?!

He's not just an excellent marketer, he's a fantastic dating coach. This guy's material helped me go from completely clueless with women to fairly competent (numbers, dates, relationships, sex, etc.). Yea, Neil Strauss, Mystery, Adam Gilad, and some others definitely helped - but it was David D who always came with the BEST stuff. That's what got me buying from him, time and time again.

Double your dating is not just a domain name. It's a symbol of quality that has had an enormous influence on men in general. Trying to steal that would be like trying to "steal" the Harry Potter series.

And even though I think the relationship niche is possibly the MOST saturated out there, one can still penetrate it with the right USP, quality offering, and marketing plan. Good luck.

Hey Sam --

Yeah, those dudes have nice sized empires going for them as does our own modest member Mr. Cortez .

But you know what, the market is big with plenty of sub-niches to build little mini-empires all over the place.

As Rod said, it's a lot of work as in any other field -- not just having a good domain name. I started about five years ago, and have built myself a steady income stream.

Jump on in ... the water is fine.

Actually, I'd love to go after that market. I studied all the DYD stuff and I'll be the first to admit I really needed it. YES... it works.

The thing is that after all these years the market really seems flooded with DYD copy cats. Some of the stuff is obviously a ripoff... some as a new and fresh approach and yes... I have some of that too.

I actually started working on a dating product for men about 2 years ago but after looking into that market I got really discouraged. Not only because the market is so full but because of what I saw guys doing with the stuff.

I have, however, found what I feel to be an untapped niche in this market but don't really have the time to develop it at the moment. Think you might like to partner up?

In this market you are going a lot on reputation. David Deangelo hit the seminar circuit hard to establish himself.

I have a friend who takes out groups of AFC's (average frustrated chumps) and teaches them how to approach and chat up women. It seems that a lot of guys get hooked on these seminars and group pulling sessions and sink thousands into it.

The ebook is just the beginning of the sales funnel. A lot of guys out there are probably making a loss on ebook sales and recovering profit from the back end.

In other words, its not just about a single product, its about a complete sales system if you want to be able to compete and have sustainable success.

there is more than enough space for you in the market. Make your product a SUPER VALUE product and you will have good loyal customers.

Make sure you build a list

I've been in this niche for five years and continue to thrive with new products and growing mailing lists. One thing i've noticed is that the top gurus in this niche do not appear to put a lot of effort into SEO. Even with top guys like Eben you won't see his site getting ranked by the big, obvious terms (i.e. "how to pick up girls," "how to meet girls," etc.) I suppose he, and others, drive much of their sales in other ways. PPC? Seminar appearances?

There are a few guys in this niche whose work I really respect. Lately, though, I've been getting approached by various newbies who claim to have written e-books on picking up women, and their products and sites are rubbish. If you're going to try to emulate a guy like Eben, it goes way beyond writing an e-book that recycles a bunch of information. Your products also need to be PRESENTED in a way that looks totally professional. This is where most wanna-be's fall way short -- poor presentation.