Million dollar idea - Business thread

[gfx3]

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.

[KRL]

Video dating services have been around since the 1980's.

[squishypimp]

its a good idea, but i think the myspace "social networking" idea delivers alittle more. why have a video when you can have a constantly updated webpage with video, pics, etc. with a "social networking" site you can also see peoples social interests, political interests, you can also see friends. how many times have you liked someone until you found out that you couldnt stand their friends? I have

[gfx3]

Originally Posted by KRL

Video dating services have been around since the 1980's.

True and have they been a success? Until recent the technology wasn't present to do something like this on the internet. But today it's available, the quality is not 100% yet, but it will be in the within the next few years from now. The downside of the classic dating services has always been the small database that these services could provide their clients with, the internet has changed this and mainstream online dating has been a huge success. Today there isn't such a platform because nobody has anticipated on this idea yet. What was a success in the 80's offline could become a bigger success today online. I'm convinced such services will arise in the next 1 to 3 years from now.

[Brujah]

Originally Posted by KRL

Video dating services have been around since the 1980's.

He mentioned that in his post, talking about offline dating services.

I think he's 100% right and this will be where online dating is heading too.

[gfx3]

I just checked out of curiousity the first domain name that came up lovetube.com and it got me here http://www.sedo.com/auction/auction_...ed=&partnerid= so I would say it's coming.

[polle54]

now this is a great idea...

but seriously, you don't need a $1 mill to do this...

no need to blow it out of proportion right away..

[gfx3]

A million $ is not that much, hiring coders, promotion like adwords, some radio commercials and hiring a bunch of women to make some great looking profiles Also there is the fact that people aren't very handy and most of them have trouble to upload a picture of themselves so you would need to supply some service to help and assist them in getting their videos online + the bandwidth costs and the fact you need enough reserve capital not to go out of business in the first year, perhaps 500K would be enough, it's just a rough idea.

[KRL]

The problem with videos is they are too time consuming and most single people are to shy to start putting vids of themselves to be circulated all over the Net which is what will happen. They'll worry about the pranksters that will edit their videos, change the audio, add subtitles, etc.

[MrChips]

This is a superb idea.

Dont knock it.

[Martin]

Originally Posted by KRL

The problem with videos is they are too time consuming and most single people are to shy to start putting vids of themselves to be circulated all over the Net which is what will happen. They'll worry about the pranksters that will edit their videos, change the audio, add subtitles, etc.

Have you checked youtube yet? Or putfile? People don't seem too worried about putting themselves on the web. Plus the videos would be inside the members area. Also you could set it up so the videos uploaded would be hard to save off your server?

This thread gave me a domain idea yesterday.

[MrChips]

Its all about a "re-branding" of the same old stuff - it will work out well.

[czarina]

I agree with you.. this is a superb idea! But you don't need a million... probably $250K would be more than enough to get started... It wouldn't need much promotion either. It would make money right off the bat without even promoting it.

[tranza]

Originally Posted by gfx3

Target market: online dating - mainstream.

Competitors today: none

I stoped reading here.

[Konda]

I think most dating sites already have the ability to add videos to profiles?
Aff has had it for at least a few years.

[Ace_luffy]

bump for the nice ideas!

[martinsc]

good idea....
got me thinking....

[Dagwolf]

Originally Posted by tranza

I stoped reading here.

You shouldn't have. This is something that IS gonna happen.

[gfx3]

Originally Posted by KRL

The problem with videos is they are too time consuming and most single people are to shy to start putting vids of themselves to be circulated all over the Net which is what will happen. They'll worry about the pranksters that will edit their videos, change the audio, add subtitles, etc.

I didn't have time to reply on this yesterday but I will do so today:

About videos being to time consuming: I disagree, go to youtube and hit the play button on any video, the thing starts playing without flaws within 1 second. My idea is to let people just upload their video and let them pick any screencap they want from their own video to use as a thumbnail for their profile, this way a person can decide if he/ she is interested enough to hit the play button for somebody's profile and spend time to watch the video. Of course you can just stop watching by clicking the stop button, there is nothing time consuming about this.

About people being to shy: Since your major target audience is for people with an age from 25 to 35-40 you are dealing with the "internet generation" what is the difference when a boss says to his secretary:"hey I saw your picture on that dating site yesterday" or "hey I saw your video on that dating site yesterday"? Why would they worry about pranksters to edit their videos? It's the same as they would have to worry about a prankster photoshopping the picture they put on the site. I know their are shy people out there who are to embarrassed to upload their picture to the internet, so those people wouldn't use this service but there are tons of singles who would.

I did a little search, some people are using youtube now to present themselves this way hoping to find somebody who's interested in them https://youtube.com/watch?v=XqCT-i6o9_U so looks like there is a demand for a decent platform.

[CaptainHowdy]

Good luck !!

[darksoul]

its a good idea but not sure something worth investing into.
Lets say you invest and put everything up and the next day someone
like match or aff launches their own video stuff with an existing
member base of a few
millions(?) users. Well you're pretty much fucked at that point.

[Nicky]

It's not bad, just requires the $$ to set it up correct

[gfx3]

Originally Posted by MrChips

Its all about a "re-branding" of the same old stuff - it will work out well.

Offline garage sales and flea markets went online and turned into ebay

Trading music or video games with your friends went online and turned into napster

Take the classic video dating service online (because since a short while you can) and see how it turns out.

[Sharky01276]

www.webdate.com

[gfx3]

Originally Posted by darksoul

its a good idea but not sure something worth investing into.
Lets say you invest and put everything up and the next day someone
like match or aff launches their own video stuff with an existing
member base of a few
millions(?) users. Well you're pretty much fucked at that point.

Not a bad argument but I doubt that this would be the case, something like this would happen over time but certainly not the next day. Ebay is nothing more than a script that can be written by a bunch of coders in a week time. If you plan this correct, make it unique, use a good agressive promotion campaign (that's why you need all that money) you could take your market in a few months before the competition had the time to set up their service. You would get the attention, the traffic and not your copycats.

[darksoul]

Originally Posted by gfx3

Not a bad argument but I doubt that this would be the case, something like this would happen over time but certainly not the next day. Ebay is nothing more than a script that can be written by a bunch of coders in a week time. If you plan this correct, make it unique, use a good agressive promotion campaign (that's why you need all that money) you could take your market in a few months before the competition had the time to set up their service. You would get the attention, the traffic and not your copycats.

but aff already has the technology (cams.com) and a huge member base
it'll take them less than a week to do it.

[teksonline]

i've had video services for years, its nothing new and hardly used

[Brujah]

This thread will be fun in a few years.. to see if the naysayers were right or not.

[gfx3]

Originally Posted by teksonline

i've had video services for years, its nothing new and hardly used

Show me.

Sharky: you found that webdate.com url listed on the youtube page I mentioned https://youtube.com/watch?v=XqCT-i6o9_U , I also noticed that and checked it and it's something you can't compare with what I suggested.

Darksoul: Sure there are companies that already have the technology or client base they could use. Both of these can be bought. Nothing special about 100 million opt in mailing lists for singles, same goes for hiring some decent coders. You will always get competition, you can't turn down an idea just based on the fear of possible competition.

This is not a project for me, if I wanted to do this I would never have posted this here or on any boards. Instead I would have done market research and kept my mouth shut

This would not be a small project, a decent vision and business strategy will be required to turn it into a succes but when done properly you could score very well. I didn't say it was a goldmine, I said "invest money today to secure your position and become the market leader of what will become a very big and lucrative business in the next few years"

Sure there are a few downsides like:

-Technology isn't 100% yet, cellphones and webcams don't make excellent movies at this point
-People will be a bit shy, how to overcome this obstacle and make them comfortable that their video is online for anybody to view
-How do I handle my competition, how to keep ahead of them

Point 1 will solve itself, point 2 is easy to solve and point 3 depends on how good you are.

[marko13]

the idea is good...

[dustin101]

I encourage you to spend you time doing that

[dustin101]

yes much more time