Mark Brooks interviewed Evan Katz, founder of e-Cyrano. Worth reading, as Evan is one of the most visible value-added service providers in the dating space.
The majority of online daters write unappealing, ineffective, generic profiles. Helping people write better profiles increases the chances they will meet someone, and overall, increases a dating site’s value.
As someone who has built and run ProfileDoctor, I pitched profile improvement to dating sites until I was blue in the face. At one point I had 50 dating site partners, and none of them ever converted very well. It was easier and less work to advertise on Google, which was counter-intuitive at first.
I’m certain at this point that profile improvement needs to be built directly into the profile creation process. The minute people need to go into the Help section or to a third-party site, you’ve basically lost them. Dating sites are going to have to start offering automated profile help as part of the usual monthly subscription price.
WhiteSmoke has a basic application that supposedly writes dating profiles. That really should be a web service, not a downloadable piece of software.
For those looking for high-touch services, it will be interesting to see how many sites e-Cyrano can persuade to become partners of his new private label services.
Private labeling is a pain, integrating web services with a simple API can be a better solution, depending on the level of integration.
Not many dating sites understand the value of great profiles. Hopefully this will change over time. What is your dating site doing to make sure people are representing themselves well?
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I want to give credit to the sites that ARE integrating and promoting profile writing services – E-Cyrano has co-branded sites with JDate, Cupid and Mate1 and Christian Cafe and Yahoo have successfully promoted profile writing as well.
They’ve done this by integrating profile writing service onto the website (as opposed to rotating banner ads which are easy to ignore). A simple text link where people go to edit their essays and can check out the profile writing service. Compound that with occasional emails to promote profile writing to your member base and it’s extremely easy and free to work with companies like E-Cyrano.
Like having a spa at a hotel, it doesn’t matter if only 1% of your members use it; that 1% is going to be VERY happy that it was there. Plus they’ll have a tremendous sense of satisfaction and loyalty because you offered them such a high touch product that garners tremendous results.
I have hundreds of client testimonials from YOUR users. Just imagine if YOU were the site to provide more people this kind of help…
Best wishes,
Evan