Welcome!
Online Dating Insider delivers cutting-edge insight and commentary on all aspects of the online dating industry. Topics include industry news, site reviews, emerging trends, analysis of dating site features, discussion about safety safety, finance and other issues important to the online dating market. Don't miss our Tools & Services directory, useful to anyone running dating or social networking sites. Subscribe to the RSS feed (you can subscribe via email as well). Your comments and suggestions for stories are welcomed.
Match is sending out emails telling me that someone has viewed my portrait. Does that mean they’re going to send me an email every time someone looks at my profile?
My Match account has ended, no wonder. I never got an email from them. Monthly resub is $34.99 a month,talk about a price hike. Dating sites are making more money, but not gaining subscribers. CFO’s run the industry now, squeezing every last drop of revenue from existing subscribers.
Match subscription option page has link to non-promotional rates. The regular rates are exactly the same as the promotional ones, huh?
Match says they have inspired twice as many matches as any other dating site. How can they possibly know that? I love the freedom marketers have to play with numbers.
Online dating is now officially a business, and that sucks for singles. Nobody cares about you, not Dr. Phil, or Dr. Ruth or the worker drone making it near-impossible for you to cancel your account. Look at how they market to you. Besides Match and Yahoo, the rest are borderline porn. Sure, they respect you, really.
Yahoo Personals is offering me a free week. I think I’ll take them up on it. I’ve tried to join a few niche sites, but nothing works for me besides having fun on OCupid, I’m sticking with the majors.
Perfectmatch is offering a free month. Who else?
What’s with Singlesnet? Literally hundreds of emails received telling me women want to talk with me, which is actually a sly form of begging me to upgrade. That’s the problem with these sites that rely completely on massive traffic deals. Game the system and get to the top of the Hitwise list. But then what? Completely unprepared to deal with hyper-growth. How many people in customer service at Singlesnet?
Do you think that Singlesnet is a better service because it ranks higher than Match or Yahoo? Of course not, they may temporarily have more traffic, but that in no way indicates a successful dating site. And what is success? Money in the bank or thousands of happy couples? Who’s doing the measuring?
Singlesnet is too much of a skunkworks project. They are right here in Boston and never return calls or requests for interviews. Keeping a low profile banking a lot of cash while they can.
Prediction: Singlesnet will be out of the top 10 in six months due to unsustainable advertising spend.
All this as we go into the dating industry busy cycle. Remember the double-digit growth back in 2004? All we have is the memories.
| 0.0 |
Blog reactions
9 responses so far ↓
1
Zoltan (Check me out!)
// Nov 16, 2007 at 3:58 pm
Interested comment from a real “Dating Insider”. But what about free sites?
I am not talking about the big free sites like POF or OKCupid, I am talking about those wanna become big like my free online dating service http://www.onelovenet.com.
We are 1 year old and I have to say that I am quite satisfied with the achieved results, if you check some of the stats, I am sure you see the growing trend!
Any comments David? Maybe a short review of my site? :)
2 Seduction and Relationships » Blog Archive » Comment on Dating Sites Want Your Business by Zoltan // Nov 16, 2007 at 4:36 pm
[...] You can read the rest of this blog post by going to the original source, here [...]
3
Jensen (Check me out!)
// Nov 16, 2007 at 5:36 pm
I wonder if the social networking giants will ever get in on the online dating game.
I also wanted to mention that I ran into an interesting survey about online dating that is worth checking out. It’s called “Is online dating now accepted?�
4
White Label Dating (Check me out!)
// Nov 19, 2007 at 3:05 pm
Interesting article! Although I would say that online dating has ALWAYS been a matter of money. Like any other online or offline business by the way. Dating makes part of the most lucrative industries on the Internet (with Sex and Gambling), so why not leverage this huge potential…
However, that’s right, some sites like True.com use unethical - or even illegal - practices to get more money from members who unsubscribed or from potential customers.
And we can also mention free dating sites. Like we all know, PlentyOfFish is the biggest free dating site. Free?! So how does this guy make money? Ok, rhetorical question. We all know how Markus makes money. He earns his big bucks from BigDaddy’s Adsense program. But some of you may not know that he earns about 1 Million bucks every two months and growing! Yes, his cheque can be seen all over the Internet.
This being said… Enjoy your dating experience!
5
http://www.tomydate.com (Check me out!)
// Nov 21, 2007 at 10:33 am
Therefore it would be wiser to use intelligent ways to seduce a woman then just act smart. Or what do you think? There are more ways to do this, there are the good and better ways and some worse. For example, Most men are so immoral that they use their wits to coarse women just to have sex, and manipulating them like sex objects albeit cunningly. This kind of approach will require you to have a little intelligence, you’ll have to know how the woman mind work in order to outsmart them, control the game and win it using their own weapons. But before you get to keen on the idea just remember that there are other, more honest ways of winning a woman’s admiration.
6
http://www.tomydate.com (Check me out!)
// Nov 21, 2007 at 10:37 am
Reality. You say one lie (that you are bold-faced aware you are saying), and you have just changed the game. You now have to keep track of the lie, never forget it, and know that that lie is what part of your potential relationship is now based on. For she will believe you. And one day, if you are both lucky enough to get involved, she will find out. And she will dump your ass. Or do a LOT of haranguing and how-could-yous….
In the same respect as you will be yourself—nervous if you are nervous (some girls find that adorable); clumsy if you are clumsy (some girls find this endearing)—you will also remember that the girl you seek to impress might not be the one for you…no matter how close a next-door neighbor she is or how many years you all went to the same football games and movies. Do not bother “bartering above your station� if she is not the type to date your type
7
Jim (Check me out!)
// Nov 27, 2007 at 8:25 am
You mentioned you have tried to join some niche sites, what are their names? I am not trying to be offensive, but do you tried pozgroup.com? In fact, it is a niche dating site for people living with herpes, hpv, hiv/aids or any other type of STDs. I have tried several herpes dating sites, but do not have the luck until I post a free profile at pozgroup.com. I am not sure about the site at first. After browsing the site, especially the blog area for months, I decide to try one month. In that month, I get contacted with several wonderful friends, some of them even have the potential to become somebody more than friends.
They say that everything happens for a reason. Who would have thought that having Herpes could turn out to be a good thing? I have fellen into love with one of those wonderful man whom I never , in a million years, would have met otherwise. Being on STD niche dating sites like pozgroup.com narrows your choices down to people who have, hopefully, learned some very valuable lessons. Will we get married and live happily ever after? Too early to say but we do love being together.
I have been on online dating sites for 3 years and have talked to a lot of people so if I were to give any advice it would be this: Stand back, be quiet and figure out who you are and what you want. Then go for it and don’t give up.
8 Duh. « Saïd Amin // Nov 27, 2007 at 7:38 pm
[...] came across a funny post by Dave Evans over at the Online Dating Insider that I think my budding entrepreneurs will [...]
9
tony (Check me out!)
// Dec 6, 2007 at 7:39 am
yea, I am also like online dating, but prefer casual dating most, that will be more relax and wonderful. I just joined a site called casualpal.com, pretty good. I’ve hooked up with a sweet girl for some days, we’re going to meet for the first this weekend. Hope we can have a good time.
Leave a Comment