For this idea you need at least 1 million dollars but 2 or even 3 would be a better position to get things going, sometimes people come on these boards telling that they need an investor because they have an idea that could make millions and millions of dollars. But when people ask for more info they just say they can't give more information and that means the end of their idea.
I don't have 1 million to invest neither do I have the time to do proper research on this so I will just wite down a rough description of it. It's a mainstream business novelty idea and I'm just curious to hear what others think.
Target market: online dating - mainstream.
Competitors today: none - this gives you a great position to become market leader in something that will become a very competitive market in the next few years.
Inspiration sources for this idea: Youtube and myspace + the general succes of online dating sites in general.
The idea
Sometimes the great money making opportunities are right in front of you and are also very logical ones.
Until now not a single dating website has given it's users the medium to present themselves to potential partners by the use of video, while today just about any person is able to make a 5 or 10 minute video of him/herself by using a digital photo camera, a webcam, their cellphone or a digital video camera. The quality of these devices is still drastically improving and will continue to do so in the next few years.
Today a profile on a dating site without a picture doesn't get a lot of interest while a picture profile usually gets a lot of attention, very logical because a picture just says a lot more than just words but imagine the effect of 5 to 10 minute videos where singles present themselves online to other singles. This is also the reason why so many people pay offline dating services a lot of money to get acces to a small amount of video tapes from the dating bureau's database so they could pick out a potential guy or girl to date with.
All these single women out there just like to get attention from men, they also like to show off themselves and hear from men that they look cute and so on, same thing goes for many single guys. Now what would happen if you give all these singles a easy to use online platform to show off themselves to other singles.
Everybody would be able to view all the video profiles (that's why you would need all that money to pay the huge bandwith bills at first) but of course to communicate with each other they would have to pay a monthly fee. It's all about reality so people would love watching all these tapes of other singles where they talk about themselves.
Investing:
The main cost would be the purchase of massive quantities of bandwidth + servers. The rest of your investing capital would be used for advertising and branding of the site.
There you have it, a rough idea to become a market leader in the online video dating industry in the next few years. It's a mainstream idea, perhaps applicable to adult and for some people it might be worth do to some market research on it.