Markus at PlentyOfFish has found some interesting statistics about Match and eHarmony.
56 million first emails sent per year
132 million winks sent per year
12 couples got married or engaged today thanks to Match.com
Users go on 6 million dates each year. ( ya right)
1 in 1369 dates leads to marriage on match.com (6 million / (12*365))
Match.com makes 1 Million dollars a day from subscription revenues.
That is $83,000 in subscription revenue for every marriage that comes out of the site.
These numbers are staggering. Finally, some public transparency about the effectiveness of the two most prominent dating sites. I don’t necessarily have a lot of faith in the raw numbers from either company but I’m glad to see them at least sharing something about their members.
I would like to see those 132 million winks go away permanently, send an email instead and don’t waste people’s time. Either you’re interested enough to send an email or you’re playing around and wasting people’s time. I would love to know how many of those winks turned into actual email conversations.
It’s amazing that Match makes PlentyofFish’s yearly revenue every 10 days.
Read the rest at The Paradigm Shift.
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match.com is making lot of money. they are leading dating company on the net.
You seem to be implicitly assuming (by quoting the $/marriage figure) that “effectiveness” relates meaningfully to “marriages instigated”. How many committed long term relationships have been created as a result of people meeting through the site? Wouldn’t those figures be just as valuable?
I was pleased – but a bit confused – that Markus highlighted this.
Paid dating makes far more revenue than the free dating sites – we’ve got individual partners that will soon be making half what Markus makes, without any of the costs that Markus has.
Will be interesting to see Markus move towards paid dating when he sets up his own site – I wonder how much more time he’ll spend on a free site when he sees how much more revenue there is in paid dating?
Ross
I personally hate the winks as well — but how else are the 90+% of Match.com’s member base (you know, the ones that don’t pay, can’t send or receive emails) supposed to contact anyone? And how else are the paying members supposed to be able to show the non-paying members that they’re interested.
Personally, I agree that winking is a waste of time. However, many women still feel uncomfortable about making the initial contact with men, and find that a “wink” isn’t quite as bold as sending a true email.
Now a comparison of dates to marriages, that’s interesting. But with a dual tiered membership like Match.com, I don’t feel using emails or winks as a way to judge success since their members often can’t reply or even know who contacted them without first upgrading their membership.
First step towards transparency in my mind would be one tier of membership. If the person receiving your email doesn’t even know that you sent it, are they really a member or just window dressing?
Thanks for the data, Markus and Dave
- The other Ross
I’m not sure why Markus doesn’t believe the 6 million date figure, since Match.com has millions of subscribers each year, I kind of think 6 million dates is actually on the low side.
Plentyoffish makes 36.5 million a year?? Where on earth are you getting that figure?
I don’t believe the numbers because 1369 dates per marriage is statistically impossible.
There are 56 Million first contact emails. That would mean 1 in 10 users contacted goes out on a date. Now lets take out at least 50% of users that aren’t mmebers and can’t respond that leaves 1 in 5 users contacted.
does anyone actually believe that 1 in 5 emails sent leads to a first date ? Not only that you need 1400 dates to get to a marriage, where as any other medium is under 100 dates…
Your right about the dates per marriage and I think that is probably a goof on Match.com’s part in either how they calculated it or the actual release of the information, especially with the eHarmony number being 10 times higher. Does a site that does the matchmaking for you like eHarmony work that much better than a dating site that allows you to specify your own matching criteria? If you look at their Sell sheet PDF file now you will notice the numbers have been removed.
I still don’t think 6 million dates is high, especially with their subscriber numbers, but does contacting on average 10 members (free and paid) lead to a first date? I’m not sure but you are in a better position to answer this question. Maybe poll your serious members to find out.
Anyways these types of statistics can be looked at many different ways and lots of information is missing , so all we can do is speculate.
Actually, as Dave reported in another blog posting (and based on Match.com’s publicly release info) less than 10% of Match.com’s “members” can actually receive and reply to emails on the site.
So … 56 million first emails sent per year … that’s great. I want to know how many first emails actually get RECEIVED each year that can be acted upon without first upgrading their membership.
Good to see you guys digging into the numbers. Valid or not, something’s not right. As Redg at Skout says, let’s measure number of emails *responded to*, thats a much more valid measurements of a positive online dating experience.
Those numbers were disclosed by Match in a brochure to attract prospective advertisers in order to improve its revenue by ads.
“Engage 2.8 million Match users who connect online and meet offline. These socially active consumers spend millions to primp for and go out on 6 million dates each year. With 20% growth in the first three months of 2009, it’s no surprise that daters recommend Match more than any other site.
………………
Connect with our engaged and social users
* Spend 60 minutes per month on Match
* View 30 pages per day
* 56 million+ first emails sent per year
* 132 million winks sent per year
* 12 couples got married or engaged today thanks to Match.com
Source: comScore PlanMetrix, December 2008; comScore MediaMetrix, six-month average, July–December, 2008; internal data, June 2008.”
Those numbers show:
- Persons use Match for fun, for entertainment purposes, for instant gratification but nor for serious dating with commitment.
Perhaps Dave, you can call Ms. Mandy Ginsberg and ask if those numbers were only for USA&Canada or they are for all countries; where in some of them, persons can communicate for free, like many in Latin American countries.
Regards,
Fernando Ardenghi.
Buenos Aires.
Argentina.
ardenghifer@gmail.com
Sincerity is the key.
I don’t care if people believe the stats. I’ve met the girl of my dreams last year and we’ve just got engaged! I used winks originally and it lead to e-mails so it works. However, I made an effort to only contact active members within the last 24 hours so I knew I was not contacting old accounts. Match.com works!