I found this sentence to be one of the more interesting comments, recently. Online dating should be viewed more of an extension of “brick and mortar” dating and not so much a magical instrument that offers willing partners without much effort. In any relationship, you have to work at it, and work in this case means providing the kind of greater detail that reveals greater articulation of personalality and character. More interactvity results in better exchanges between potential romantic partners and helps each partner fine tune his or her interpretation of the other person. Access to greater interactivity allows for a better conduit of the admirable skills of wit and intelligence. In the end, it offers greater meaning to the interchange.

How often do you take the Gulfstream IV to Seattle or Omaha to play bridge with Bill and Warren?

Indulge me here: list the 40 sites you own.
site 1
site 2
site 3
…
site 40

I’m curious. Really.

Friendfinder has over 10 affiliates doing 100k a month. The top ebay affiliate does 2 million a month. I know a few people who do 40-60k/day. Travel and finaince also has a lot of affiliates pushing 500k/month that is just off 1 program, most affiliates will have close to 20 programs.

In profit.

A one man operation.

Out of his 1 bedroom apt.

Driving his ‘74 Gremlin.

Ha!

I will say this: you do make me laugh, my friend – a lot:) And, laughter is good for the soul!

Are you actually serious?

You’re such an easy mark, my friend (no pun intended on your name)…I just can’t resist this:

“i make between 20 and 25 grand a day in profit off 40 sites and hundreds of PPC campaigns and other direct to merchant advertising. This is a topic i know well… ”

So, let’s see: $20-25 grand/day in profit translates to $7,300,000 – $9,125,000 per year. In profit.

A tad exaggerated, perhaps? (just a teensy-weensy super-deensy little bit?;-)

PUHLEASE! Give me a BREEEEAAAAK!!

Ok, all teasing aside, here’s a deal for you: you use your “I’m one of the biggest affiliate marketers on the net” acclaim and put it to work by sending me some (no, make that tons of) traffic. I’ll split the back-end with you, 50/50. Deal? Together, we’ll make around $50,000,000. Profit.

******************************

Plentyoffish really is just my hobby site. I’m one of the biggest affiliate marketers on the net and i make between 20 and 25 grand a day in profit off 40 sites and hundreds of PPC campaigns and other direct to merchant advertising. This is a topic i know well…

I find a rule of thumb is that a max of 10% of unique visitors will click on a ad in a given day. Myspace has 500 pageviews to a user, a site like corante may only have 5 pageviews to a user. Advertisers will only pay for responses, in this case clicks to their ads. The point is that 9.4 billion pageviews on myspace would translate into 94 million pageviews a month for a site like corante to make the same amount of money.

To put it another way, if myspace has 2 million unique visitors a day, 10% will click on ads doesn’t matter if they have 200 million pageviews/day. If the site only has 20 million pageviews a day then you can expect a clickthru rate of about 8%. This is my experience from advertising on hundreds of sites, including myspace.

Comparing pageviews on site abc to pageviews on site zyx is comparing apples to oranges.

Ebay has a business model that works! That is, they make PROFIT! So, of course their market cap is only going to get hit marginally if Skype fails. That still does not justify what they paid for it.

Give me another online business that makes PROFIT besides ones like Google or Yahoo or the few dating sites like Match or eHarmony (or little ol’ us).

They are few and far between. People are so focussed on revenue and/or “brand lift”. As I said, the only ones benefiting are the founders of the bought companies and those who got in early to success stories like Ebay.

Even if it bombs, Ebay only looses 5% of it’s market cap.
http://www.internetoutsider.com/2005/12/mossberg_does_s.html

More Skype details at http://gigaom.com/2005/08/17/skypes-number-game/

You are operating under the assumption that a click-through is what constitutes “success” where I see constant exposure as relevant to brand lift.

Nine billion pageviews meaningless? Statements like that lead me to believe you do not understand how to put value on sites that are not related to dating.

The average user on myspace views 500 pages/month which means they aren’t clicking on ads.” Why does it mean that? Clue me in.

I didn’t compare Google to Myspace, I was talking about pageviews, not revenue. I think we have some apples vs. oranges thinking going on here.

Appreciate the comments anyways, fascinating to dig a bit deeper into the reality of these sites.

Just think, in three years people will bash Myspace like they bash Friendster now. Fickle consumers.

I stand corrected – somewhat. I would argue that Myspace is an anomaly and got the price it got because its new owners figure they can do a lot more than $30M. At a $580M purchase price, they have a ways to go – like 20x or so.

Just like eBay is going to take a major bath on Skype ($2.6B or whatever ridiculous amount they paid for it? C’mon!), I would argue the same is true for a lot of these purchases (speaking of which, $13.1M by Spark for Mingle Match, a collection of sites that lost money and had huge debt, relatively speaking?).

As my good friend Markus pointed out, Myspace’s page views is a meaningless number. And, $30M in revenue is not exactly like Google’s multiple billions. What are they spending to get that $30M?

The only ones who are gaining from these purchases, IMHO, are the founders, who walk away never having to worry about putting food on the table again (for 12 lifetimes, if they had the option;-)

Everyone else is losing, long-term (well, except those who owned their stock, pre-sale;-)

Now, if only I could start losing multiple millions to quintuple my revenue overnight, perhaps some big-wig will pay me $200M for ChristianCafe.com…

But, in the meantime, as that doesn’t pay my mortgage (my bank is funny about me quoting my net-present-value worth; they insist on their money on time, every time), I’ll get back to what I do best – running a profitable company.

Sam Moorcroft
P.S. I do concur with your last statement: “casual daters leave in droves for free social networking services, serious daters continue to pay”. We are seeing higher quality payers (who pay more and for longer) and less serious ones not buying. As long as people continue to pay for our service (and provided we continually give them a reason to by adding new features, etc.) we’ll keep offering it to them.