The Online Dating Side Hustle

• This one may top the list of 6-figure opportunities for you...
• 335 subscribers will generate $100,500 per year...
• 5,000 subscribers generate $1,500,000 per year...

The average most dating sites charge is $25 per month. The more narrow the niche market, the more you can charge, depending on whether that niche is a 'gating' element before someone will consider going out on a date.

Finding Your Niche

This is probably the most important thing that you'll do. Remember, only 335 subscribers at $25/month create a yearly revenue stream of $100,500. That can help you narrow the focus as much as you would like. It could be people who like pets. It could be seniors, college students, people of the same religion, or similar age groups, locations, or occupations.

Let me give you some examples that might get your thinking "out of the box" when it comes to niche markets.

For instance, if "love of travel" is what you want in a potential date's portfolio, then www.MissTravel.com might be the place for you to look for that 'special' someone. But it will cost you a little bit more. Their 1-month membership is $59.99. Three months drops your monthly rate to $54.99 and 6 months drops your monthly rate to $49.99 per month.

But these dating sites can get even more specific. If you’re into the “Sugar” lifestyle (sugar daddy or sugar baby), Seeking Arrangement is probably something you’ll want to check out. This site puts attractive women together with successful men (or women or both). The membership lengths are 30 or 90 days for a premium account which comes with all of their features. While women can join for free, a 1-month membership for men is $109.99. A three-month membership is going to be $96.66/month. That's it, or you can do a one-time purchase for 3-months for $289.99 which is really the same monthly cost as the 3-month membership. But, if you want to be featured, you're going to have to step up to their Diamond subscription. That's $274.99 monthly, with no further discounting. What does that buy you? If you are a successful man, the Diamond membership includes being featured on attractive member’s dashboards and a diamond badge also appears to help you stand out everywhere.

The bottom line is that you have to find a niche so that you don't accidentally end up competing with the marketing prowess of dating sights like Tinder, Match.com, eHarmony, and Bumble.

What Is The Income Potential?

Let's stay with the $25/month membership model to calculate these numbers.

Those are very exciting numbers, and this is before we start adding some additional paid services that I'll tell you about later.

Market Share of Top Dating Sites

You're probably wondering if those numbers in the chart above are real. So, I thought I would share how many people are actually using dating sites. The top 10 are listed below. Remember our goal is 335 monthly subscribers to get to a 6-figure yearly income stream. These numbers might surprise you:

1. Badoo — 480M Users.
2. Tinder — 300M Users.
3. Plenty of Fish — 150M Users.
4. Bumble — 100 M Users.
5. Adult Friend Finder — 99M Users.
6. MenNation — 99M Users.
7. Match.com — 96M Users.
8. Ashley Madison — 65M Users.
9. Hppn - 50M Users.
10. Zoosk - 40M Users.

You're probably saying to yourself, this side hustle just might be worth reviewing a little closer, so you're probably wondering where to find the dating software.

Where Do I Find the Software?

There are plenty of dating app clones that are available for you to look through. Or if you want to try to build it yourself, there's an option for that. If you want someone to build one for you for a one-time fee, I found a person who will do that on Fiverr.com with three options. And of course, there are several sites that offer clones if you Google "Tinder Clone" or pick another favorite

• To build it for free there's a drag-and-drop way that will give you a lot of flexibility and you don't have to know any code. It's called bubble.io and you can get to it here: https://bubble.io/ . As the site isn't very intuitive, after playing around, I found the best way to get started is to go to its guided lessons here: https://bubble.io/lessons. I guess if you're going to build a lot of these, and you're going to do really custom things with it, you can spend the time to learn it. Be prepared for upsells, that get you into a monthly payment scheme.
• The Fiverr model seemed the least painful, but there's a one-time cost for you to consider. Here's the link to that person: LINK. If that link somehow doesn't work by the time you read this, look for people with 5 stars who build Tinder clones. Here's a search link that will give you more choices: LINK.
• When you search Google for "Tinder clone software," you'll come up with an endless number of choices. From an initial search, this one seemed to have the best ratings: PGDatingPro.com. Their basic package is $490, and it looks like it's a one-time price, but I highly doubt you'll end up paying just that amount. So far, they've been very elusive on their pricing model, so beware of added charges to get it launched across multiple mobile platforms like iOS and Android. By the time you're done, you might have easily gotten what you need from the Fiverr.com person for $2,000 and that individual's Premium package.
• SkaDate is another software package that seems to be popular, and they are a bit more upfront about their pricing: LINK. Their pricing is shown here: LINK, and it begins with $999 and increases to $2,999 for their standard software. However, it can be custom altered starting at $11,000.
• And of course, WordPress has both plug-ins and themes that you can use if you have that expertise or know someone that does. Just search for "WordPress Dating Plug-ins" and/or "WordPress Dating Themes" and you'll find a lot to choose from.

Your Pricing Model

There are lots of ways to vary your pricing model.

• There's the Freemium model that was originally made famous by Badoo. It's free to go on it, but you can activate "Super Powers" or increase your popularity by rising up to first place in the search results by paying money. These are called "paid services." Tinder also has a 'Boost' feature that makes someone a top profile in the area, or the "Super Like" to let someone know that they really stand out. Other paid services can include access to multimedia content, mailboxes, messengers, or video chats, sending virtual gifts, and other features. By the time you get done, you'll probably end up spending around the average of $243/year, according to most estimates.
• The Subscription model means you're paying for a membership for access to the service features on a regular basis. An example of a subscription-based website is eHarmony. People can pay for a month of membership or for 3/6/12 and get a discount. You can also allow free access to limited site features, run free trials, or simply require payment from the very start.
• The 3rd model is a combination of paid services and subscriptions. This combination tends to work well if you allow people to exchange 100 emails within a paid membership period, as an example. When the member exceeds that number, they can pay extra to increase the number of emails allowed. There are really a lot of possible paid services: special gatherings or trips, virtual gifts, stealth mode, access permissions, elevating your profile in a search or becoming a featured member.

There are also several alternate ways to earn money on your site like adding Google's AdSense contextual advertising, banners, partaking in affiliate programs, and so on. You can even sell merchandise in an online gift store with flower delivery services, and so on. Of all these, I recommend creating an affiliate program with someone like Rakuten Advertising. Set your company up as a 'publisher' and you will be able to use their #1 affiliate network to build your site's membership.

What Are The Costs To Open a Dating Service?

A basic website can be set up for less than $1,000. That includes purchasing the domain and hosting it, as well as $60 to use a custom WordPress theme on it. You will need about $1,000 for dating software like SkaDate or $490 for PG Dating Pro. And to get a nice logo designed, you might try a site like www.Looka.com which gives you a lot of flexibility in design for around $160 for a complete package of logos. To publish it in Google’s Play Store for Android phones, there’s a one-time fee of $25. Putting it in the Apple App Store for iOS users will cost $99 on an annual basis.

But let's face it, if your plan is to compete with services like eHarmony or Tinder, or Match.com, you should expect to end up paying anywhere from $15,000 to $50,000 to have a website designed from the ground up. That cost would cover just about everything you need, but I'm not talking about building anything at that level for 335 people and a $100,000 revenue stream as a side hustle.

But you should think about having to invest up to $5,000 to start advertising online. It might be considerably less if you've been able to home in on a niche. Facebook gets pretty specific on interests, and you can set up your own budget. YouTube is another possibility if you can put together a video pitch that contains a 5-second hook, followed by a 25-second promise and up to 3 minutes of total content, in order to get them to click to your landing page on your website to sign-up. If you target YouTube content providers with 50,000 - 150,000 viewers to advertise on, you'll probably only pay a $1/click. And you only get charged if they watch the first 30-seconds. Try a small budget and a couple of alternative pitches in order to get a CTR (click-through rate) of 1.25 or higher. Basically, every dollar you spend with that CTR should then drive more revenue than the cost of the click-through. That means you can spend the money it takes to get to those 335 users you need - or well beyond.

What About Ongoing Costs?

That's going to depend on a lot of factors, like how many added "paid services" you have to manage, how much support and maintenance your site and app will need, your ongoing advertising spending, as well as some minor costs like hosting. My best guess is that it will range between 15% and 25% of total revenues depending on the number of subscribers you need to support. As you get more subscribers, that percentage should drop sharply as you gain economies of scale.

Summary Recommendations

If there wasn't readily available software around with all of the functionality conveniently?built in, I'd say that you might need some serious upfront dollars. But the ease of getting into this market at this point is just too good to ignore. And when you consider the opportunity as your membership starts to increase into the thousands, this just may be your lottery ticket.

The real trick is going to be the ongoing marketing and affiliate network that keeps your membership numbers steady or growing. For sure, you're going to get a lot of churn in your membership ranks. People will find their soulmates and you have to begin anew. That's why I spent a little time trying to go over the YouTube option. Like the software, if you can find a pitch that works, you're going to really score well. A good source of how to market on YouTube is provided by VidTao.com. Sign up for free and you will get a lot of daily information on how to make some great ads, as well as be able to spy on your competitor's ads.

Net-net, my vote is that this is a real thumbs-up from the standpoint of a side hustle. My wife keeps tapping me on my shoulder and asking, "Why aren't we doing this? It even looks like we'd have some fun!" So there you have it.

PS - I'm thinking of rounding up some of my friends from the venture capitalist & angel investor communities to run a "Side Hustle Accelerator Program." The goal of the virtual program would be to help you create your own six-figure side hustle from ideas like this one. The program would be similar to some of the incubators that I worked with in the past where business plans, pitches, go-to-market strategies, and the rest were worked on with mentors. There would even be some fun - "Shark Tank" - style where you'd present your business idea and strategies to the rest of the participants in the Accelerator. If that sounds like something you'd be interested in, send me a private note.

? Joe DiDonato, Side Hustles Newsletter - Edition #14