Old Fashioned Dating Agency
All over the country, in fact – all over the world, there are lonely men and women eagerly seeking confidential introductions to other people – for friendship, companionship, even marriage. They’re in every village and hamlet, in every town and city, at every crossroads and on every rural route; up in the mountains and down by the sea – they’re everywhere!
You can help these people ease their loneliness and make a very good income for yourself as well, with either a Correspondence Club or an Old Fashioned Dating Service. If you enjoy people, and have an imagination for the world of business, then this is for you.
Online dating has it’s pros and cons. Many men and women have experienced putting alot of effort into sending interest in someone, and then find that the person they have approached isn’t interested in them. There is usually alot of emailing that goes on between two people before they get a chance to meet, and then, if either one doesn’t look like the photo they posted, often the chemistry isn’t there at all.
Sure, it’s a way to hone your skills of approaching the opposite sex because you only have to focus on that one person while you’re chatting with them. You don’t have the distraction of all the other normal occurrances going on around you, like for example, who is also sitting near you, what you’re wearing and your date’s response to that, what your date is wearing, how they are responding, how sometimes your conversation gets interrupted by a phone call etc etc. None of these things seem to get in the way when you are first talking to that person on the internet.
A good Old Fashioned Dating Agency or Correspondence Club links you with real people in your local area. If the person running the agency is intuitive (and if you’re looking to set one up you’ll need to be), then you’ll be placed with someone who compliments you in ways you might not have thought to consider.
The interesting thing about a handwritten letter is that it speaks alot about the person who wrote it. All women know this. Women, being the intuitive creatures that we are, know how to get a sense about a person from his or her handwriting. Did you know that most novels that made it to worldwide sales status were first written by hand? When a person writes by hand, their emotions flow into what they are writing, and often the wording is just as if he or she were there in front of you speaking to you. All of the Harry Potter novels were handwritten to begin. It has something to do with the creative flow of the mind and the left and right hemispheres of the brain, where the things we want to say just pour out onto the paper. Never underestimate the power of handwriting.
So, if you have an interest in people and would like to become a matchmaker who helps to link one individual to another, this business idea could be for you. You’ll be able to assist those people who are very shy and not very confident when it comes to dating to link with others who are just as shy, who might never have found one another if it hadn’t been for you.
There are three things in life that terrify alot of people – selling, dating, and public speaking. If you are genuinely kind and do your best to help those men and women who come to your for assistance, you can become very successful at matchmaking by helping the couple to feel more relaxed on their first meeting, making it alot easier for them.
The first step is to find out what the other dating agencies and correspondence clubs are doing, if you can find any still running of the old fashioned kind. Your purpose will be to design your own format, and look for ways to improve upon what they are doing. So, check out the newspapers and the internet and write a letter or email to as many of the advertising dating agencies or correspondence clubs as you can afford. Simply state that you’re thinking of joining a correspondence club – but don’t want to get ‘ripped off’ so you would appreciate a sample copy of their latest club bulletin/newsletter and a listing of everything the club endeavours to do for its members. It isn’t an absolute necessity – but it wouldn’t hurt to include a loose stamp or stamped self addressed envelope with your letter of inquiry if you have written a snail mail letter. Of course, an email is going to simply be replied to by hitting reply, but often these old fashioned services do things the old fashioned way, and they use regular mail.
If you find an established club, they will usually respond quickly because the very least it means to them is another address they can sell. Don’t use business letterhead paper or a business name. Just inquire as an ordinary interested person.
Once you have your game plan organised – ie. what you will offer your members, the fees you’ll charge, and the related services or items you want to offer as sources of added income – your next move will be to begin advertising. Start small, and go slowly…. This is mainly to allow you to handle the ever-increasing number of members while still maintaining firm control over the time required keeping up with the business.
You can place free classified ads for this on sites like http://www.gumtree.com.au or http://www.geeewizzz.com.au , or any number of other free websites where you will be able to place a free classified ad. Your first newspaper advertisement should be in the classifieds section of the newspaper, and yes, men do look there first. Tradesmen buy the paper everyday to read while they are on their break, and so advertising in the newspaper is still very effective. An advertisement such as the following, inserted once a week for a month, should produce enough inquiries to keep you busy:
Young woman, just divorced, wants to meet eligible man through correspondence. Tell me about yourself with a SSAE to: Box number, and your name or nickname. (Most people just use a tag line such as: Judy, Box 123, Anywhere, Sydney).
At the same time this ad is running for men to inquire about the available ladies, run an ad such as the following in the newspaper:
Young business executive – little shy – wants to meet right woman through correspondence. Will answer all letters. Alan, Box 123, Everywhere NSW.
Certainly you should vary the ads – study the ads the other clubs are running, and adapt what and how they’re doing it to your own needs.
Hopefully before you begin, and as a result of sample bulletin/newsletters you received from all the other dating agencies and correspondence clubs that you wrote to, you’ve prepared your own bulletin and can send it off in reply to all of your inquiries, with an invitation to pay for membership in your club. In order to establish your own mailing list, you should set up a system where you offer a benefit if a person introduces another to your club or dating service. Then, word of mouth will build your business for you.
Important to remember – Do not begin advertising until you have your first club bulletin /newsletter prepared, along with your membership application. Then, just as soon as you receive each inquiry, you can send out your answer – the faster your service, the more credibility you’ll impart to your prospects. Also, always watch what older, more established correspondence clubs are doing – you’ll want to duplicate their methods, but with more flair and better service for your members.
After about three months in business, you should be pretty well established and showing a good monthly profit. Then you can begin running advertising of your own in a larger range of newspapers, magazines and on the internet. If your dating service caters mostly to seniors, many of them won’t have internet skills or even interest in learning how to use the internet, so you’ll need to run your club or agency in such a way that you cater well to those type of participants.