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Robert Fathers, CEO of World Dating Partners, wrote in to clarify details about the deal with Relationship Exchange as well as give us a good look into WDP operations marketing and plans for 2008.
Relationship Exchange partners have been very loyal despite some hiccups in
the past, all the main partners at RE are transferring to WDP platform, and
after seeing the size of our existing system, the technology and the feature
rich sites that we produce, are confident that they want to step up their
advertising to get back to their original revenue. We are unlike
WhiteLabelDating or other similar services where the site is based around
URL masking re-direction, and programmed in PHP with MySQL as a database.
These systems are very restrictive and susceptible to collapse when they
expand, as well as not very secure, MySQL doesn’t have a good reputation as
its open source.
World Dating Partners on the other hand, has an enterprise system running
over 30 servers, was developed over 3 years in Java, using Spring
Technology, running over two Oracle storage units. This unique technology
besides costing over $5 million to develop, is backed by nearly 100 staff.
This will increase in the new year when we open offices in LA and later in
Boston. By the way the 20 million is our own collective database and not
entirely the Relationship Exchange one; alongside this were databases from
other companies that have recently joined us, one of 8 million, and another
of 3 as well as our own 5 million database. This now builds at around 1-2
million a month as more and more sites join us as a financially viable
option to running their own sites and cutting the overheads and headaches
related to running a large dating service.
The customer experience itself has every feature that you could possibly
imagine, which both draws in members at over 8,000 a day, with an extremely
high retention rate and currently being used by over 300 radio stations
worldwide, 34 TV stations and programs, over 30 newspapers worldwide,
including New York, South Africa, Australia, to name just a few. We are also
lucky enough now to be working with mainline magazine publishers in the UK
and USA with 150 brands and 200 in the UK and Europe. From a marketing point
of view WDP has only been active for around 6 months and now with a strong
financial background and history will start marketing in earnest this year,
I am sure you will hear a lot more about us over the next 12 months.
WDP has multiple platforms covering various main stream dating services,
each one can be used by any site owner to drill down into niches strictly
filtering members by geographical, ethnic or interest based criteria. This
can now be done in over 11 languages. Our White Label sites are true white
labels and not headers and footers like other services. The result of this
technology means that it is built to an enterprise level and covers all the
criteria required by public companies or any other blue chip customers. We
process 41 currencies and virtually every card that can be processed from
across Europe, the USA and Asia, this also includes direct debit processing
which in particular works well in Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Austria.
World Dating Partners covers indemnity for every customer that joins our
system and we also run StrongMail and Optimost to increase customer
usability and guarantee email deliverability. We have strict protection of
members and registered with the data protection act and have extremely high
security. We are recognised now by iMedia as one of the top 80 Internet
organisations in Europe and chosen to represent ecommerce for APAC at a
recent conference on anti-fraud systems. This is because we have developed
our own unique protection system and spend a lot of time on manual checking
of profiles to keep our sites clean and allow our members to get on with the
dating they have in mind instead of worrying about who is going to scam
them.
World Dating Partners in the New Year are opening offices in Los Angeles and
later in Boston to expand our operation in the USA, with so many major
brands being used by our services now. The increase in business is due to
intelligent due diligence of companies, who research the current market
thoroughly to find a system that caters for their specific needs and
guarantees a high level of security and protection for their members, in
fact you don’t have to dig too deep to discover the differences, its why we
put so much into development. We were thinking of the future and not
immediate business.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
This company sounds like it has its act together. While I’m aware of some of the major US sites that are on the RE platform I’m not familiar with any brands that are on the WDP platform.
Can you provide some more insight into WDP? A few questions that I’m hoping you can answer:
- Can you inform of any major (or even minor) US brands on the WDP platform.
- WDP claims 8,000 registrants/day joining. What % of these are US/Intl.?
- WDP claims 20 million profiles. How many of these are US/Intl.?
- You often talk about stale profiles. What are the WDP rules for purging stale profiles (how old are these 20 million profiles)?
- Can they be a little more specific what “an extremely high retention rate” means?
He mentions White Label dating – whilst it isn’t written in PHP, it does use a MySQL database. To suggest that a platform is superior because of technology is clutching at straws.
I think Facebook, Flickr and other sites would disagree with his point of view :)
For most online daters, what matters is finding someone attractive close to them – and doing it in an easy to use and safe environment.
The best way to choose a white label dating provider is to test them – send an equal amount of quality traffic to each site and see what gives the best return. That’s what really matters – not size Robert ;)
I have read the above posts and have also looked at both your system and WDP’s,
my mind is made up, and I believe Think Partnership have also made up their own
minds.
I absolutely agree with you. In order to find the best provider you must first
test them. Luckily, in this case the answer should seem obvious to everyone.
If what you say is true, why is it that Think Partnership decided to go with
WDP and not a different dating provider?
Dave
I really can’t comment, other than to say that WDP has been strong in the USA where Think Partnership are based.
We’ve not spoken to Think Partnership and our marketing in the UK so it’s quite understandable.
When we formally launch in the USA we’ll be able to support members in the USA – this is a matter of weeks now and we’re really looking forward to it.
Our Platinum Sponsorship for iDate and the Social Networking Conference for all of 2008 will help raise awareness and I’m quite sure many of the original Relationship Exchange partners will be evaluating our service :)
Best wishes,
Ross
Wanna see one that takes 15 minutes and is more engaging and powerful than e-harmony’s test? Go to http://www.ButterfliesAgain.com, check it out and talk to me…
I had a look at your new video presentation and I must say that I am impressed although it looks very similar to the WDP one with a woman voice :)
You mention in the video – and other marketing materials – that FHM have a dating site under your platform, I would be very interested to have a look at it!
As to the size of the database, I have to agree that what matters is the return. But I assume the “return” is directly related to the size of the database, especially when members search in a particular restricted geographical location/niche. Obviously, chances are that they will be more likely to convert on a 20 Million members database than on a 400,000 one. But I understand the database size is less of a problem for a platform that does not provide true niche customization.
Best wishes,
Thomas
The term “Finding a needle in a haystack” is appropriate for a site with 20million members – the membership quality is not as good if members have been bought and are no longer active.
You’ll know from some of your own partners who came to us that our conversion is better and I think it’s because there is higher quality of membership.
Yes you are right. I am somehow related to WDP. That’s right, only active members actually matter. And even if WLD database is smaller, I have to assume that about the same percentage of it is made of inactive members as well. Also, I would say that no matter how big the database it, one will be able to find his “perfect match” as long as the profiles gather enough data for the members to perform an advanced search in any niche or geographical location of interest. And more profiles will obviously mean more choice and the opportunity to narrow the search to get even better results.
As to the conversion, it is closely related to the fact that WDP membership prices are higher than WLD’s because of a more comprehensive/quality system – which might mean lower conversions and retentions at some point, but a higher recurring income for the partner in the long run.
Let me correct that a bit – our database is smaller because we remove inactive profiles after 6-12 months so there’s no rubbish blocking up the database.
So we actually have a higher amount of active members because we trim away those who aren’t interested.
Re. partner income – you know if you’re part of WDP that isn’t the case Thomas. We both know WLD converts better and generates more revenue than WDP.
WDP has a decent system and a larger database (also a larger database than match.com and most of other dates sites in the wolrd!!) – but we encourage partners to try both systems as we know they’ll make more money with us :)
Hope you don’t mind the corrections – and by all means do keep an eye on our new blog at http://www.whitelabeldating.com
Cheers,
Ross
No worries about the corrections :)
WDP database is regularly cleaned as well and every profile is checked manually to ensure that only genuine and active profiles remain on the database.
As to conversions/revenue, honestly I have never been an affiliate with White Label Dating so far, but I used to be quite a good WDP affiliate even before I started working with them. Nevertheless, I know your system and the reason why I was attracted by WDP at first was because their system is much more comprehensive in terms of features, administration, statistics, demographics etc… and as a partner, I thought it was very important to be able to analyze as many variables as possible.
Also, WDP providing true niche customisation, I could promote as many different niches as I wanted and leverage/test/compare the potential of each one.
So to conclude, for me, conversions are not everything – and depend highly on the niche you are promoting anyway – the whole system has to be taken into account to determine not only how to make the most money, but also – and more importantly – how to make sure you are not actually losing a lot without even noticing it :)
But like you said, I do agree that the best thing to do is to test both providers and see which one works best for you. Some people may end up making more money with WLD, others with WDP. Just depends on what each partner is expecting from a white label provider, and how he intends to leverage the potential of the affiliation.
Kind regards,
Thomas