Is dating a viable niche for new affiliate marketers to enter? Sure… any niche is! Is it easy? No. Is any niche easy? No. What’s the best niche to get into as a new affiliate? Any.
So why are so many new affiliate marketers heading into dating? I think it just has to do with it being so prominent, especially with the amount of dating ads any single male would run into on Facebook. There is also a ton of information out about it on forums, blogs, and I’ve even written about it once or twice on my blog.
The problem with dating is, though, that most of you affiliates think that dating is like this:
This was the affiliate marketing industry about 2 – 3 years ago, right when I was jumping on-board. It worked for a while, and then, over time, I gradually saw my ROI drop from 100% all the way down to 10%. I’ve dropped out of the niche now, because I fell into other projects and niches that work for me. Am I saying dating won’t work for you? No. There are plenty of people making 4 – 5-figures a day with dating.
What are these people doing to make it work?
Besides split testing just about everything from ad images, ad copies, offers and landing pages, the real magic comes down to targeting. No longer can you target every single guy living in the US, UK, Canada, or the AU and expect to have low click costs, let alone a profitable campaign. The guys that know what they are doing target down to the 4-5 figure demographics, figure out how to get the best out of them, and scale it out to other similar demographics.
And you don’t have to limit yourself to the obvious. Try targeting through keywords like Sesame Street or something lame like that. Workplace targeting works, and targeting students from specific colleges has worked well for me in the past.
Don’t bitch and moan about how hard it would be to split test all these little demographics and think it would just be easier to target them all unless you like losing money. You’ll save yourself money, and might come up with some creative ideas that will fuel you into other great ideas. That’s what this new generation of affiliate marketers will need to do – get the hell outside the box and start thinking!
Still thinking inside the box too much? Leave your comments below, or join the forums so I can help you come up with some creative ideas!
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hey i recognize 3 of those images from my ads :)
5 figure tight demographics are working well and yielding 100-150% ROI
this time last year i could leave broad demographic CPC dating ads run on auto-pilot for weeks/months, but no longer. i have to constantly test new types of ads and images.
there will never be a shortage of single people online shopping for love.
Great post. It was easy to split test when FB allowed you to say "Hey Sesame Street Lovers" :)
Ah the Sesame Street adult dating days are over.
Serious though – great slap in the face post. Straight to the point, get to work people.
Dating is not an easy niche and making 4-5 figures a day is quite an impressive achievement.
When you say : "What’s the best niche to get into as a new affiliate? Any." I don't agree at 100%.
Not any niche works for anybody.
Some niches work better for people than others, and more important, you need to work in a niche that you love. Don't resell bikes if you don't like bikes ;-)
It's the experience that counts. Getting into any niche, is better than sitting here and just talking about what niche will work the best for you. It's the experience that counts.
I think dating's so prominent on POF.com because the average online dater is a member of 3 websites (we're usually one of them b/c we're 100% free). Also, our targeting system makes targeting the demographic of interest really easy.. so for example, single parent dating?
- US
- M or F
- any age (best if you split test this)
- Has children does not equal no
+ Search type/intent to further narrow down if you want serious people or people looking to date for fun.
The offer itself almost tells you who you should target.
Hey Justin,
Told you I would be back ha ha.
"Don't bitch and moan" made me laugh out loud!
I hate testing, can you do mine for me please :)
Great post, I think people go the for obvious way too many times, so like you said, it's better to think out the box.
And I agree with you, I think any niche can be profitable if you target it the right way and understand your market.
Sally :)
Nice post.
Quick Q – how many leads can you expect from a demo? EG: 1k demographic, how many leads would you be able to get? 10%?
Just asking because a 5k demo broken down in 5 groups and only receiving a couple hundred leads isn't really worth it.
Thanks.
Theoretically 0 – 1000
Typically: 5 – 25% of the people that click through your ad.
Too many factors to answer that question. Best bet, go out and test it yourself.
Those are numbers I have never tracked, although might be an interesting idea if you could implement it somehow into your own tracking system.
Also, a few hundred leads on 5000 people might not be a lot, but that's why we affiliate marketers love the term scaling. 50 campaigns targeting 5000 people = money.
Man, every newbie I talk to starts with dating and I tell them it was one of the hardest (depending on how you quantify that) niches I've had to crack. "Most tedious" is probably more accurate.
P.S. Look at you, Justin, you super-guru, you. I give you a lot of credit for sticking with the blogging despite everybody breaking your balls. I'm sure you realize this by now, but I think you'll go far with this.
CU!
Go micro demographic :P
Target acquired: Males 22 – 23 who like beer pong and halo – image of girl playing beer pong – "hey, wanna play some halo?"
haha
In all seriousness though, I agree, you can't bitch about the failing ROI on marketing when it becomes so saturated; just gotta move on and find the next thing.
The new dating sites will suffer, it's the old dating sites that controlled the majority of the market before Facebook came out that will survive. Now that Facebook is out, you can date for free, so its really killing the industry. Same with Porn sites, it's very hard to make money from it, cause there are too many free tube sites!
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