Hot or not goes free: They buy into the idea that free dating sites will subsume paid sites. To some extent I agree. Sites like Match hit a ceiling and have to grow by acquisition and international expansion. Free sites are taking away some of the thunder of paid sites- social networking sites, not free dating sites in most cases.
Lavalife is trying something new, moving from credits to $29.99 subscriptions. Let’s see how they do with that. Anyone want to guess how much market share they are going to loose?
I am tired of hearing that Match is going down because they charge for a decent service. Free sites will say that until they are blue in the face and it may happen at some point, but that is not for a long time. Nothing but background noise and the only people listening are the ones who read this blog. Most consumers don’t care, they try new sites out all the time. I’m still waiting for a decent percentage of singles saying they are meeting better quality people on dating sites.
90 million singles, only a third of which are online dating at any one time. An untapped market of 60 million people and the answer is free dating sites? I don’t think so. I think it may be the opposite. Higher touch services, higher pricing, safer sites, authentic profiles and a better user experience.
Sam at OkCupid has made millions taking pay services and unleashing free versions. I respect that. The Internet is perfectly suited to making certain businesses more transparent or free, and there are plenty of examples of free being as good as, if not better, than paid.
Problem is, a lot of these rules don’t apply to online dating.
I bet we could bring 10 million more singles online with a few straightforward changes to typical industry practices. Â
Most dating site operators don’t understand the difference between authentication and background checks. There is a lot of money to be made when people can authenticate their profile for a few bucks. When they figure that out, more singles will come online.
Dating sites ruined for themselves. They got to greedy, and left the door open for everyone to come in and make a mess of the place. The notion of a dating site having quality singles has gone out the window, the majority of sites are full of stale junk profiles and scammers.
Speaking of junk, when dating sites start showing ads that aren’t from the bottom of the barrel, maybe they won’t have to game search engines and artificially inflate pageviews to justify their existence.
Let’s lower the quality of our profiles, throw in lots of crappy advertising, save money by not hiring any customer service and hope we can flip this sucker before the bottom drops out. Nice business model but not very respectful to their members.
It’s no wonder people malign online dating. The industry doesn’t talk with each other, they won’t open up profiles, security is a pesky problem, and with all eyes on the bottom line, innovation is all but ignored. I’m not talking about DNA testing for compatibility, I’m talking about basic changes to the way the business operates.
Just like free sites continue to pester us with the demise of paid dating, I will continue to tell the dating industry to wake up, think different and take a few risks. Same goes for the VC and angel investors who avoid the sector like the plague, for good reason most of the time. We need a few more well-funded dating sites. $10-25 million right off the bat. That’s what it takes these days to make serious inroads into the market. Show me a top-10 dating site that hasn’t spent this kind of money to get where it is today (besides Plenty of Fish, but that’s an ad network these days, not a dating site, and it’s an anomaly not likely to be repeated for quite some time.)
There is plenty of room for a new paid dating site to take on refugees from the top 10 sites. It doesn’t have to be a mashup of the latest technology, or bare-breasted advertising, it has to feature an impeccable database full of real people and a way to connect these people online before they meet in a safe, useful manner. Technology and boobs may get them in the door, but quality service is what keeps them coming back. Why is this so difficult to understand?
My girlfriend comes back from a month in Australia tonight. I promise I will be in a better mood tomorrow.
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I think your absolutely right. Providing a high quality service is key to keeping people coming back. All it takes is one scammer to drive away the crowd. And fake profiles just frustrate them into not coming back.
What methods are there for background checks? I would impliment them if I knew of an easy way to do it.
Backgroundchecks.com, Trufina.com and several other vendors provide background checks to dating sites. I would contact each company and see what kind of a deal they will make with you. Each is eager to get a foothold in the market.
I totally agree about paid sites. It’s very hard to maintain the quality of profiles on the site when the service is free. The more savvy people get, the more they expect from their dating site. People go to expensive clubs because they are exclusive, there is no reason why they wouldn’t do the same online. All you’d achieve by flooding the market with low-quality, free dating sites is put people off the medium completely.
A challenge for dating sites is the efficient management of the signal to noise ratio. How do you stay on top of the spammers, scammers, etc. without filling a room with CS agents? Craigslist has an abuse reporting system that is effective, but since the CL experience is presented as rather noisy in itself, users are interested in being moderators of a sort. When someone goes to a dating website (in particular the fee based ones) they don’t want to act as a moderator, they expect it to be done.
Why hasn’t someone introduced a heuristics system that sifts through the profiles looking for innappropriate content, interactions, and behaviour?
Dating sites believe it’s more effective to hire people who can do multiple roles including CS while relying on members to flag inappropriate profiles.
A heuristics system would be incredibly useful, especially to reveal spammer-like behavior patterns.
Great post, Dave. Online dating sites must realize that it’s not just about quantity, but quality. Quality retains members. Quality builds customer loyalty. And most importantly, quality attracts more quality.
And it all comes down to a few things:
Getting rid of liars: Talk to Honesty Online about providing truth identification services. These guys are way ahead of the game.
Raising the level of attractiveness: LookBetterOnline and E-Cyrano should have a partnership with every single website. Good, clear, digital, time stamped photos; unique, thoughtful, personal essays – why not build these options into your shopping cart? The more people who you encourage to use them, the more people who are likely to have success on your site.
Raising the level of seriousness: Content, dating coaching, matchmaking, customer service. These are all scalable options that you can offer as part of a VIP package.
Imagine offering members photos, essays, background checks, customer service and three months on your website for $300. People will do this. They can afford it. It’s Just Lunch charges $1500+ for 10 dates with strangers. GE charges $5000 for something similar. You don’t think people will pay a few hundred for higher quality and more choice?
Dating sites need to resurrect their image. They need to create an atmosphere where a decent human being WANTS to hang out. Let the riff raff go to PlentyOfFish. Real people will pay to connect with real people. It’s your job to give them the opportunity.
From reading this, I can clearly see why some of the “entrepreneurs” here have done nothing about IMBRA (yet) in the courts and why they will not help with the necessary $200 each in the fund drive for the new and more powerful lawsuit.
Apparently, some here think of US Government mandated background checks (as opposed to voluntary) as a new revenue enhancer.
First of all, let me tell you what MBAs learn on the first day: if background checks are required by law, everyone will have to do them and they will become a break-even hassle, not a revenue enhancer.
Second of all, read the book “1984″ where the government interferes in the relationship of Winston and Julia and then, at the end, the government “discloses” some information about Winston that it feels she should know, breaking them up.
IMBRA has brought the world of “1984″ to the modern US, which is now more into Internet regulation than Communist China.
Over at http://www.online-dating-rights.com, we have well on our way toward raising $100,000 for a much more powerful lawsuit against IMBRA than you saw with the amateur hour nonsense of 2006 (minor websites playing nice while asking the courts to please say they have a right to introduce people to each other – in other words, playing nice with loser judges who never heard of the right of assembly).
Evan, I agree with the bundling deal, we’ve talked about this for years. So far, we’ve seen that most people won’t pay an extra few hundred dollars for quality and choice.
Good photos are all about the composition. Anyone can get a decent photo from a low-cost digital camera. You could buy a $100 digicam on eBay, have a friend take several shots, post them to your profile and still have a nice camera at the end of the day. LBO’s $150 price point is too high and they are unable to charge less, since they keep their profit margin at around 50%. LBO and SingleShots will do well, but that price point is far too high for most people.
C’mon, Dave. If they can buy a $100 camera, they can buy professional photos for $129. If they can buy shoes, they can buy essay help. Sure, we know that people aren’t purely rational consumers. That said, people buy what they’re taught to value. Online dating sites are criminally undervalued. In purely reaching out to the average person who makes $35K a year, they’re neglecting the pepole making $70K+ who would jump at the chance to be around exclusively real, honest, attractive people for the cost of $300! ESPECIALLY if it meant they didn’t have to deal with the misspelling liars out there. Yet I don’t see anyone even experimenting with this model. They’re doing a $34.95 Yahoo Personals Premier for a personality test or a Match.com Platinum $3500 mathchmaking system. Where’s the middle price point for people who are serious about falling in love?
Dating sites? Any thoughts?
Big commercial dating sites are going down because of small players like HBCUBootyCall.com (http://www.HBCUBootyCall.com) these people are taking the dating industry to another level. It’s more about booty call now for young people than dating.
See for yourself: http://www.HBCUBootyCall.com
I am looking to do exactly what it takes to get my current dating site up and running. People want a “safe” place to go and meet other singles. And I mean those that are over 18, single, widowed, or divorced and NOT felons! What do I need to do to entice the “truly want to find that special someone” to come to my site? Lots of great info here that I will start utilizing only because this site is brand spanking new and I want to do it right!
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