Paid Dating Sites Doing Well

August 13th, 2007 · 9 Comments

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Listening to Markus at Plenty Of Fish spread his doom and gloom message about the paid dating market is depressing. Time to change the channel for a moment.

Spark Networks and Match are doing quite well. Go browse the financials, it’s all there. If you ignore the overall flatlining subscriber growth in some sectors, more revenue is coming in at the top dating sites. Most of the people I talk with who run popular dating sites say something along the lines of “revenue is king, we don’t care how we get it.” For one, the Asian market is going to be enormous, and it’s only just getting tapped.

Go see how Match and Spark and Yahoo are building out new platforms, reducing acquisition costs to underperforming properties and raising prices. Well, Yahoo is writing a lot of code, but I’m not sold that a new infrastructure is what’s going to save them. Just look at the turmoil the entire company has been in the last few years. Institutional issues like that are pervasive, affecting all business units.

I am surprised that the online dating industry has not been able to grow more in the US. Three million paid subscribers, is that all the industry can muster? Advertising scantily-clad co-eds on Myspace certainly drove some traffic to dating sites like True, Match and Mate1, but to what end?

I view that sort of advertising as counter-productive to bringing the industry to the next level. But it’s all about the allmighty dollar. These are corporations beholden to shareholders. Show more cleavage, watch the numbers go up. Sounds pretty short-sighted in a “I told you so” sort of way, time will tell.

Until now, spending $20-100 million a year on unfocused advertising was the only way large sites could get to new consumers. I think that kind of unfocused spending is coming to an end. It’s an issue of the advertising networks sharpening their ability to gauge a viewers intent and what they are paying attention to. Thats your Web 3.0 right there.

Sidebar: I write about attention, reputation and identity, the foundation for what people now call Web 3.0, at my other blog, The Progress Bar.

Forget a larger ad campaign, focus instead on ruthlessly hunting down potential customers and work like hell to differentiate yourself from the competition and gain their trust.

This is where niche dating sites have the upper hand on large date warehouses like Match and Yahoo. Smaller, nimble, creative marketing campaigns that don’t cost a fortune. Hey I got sucked into the eHarmony groundswell, and my wallet is $170 lighter. If they are able to suck me into the vortex and get me to try to cool-aid, middle America doesn’t stand a chance.

Dating sites lose members after three months for a reason, and that reason is that they are on unable to retain the trust of the member. Too many people get screwed over or emotionally hurt because there are few safeguards in place at dating sites or the database of people doesn’t match what the person is looking for. This is changing, as several large Texas and California-based dating sites are in the process of implementing background checks. All I can say is that it sure took them long enough.

When Tim Price was at Date.com he said that dating sites are in the business of selling hope. I thought that was a great statement then, and hope that dating sites keep that in mind as traffic numbers have overtaken metrics like effectiveness and quality and customer satisfaction.

I’m off to see what’s going on with my dating profile on Facebook.

9 responses so far ↓

1 Eileen (Check me out!) // Aug 13, 2007 at 9:10 pm
Too many dating sites. Too hard to decide which one should try.

My friends recommended millionariecupid.com to me. I tried and it works.
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2.4
2 Fernando Ardenghi (Check me out!) // Aug 14, 2007 at 10:46 pm
*** Paid Dating Sites Doing Well ***

“I am surprised that the online dating industry has not been able to grow more in the US. Three million paid subscribers, is that all the industry can muster?”

Great News Mr. Evans!!!

Online Dating Sites need to offer GREAT INNOVATIONS to court the other U.S. 87 million singles not seriously dating online
but …. INNOVATIONS will definitively come from new discoveries on Theories of Romantic Relationships Development.

* better&more_powerful math equations to approach how to evaluate compatibility between prospective_mates/couples
and
* more power calculation
will be the keys to reach those new discoveries.

Regards,

Fernando Ardenghi.
Buenos Aires.
Argentina.
ardenghifer@gmail.com
Rate this:

3.2
3 Bob (Check me out!) // Aug 18, 2007 at 5:37 am
Another reason for churn is that you meet everyone you need to meet in the first month. a month at 3 different sites is far more efficient than 3 months at the same site.
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2.4
4 Steve Agins (Check me out!) // Aug 29, 2007 at 9:05 am
I’d like to hear from other readers who have tried Chuppo, the new video add-on from SkaDate.

Have any readers attempted to integrate another firm’s video program with SkaDate?

Steve
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2.4
5 David Evans (Check me out!) // Aug 29, 2007 at 9:48 am
Good question Steve. Most of my experience has been with Userplane. Chuppo may be a good solution, but why pay when you can get the same for free?
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3.2
6 Mike J (Check me out!) // Jan 14, 2008 at 1:20 am
I don’t think they the same, I tried userplane and their support is abominable: nothing any response during 10 days :(
I want to try chuppo chat in next month. Seems they offers a free plan and the prices for paid plans lower than userplane. Does anybody tried them? What about their features?
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2.4
7 The Real Mike Jones (Check me out!) // Jan 15, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Hey fake mike J - email me - our support que is typically clean under 24 hours - so maybe you are not actually contacting us - or maybe you work for Chuppo - regardless - mjones@userplane.com .
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3.0
8 Jeremy (Check me out!) // Jan 16, 2008 at 3:02 pm
I tried chuppo free plan for some time, had to ask them a few questions. I didn’t seem to like their admin area though user response was good. What I liked in the first place was a simpler UI than at userplane. I had more traffic some time later but I decided not to pay $50/mo for a hobby site Maybe I’ll return to them later. Does anyone know if they are good for say 20 chatters in a room?
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2.4
9 Uliana (Check me out!) // Jan 17, 2008 at 4:49 am
Dear Mike J and Jeremy, as I see your are interested in chuPPo chat. During the whole January we provide free unlimited chuPPo Chat for 3 months when purchasing SkaDate license. Also, chuPPo always has free plan to try out with a small community. Feel free to check the offer on our web-site: http://www.skalfa.com and try our 24/7 support for more details. -Uliana K, Skalfa VP Marketing
Rate this:

2.4

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