I need your opinion on writing a dating ebook (11)
I keep thinking about writing a dating ebook, specifically an online dating ebook. A guide to pulling hot chicks off pof and okcupid. It would be informative, funny, and inspirational. I guess I could put it in CB or direct market it myself.
What do you guys think? Is the market for this saturated? All opinions welcome.
Yeah there's a lot of money to be made in it, in dating advice in general... market is extremely saturated, but it helps narrowing down your niche to specific sites with lots of volume (POF/CUPID/ZOOSK/FB/etc..) so that's a great way to cut most of the competition, "directly".
Focus heavily on the introduction aspects of the process as well... this does a couple HUGE things for you...
1) It's the thing most guys are stuck on... if you think about it, if you're having trouble on a dating site, majority of the time its going to be a "How to approach girls and get the 'right' responses" issue, rather than majority of other things
2) Allows you to build upsell products off the main book, so a product on profile creation, being funny through messages, how to get the number and what to do with it, dates & meeting up, having sex that same day, relationship management, sexual techniques, managing multiple girls, your inner mentality and how to be a "natural" with women, types of women (older/younger/college/spanish/euro/asian/black/etc...)
3) It's the beginning... guys think in terms of process and systems, so giving them the foundation and a proper way of starting the interaction is going to peak their interest
4) Easiest way to give lines from scratch... and what I mean by that is... you don't have to really develop a backstory when opening and starting a convo... but if you're trying to explain how to be funny or how to go for the #... you need to provide a back story with preconceived notions and "fake" convo to convey what type of interest level the girl is at... which can be a lengthy topic, which is why it's perfect for its own product... ie.. a girl who is very responsive and talkative in the message only requires a simple: what's your number we should speak more on the phone and get to know each other better... vs a girl who is less responsive will require more tending to and you'll have to hit on other points of the convo, etc...
So to sum up... focus on the intro mainly, elude to the other topics, then upsell them on those topics later on.
Hope that helps provide some kind of structure! ;-)
-D
dont waste your time. spend your time selling shit people are ALREADY buying. Selling online dating stuff isn't a cakewalk and the market is pretty small.
Originally Posted by dconstrukt
I would argue the fact that the market is TOO small... but I guess it's just based on personal experiences... In my experience it hasn't been HUGE, but it wasn't small either.
Running much marketing and being behind the scenes in the PUA industry 11 years: here is my distilled wisdom in a nutshell: It's not worth it.
Here is why: There are 2 types of guys who you can target for ebook advice: People already in the PUA community and people who are not. People who are not in the community also have an ego. No guy likes to admit his ass sucks with women and that he hasn't gotten laid in a long time, and that the women that he manages to scrape by are trolls. Cognitive dissonance is a powerful thing. It isn't till they hit this threshold of something so horrible (in their world) of their GF cheating on him playing him out or something where he orbits and chases a girl while being asexual for 7 years and she finally can't milk him for any more favors that he gets bitter and gets the impulse inside to change.
Then he will go online and type in phrases like how to be a player, how to get a girlfriend, etc. These properties are rampant with David Deangelo's and other people with 5-10 million dollar marketing budgets. They gladly spend $100 on adwords for a $17 ebook on the front-end because they have such an exhaustive back-end with autoresponders and everything. Thus, another normal person becomes a "PUA" and enters the community.
From then on, he'll read more and more, and based on his personality and buying into marketing hype, he'll join a cult--err school of seduction. Whether it's RSD, Love Systems, Speed Seduction, whatever garbage is being pushed out there, he will identify with a sect and then become a lapdog. He'll consume content at the speed of light yet oddly enough still be terrible with women. He'll realize there's something fundamentally wrong with him, then look for the answers, which all too many of these jokesters try to offer. Carlos Xuma probably has the most hilarious garbage, with some meyers briggs female ripoff psychological babble that is a great piece to read and then logically rationalize that it'll help you get laid (as if everyone who was good with women had to know this shit lol). I think he's probably the only seduction guy to push diet or some other rebill vertical on the backend.
Cults are funny things, and people bash on each other all day in the PUA community. This is the reason if you target people already in there as a no-name dude, you better not only be a casanova x100 + have the ability to self actualize and articulate what you're doing so that others can model you.
So in a nutshell: If you want to target new people with your advice, you're competing with million dollar marketing budgets of people who've been doing this for awhile. If you want to target the actual niche of people already in it, you're dealing with a brainwashed dolt and have to convince someone who really believes all these jokes and gimmicks and lines are making him a more effective seducer that you are a more effective guru for him.
Originally Posted by dubbsy
Originally Posted by brodgers
I actually have consumed extensive amounts of material myself, and it has helped me become a better person. I don't know who you worked with, but I really liked David D's cerebral, analytical approach, and all the books he recommends that have nothing to do with women, but more with achieving your potential, becoming successful, getting your life together, etc. On the other hand, someone like Mystery outlines a foolproof method to go from A to Z with women.
The reason I want to write this book is because I see something missing - I can create a better guide to getting women online than the vast majority of what's out there. It's going to be a lot of work, that's why I created this thread, to kind of think out loud. Like you say, I think I would mainly be targeting newcomers because those who have already been converted to a certain pua religion are hard to convince. But then again all they do is buy more material to read. Perpetually.
Here's the reason why I believe there is a vast market for this:
1. Online dating is growing furiously.
2. I created a fake female profile on pof, just to see. I got 150 "hey how are you" per day. Those guys have a long way to go, and they need a cult..err.. a book to read.
yeah most of the online stuff out there is pretty outdated. I think David Wygant has something, some others I think Adam Taste and some dude Blackdragon have a couple as well. You could try to capitalize on that end of things, as some of them like net2bed still advocate Yahoo personals which is defunct now.
By the way I wasn't trying to discourage you from doing such if you wanted to, I was merely stating that you have a lot of competition if you go for either traditional pickup niche, and the target audience is really limited. In the end, you're selling people vaporware. People are buying your shit without even having ever seen it. It's not like a grocery store. Getting someone to pull out their credit card to buy something they haven't even seen is one of the most difficult things in the world to do. Most AM you're just measuring EPC's, running targetted traffic to offers that already prove they convert. When you need to be the person creating the converting offer, you're in a whole different world. Yeah sure go read cashvertising, scientific advertising, ogilvy, halpert, and the old school direct response hard hitters but actually writing engaging and most importantly CONVERTING copy is a whole different world. There's a reason most decent copywriters do 20k upfront and %profit royalty. If you want to get into video salesletters etc like on clickbank etc then your variables jump up even more exponentially as you need an engaging actor or person who will transfer his enthusiasm and your copywriting and make it his own and then funnel it to your prospect... not to mention shooting the thing, post production, etc etc.
Then you need to design a high converting shopping cart, set it up as a 2 step order process, create multiple segmented lists of hot leads that almost bought and regular leads, and then maintain your list and move leads that convert from leads to buyers into the buyers list so they don't get your autoresponders. 1 click Upsells? Easiest is to just make a physical version of your book and then offer it as the first upsell for a good 60-70% ROI on cost. That would also require you to setup your book in createspace, get proofs made, shipped to you, then bulk purchasing them, then finding a dropshipper compatible with your shopping cart that can fulfill these upsells so you're not running to the post office 3x a day, etc. you'd have to be a fool not to offer monthly continuity, and so you'd need to create content to pace each month, master the audios etc etc.
In short, there's a reason most affiliates stay affiliates, all this shit is way more work than most people can handle. What I described is maybe 40% of the process of creating your own highly converting offer and banking off it. But this is also the reason if done right, you can give 200% commissions to your affiliates on the front-end offer and let them brag about how they are making 300% ROI off your $17 front-end, while you laugh your way to the bank with an Average Lifetime Customer Value of $490+. And this is just Eben Pagan (David Deangelo), who albeit a brilliant marketer who had first mover advantage, turned a simple ebook into a $30 million/year business
ok, lemme break this down for you guys....
1. eben got in when ad costs were SUPER low... you aren't gonna get traffic like he did for that cheap anymore.
2. eben had a RIDICULOUS backend.... thats why he was able to offer the commish... plus when you're one of the only guys in the game, its easier to get affiliates. His affiliates were high traffic websites he has exclusive deals with. (i.e. you ain't getting your shit on there)
3. you aren't gonna make something better than all the stuff out there... especially if its about online dating. We have national press, aka PROOF... without that dude, you're FUBAR. In fact, I think, without a connection to dyd as far as getting traffic from them, you're very screwed in this market... i see it all the time.
4. A guy is gonna buy your stuff vs mine, wygants, mysterys, puatraining, vins, xumas etc? I don't see that happening... in fact, i see ppl trying all the time and giving up because the niche is not as easy as you think. Ppl only hear eben $20mill a year and think they're gonna be rich putting out some crap guide.
5. Shit, in the last 3 months my shits been ripped no less than 4 times.
forgot to tell you... (so you don't think i'm talking outta my ass) i've been in the dating/pua niche since almost day 1 (started selling in early 2005)... created the first online dating program back then... its still selling strong almost 8 years later, so i know wtf i'm talking about. We hit #1 in dating on clickbank in Dec.... and trust me... i wish it was #1 in fitness or IM. :-)
my point in all this is this.... you're much better taking that time and going into a bigger niche that's got more affiliates, a bigger group of people, and are already used to buying stuff (investing, fitness, health, money, etc).
Yeah it's crazy to think you'll do David D #'s.... as already mentioned he was basically in at the ground floor... idk which companies you guys have all worked for/own, so I can't speak on your products or experiences... but when I worked for Love Systems... that company made back, to the tune that their instructors were easily making low to mid xxx,xxx a year... but their main income was through seminars, and I'm pretty sure we were the most expensive in the industry.
Their ebooks sold reallllly well also, when we did the Phone and Text Game launch, it presold $100,000+, and it's Day Game presold somewhere around there too. They're making a Online Dating version, at least last time I knew I've been gone for about a year and a half now, but the main thing is that they have a HUGE following, so building that up will be your biggest asset and challenge.
If you do go this route... transparency is going to be huge, get on twitter and fb, the forums, youtube, show videos of your POF account or something, show tactics on videos, etc... and really explain how you've been to all those companies and taken the best part of each and disgarded all the fluffy shit that didn't work, it will be a hard task to do but could be worth it if you do it right.
Bottom line is that I know people in the PUA industry who do upper xxx,xxx a year and I know people who do x,xxx a year, so there's potential, but as the guys have said you're going to have to work crazy hard, and there's a greater than 50% chance that your effort if put towards a larger niche will pay out more. But I'm not going to say that there's no potential especially seeing it first hand within my own dating coach life, it's just a lot harder now that it was ever before...
Thanks for the replies guys. If I do this, it would be for the fun of it I guess, and just letting all my thoughts out and putting them on paper, so that I stop thinking about writing this book. I don't expect to make nearly as much as David D. What I would like to do is invite all the legitimate masters in the field to contribute to the book if they will, then plug whatever products they want.
I'm happy to see there are a few guys here who have mastered the art of attracting women.
dconstrukt, I think I know who you are, saw your video with David D, and checked out your website. I love the bit with David D, very good stuff. I'm sure your program is very good.
thanks dude. go into a real market... trust me.... had i know this a few years ago, i would have done the same.
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