Make Money From Online Dating Part 1

In 2008 Americans will spend $642 million on internet dating (Jupiter Research); a figure which is expected to hit $932 million by 2011. The European market, with an annual growth of 9%, is predicted to reach $742 million within the same period. If we need further motivation to promote dating sites, top affiliates are earning in excess of $10,000 per week. Do I have your interest? Good!

Make Money From Online Dating kicks-off a series of articles designed to initiate new marketers into the business of dating site promotion. If you have never owned a website, are clueless on the subject of search engine optimization, and think link bait is used to catch a juicy bass, your eyes and mind have come to the right place. Sit awhile with me, kick-back with your favorite beverage (mine’s a Diet Coke or Bud), and let’s you and I talk dating promotion.

Choosing A Dating Niche

We begin by identifying the market demand we wish to target. I would suggest you chose a dating niche to promote in order to limit your exposure to competition. The less popular niches, with correspondingly less competition, are desirable from a marketer’s point-of-view because we have a bigger chance of getting seen by our prospects. As an example, I’m going to select dating sites for the elderly.

We must now do some keyword research to determine which words and phrases are in most demand for our niche. This will help shape the direction of our marketing efforts : choosing a domain name, optimizing our site, creating relevant content. Use the Overture Keyword Selector Tool, based primarily on Yahoo! search statistics for the previous month (a good free tool). Here are the results for the keyword dating :

1497182 - dating site
1247472 - dating
438647 - free online dating
415659 - dating services
339702 - adult dating
330368 - internet dating
322178 - online dating
176836 - free dating services
143822 - gay dating service
143737 - gay dating services
121867 - christian dating
113121 - free dating
64034 - speed dating
50665 - christian dating service
47295 - jewish dating
46682 - single dating
42971 - online dating service
35791 - senior dating

Notice senior dating got 35,791 searches last month. Now if we enter senior dating into the Google Adwords Keyword Tool we find generated a list of related phrases that we can download in text, .csv (for excel) and .csv. Create a folder on your desktop and save those keywords for future reference.

Choosing A Good Dating Domain

The best domains are easy to remember, tell us what the site is about and formed of a keyword or phrase. Gadget.com springs instantly to mind.

A neat tool for quickly checking variations of domain name is found at ajaxwhois.com. We’ll be using our keyword list for the first time now. If we try senior dating, our primary keyword, we find it is already registered. So we return to our keyword list, checking for any availabilities that meet our criteria for a good dating domain. SeniorsSingles.net is available but we want a dot com (since all names typed into the URL bar resolve to dot com, and we don’t want to lose possible type-in traffic).

After checking for only a few minutes, I’ve found a domain I like : SeniorsDatingSite.com (available now, as of Aug 19th, 2007). This is not a perfect domain because the singular version (seniordatingsite.com) is unavailable, but we’ll go with it for our example.

You now need to register your domain and I’d recommend namecheap.com

Hosting Your New Domain Name

The importance of choosing a good host for your business cannot be underestimated. If you know other internet marketers, ask for recommendations. I personally swear by webair.com who have fantastic 24/7 support, 99.999% uptime, competitive prices and custom solutions. This being your first site, I would choose a basic virtual hosting solution; you can upgrade later.

Setting Up Your Dating Affiliate Site

You need a website that targets demand for your chosen niche. No, you wont be setting up a dating site for seniors, but you must give your audience of prospects something they desire. Here are some examples :

• Reviews of dating sites
• A simple page exhorting the benefits of a certain dating site
• Advice and tips on dating and relationships
• A forum for dating and relationship discussion

To keep things simple, I suggest you setup a blog. Among many benefits, the beauty of blogs is they’re easy to install, free (get yours from wordpress.org), and the search engines love them.

What you’ll be blogging about is your chosen niche, how you’ll be doing it is entirely up to you. You could blog about your own dating experiences, interview people, review what’s happening at your favorite dating site and report on all the fun, provide dating and relationship tips and advice like an agony aunt or uncle.

Monetizing Your New Dating Affiliate Blog

Big dating sites tend to have big affiliate programs. The Friend Finder network, a leader in online personals since 1996, is perhaps the largest affiliate sponsor, paying out more than $500,000 per month. You can freely join the network and promote any or all of their 28 sites, one of which being Senior Friend Finder. I would recommend the Friend Finder Network to new marketers for a number of reasons :

• People know and trust the brand so sales are easy
• A diverse site portfolio
• Bi-monthly payouts via wire, check and epassporte (epassporte.com)
• Various program options
• Helpful support for newbies

After you’ve joined up, login to your account and you’ll see a numbered list of program options. You can earn up to $1 per click, 75% recurring on memberships and, promoting Adult Friend Finder, $85 for each and every member that signups up via links on your site. I would personally choose the per signup program because you will see larger earnings in a quicker time-frame; however, the revenue-sharing option is a better long term marketing strategy.

In the next article on making money from dating sites . . .

In part 2 I’ll go over the basics of blogging, getting dating traffic, and how best to monetize your new blog to make long-term income. You will then be armed with sufficient knowledge to begin a career as an online marketer of dating. Riches wont come over night but I promise you, stick at it, produce quality content that targets the demand of your niche, and you will see virtually limitless income-growth.