My affiliate manager, Michael Crouch over at Neverblue, recently sent me a pretty good report on the dating vertical.  This can provide some great info if you’re looking to get the highest quality traffic to your offer, especially if you’re running a CPS offer.

User Age

• About two thirds of all users are aged 25 to 44 years.
• The older the user the more likely they are to subscribe.

Women

• Statistically, slightly more women will complete a personality profile (eHarmony, Perfectmatch) than men and go on to subscribe
• Woman who have been previously married subscribe at a 25% higher rate than those who have not

Education

• The more highly educated a user, the more likely they are to subscribe.
• The more highly educated a user, the higher their lifetime value once subscribed
• Over 80% of the major dating site users have attended some college

Ethnicity

• Users with Japanese or Chinese backgrounds tend to subscribe longer than other ethnic groups
• Jewish users have a 10% higher lifetime value than any other religious group.
• Nearly 1/3 of users consider themselves religiously “unaffiliated”.

Parents

• 35% of woman have children under 18 , while only 16% of men report the same
• Generally, the more children under 18 a user has the less likely they are to subscribe
• Men who have been previously married subscribe at a 50% higher rate than those who have not.

Geographically

• Historically, user traction on dating offers has tended to be from urban based populations.  With the increased penetration of broadband access into rural America this is changing and internet use is increasing in these areas. (think ChristianMingle’s recent success)

Groups who will most likely not subscribe

1. Males aged 18 – 25
2. Lower levels of education
3. Lower salary levels
4. Users recruited from sites of convenience ie. Adult sites, celebrity sites, untargeted social network traffic

Groups most likely to subscribe or provide higher value

• Females 21 – 30
• Males 35+
• Higher education
• Higher salary

There were a couple things that surprised me here.  I didn’ t think that college-educated individuals would be more likely to subscribe.  I’ve never split-tested it to find out, but now that I think about it, it makes more sense.  Another thing that caught my attention is that females aged 21-30 provide a high value to the advertise.  I figured the ages would be higher than that.

Recently I was flown out to Los Angeles by AKMG and was selected to give a presentation at Meetup202 LA.  The topic I chose was how to get started with buying banner inventory on websites.  If you read my recap you’ll know the story about how I was really nervous about it.  Smaxor being present didn’t help my nerves because I knew if I had any slipups, he would know.  But after it was all said and done, I handled it pretty well.  A lot of people came up to me after wards and gave me great information and let me know they gained some good information, which is was my objective in the first place.  So I considered it a success.

The purpose of this post is to let everybody know that my Guide to Buying Banner Inventory is now public information.  There’s a link in the menubar above, so you might have seen it before.  I just had it set to password protected to tease everybody for awhile.  I had a number of people contact me on AIM asking for the password so they could check it out.

I did let a handful of people check out the guide in rough fashion so they could check it out and provide feedback.  They pointed out a few things I’ve added to the guide, but for the most part it’s pretty much a direct copy of the presentation I made at Meetup202 LA.  A few of the people that have already seen it have used the tips I’ve given away to get some campaigns up and running.

For what it’s worth, I consulted with a few affiliates who I trust to get their feedback on whether I should turn this into an eBook and make some money, because this guide definitely gives out some great information that you can use to fatten your bank account.  However, I didn’t want to be labeled a guru or an eBook marketer so I decided to go the Nickycakes route and release it as a guide on my blog.

I’m sure there are some small parts I’ve missed, but I believe that I have covered pretty much what you need to know when it comes to buying banner inventory.  If you guys see anything that I should change in the guide, just make a comment on those pages and I’ll add it if necessary.

Without further ado, just click the link above in the menubar or click here for my Guide to Buying Banner Inventory.