The Fuckonomics series: Discussion of dating and sexual marketplace theory and practice using business and economic models with a goal of increasing proficiency in both dating and business.

Issues I see come up frequently in AskTrp and our comments include "I'm getting too many matches to keep up" and "I'm getting a lot of first dates but no seconds."

It's a problem that newly successful daters and growing entrepreneurs have in common, going from scarcity to substantial volume then becoming buried in a holding pattern of overwork and feeling behind without reward. The solution can be as hard to accept for newly unplugging men as it can be for businessmen tempered by a lean startup period:

If you find yourself buried in work, raise your prices immediately!

With love and money, the market finds its own equilibrium in response to conditions. This gives you a single control point- price- that spares you the effort of sizing up and persuading each and every prospect. In business, more volume than you can handle is the market telling you, you can charge more! Don't be a fool, ramp up your prices until you notice market pushback, then dial down a notch. In your dating funnel and love life, areas you find a logjam of overabundance indicate areas you can ramp up your demands or "price" in the SMP. However, this brings us to another relevant business axiom:

When things are going well, don't make large or radical changes. In business, this means take caution before making large changes to personnel, organization, process, advertising, pricing etc. Smaller steps make it easier to monitor effects and find the perfect equilibrium in metrics like price/volume point, and overshooting becomes hard to walk back as market conditions shift over time. This also applies when making changes in response to dating market pressures; take care that you don't overapply demands or restrictions or do it with conspicuous ruthlessness during times of personal abundance as it can affect your long term reputation and successes in the dating marketplace.

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Five applications of the concept of price in the sexual marketplace

When you're getting too many online matches to keep up Once you've gotten your pictures and prose dialed in, you'll start getting a big uptick in initial responses instead of radio silence from the women you contact. If many of these result in good banter that doesn't pan out to meetups, this suggests you're connecting with a large volume of low-matched prospects. "Increase your price" by going bolder toward expressing your expectations and preferences. I strongly recommend sticking to positive qualifiers in dating profiles; I.E.: "I like fit women" as opposed to "I won't date fat women" because the former won't work against you. Increase your word count and clarify your USP to prequalify your prospect stream better. Dial up your specificity until you find yourself working with a small volume of very highly matched prospects. When I first started online dating I'd converse with 20-50 women for every meetup; ultimately I market calibrated this down to 3-5.

When you're getting a lot of number closes in person that don't pan out later The market is suggesting you're attractive and valuable enough, but youre underselling and haven't made an emotional connection in your pitch. "Raise your price" by ramping up your efforts toward making an emotional connection, whether through more kino or bolder suggestions and moves in your escalation. Try putting more zing or emotional English in your first impression, till you see more follow through, but without dramatically decreasing numbers offered.

When you're getting an abundance of first dates and meetups that don't pan out If these end early or abruptly you're blatantly overselling online; but if they seem to go along fine enough as dates/meetups go but end ambivalently without followup, you either need to prequalify better earlier in the dating funnel as above, or the market is indicating headroom to dial up your push-pull and escalation, enough to see better connections and follow through afterward but not so much that you reach noticible pushback and sour-note endings with prospects. I started at about 25% first meet from online going further; now my upstream dating funnel and dialed-in touch and escalation results in 80% of women I meet in person going on to sleep with me.

Relevance to Dread Game "Raise your price in the face of market demand" is also the basis for successfully applied Dread Game. The higher a man's value, the more likely other women will make conspicupus IOIs and flirting moves. Calibrating the correct level of Dread is like The Price Is Right: the goal is to apply up to the correct amount without going over. Ideally this occurs organically without conspicuous or consious effort on the man's part, and the increased perceived value inspires her to "offer a higher price" by increasing mate retention behavior.

Leveraging lower SMV I laugh to see AskTRP posts like "I slept with a low SMV woman how do I salvage my reputation" or "Girl really into me that I'm not that attracted to" For a crowd so intrigrued by Machiavelli and Dark Triad traits (not my personal interests BTW), they're missing the most obvious name-your-price opportunities in the whole damn sexual marketplace while recoiling like kids afraid that touching a nasty girl will give them cooties. Leverage the natural advantage of SMV-differential arbitrage and use these opportunities to flex your growing power and develop the habits and frame that will give you the experience to act as a natural as you hit your stride and find successes with ever higher-SMV prospects. Make female orbiters of women you don't want to sleep with; use these situations to experiment and leverage phenomena like the intermittent reinforcement schedule while collecting benefits like favors, rides, home cooked meals. Push and see just how far this "price" thing can go! Eventually, you'll find their upper limit of demands, or better prospects will price them out of your personal market.

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In the sexual marketplace, Approach and Escalation are the man's prerogative. As you build value in yourself as a man, abundance will follow in your personal marketplace. When you find an area of abundance or surplus in your love life, it's a market indication that you can "raise your price" or command more than you currently are in this area. Blue Pill conditioning and our natural protective instinct make men more timid and cautious than necessary in the sexual marketplace. Watch market feedback carefully, adjust upward with control and don't overshoot, but fulfill your prerogative and raise your prices in life's transactions as high as the market will bear.