Say goodbye to wasting countless hours on Match and eHarmony for dates. From TechCrunch:
VirtualDatingAssistants.com has launched a service to allow busy male professionals to fully outsource their online dating experience. At a price of $480 per month, the company’s virtual dating assistants will use “advanced internet dating techniques and strategies to create online dating profiles, interact with women and set up dates with them.†The company says it will work approximately 40 hours per month for each customer and guarantees them a minimum of 2 dates per month (or their money back).
According to the site, the “007″ assistant will begin “contacting and interacting with the candidates. Once an interesting candidate is qualified as a strong candidate, your 007 Dating Assistant works to stimulate interest, build comfort, and flip her attraction switches.†The client doesn’t have to participate in the process until a “pre-date evaluation†meeting before the actual date.
VirtualDatingAssistants is basically taking Match Platinum one step further.
There are (were?) three levels of service to Match Platinum:
6 months for $1,500
12 months $2,500
12 months + more exposure (dates) $3,500
Match matchmakers search the database and connect you with people. They don’t know any more about the members that what’s on their profiles, so where’s the value? It must be in the discussions with customers, light coaching, etc. Saying that you have to pay an extra $1,000 for more exposure was a bad idea. Everyone I talked to disliked the extra tier of service.
Why should VirtualDatingAssistants be successful? When I hear something called a fool-proof system, I tend to be extremely wary.
Members stay on dating sites for an average of three months. At $480 a month, the lifetime value of a VirtualDatingAssistants subscriber is $1,440. They say they are going to work 40 hours per month on each customer at $12/hour.
The wording on the site is focused on men seeking women, which is a mistake. They should start as gender-neutral business and see where it goes, adjusting the marketing pitch accordingly. My spider-sense tells me that a high percentage of women are going to be very upset when they find out they have been talking to an assistant instead of the real guy. While not totally disingenuous, I have some serious reservations about how the service operates. It can be structured as a helpful and effective time-saver. It can also turn out to be a total scam, leaving behind large credit card charge disputes and broken hearts.
As one commenter says, there are serious legal issues surrounding the business model. Dating site owners, would you allow this sort of doppelgänger activity on your sites?
As dating sites continue to fall short of delivering the services singles need to be successful, the market for third-party services like VirtualDatingAssistants will live on.
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
How ridiculous. They’re going to be writing checks for guys who can’t cash them.
I just feel that they lack a certain level of personal attention. To me, it reeks of the matchmaking version of a pickup “artist”.
Some look better than they taste. And some just choose to be a flightless bird wondering ever and on why they didn’t take off!
David, their sales copy is way too pedestrian. And charging like a wounded bull won’t do them any good turn either. What is shocking, the testimonial page has refused to date the site’s navigation bar!
Gaurav Barot
-Heusinte Dating Labs
(Comment reposted from TechCrunch thread)
Actually $480 is a decent price for 40 hours of work, especially when compared to matchmakers who tend to charge $5k a year. I like that there’s a service guarantee in place.
However, the assistants should disclose that they are working on behalf of a 3rd party.
Ultimately, internet dating companies should offer matchmakers (of good repute) memberships in a similar fashion to recruiting sites offering headhunters enhanced access to the likes of Monster.
So a matchmaker should be able to sign up with Match.com, for example, and list their clients profiles. They should be able to receive and send notifications to other members, and those communications should be clearly denoted as coming from a matchmaker on behalf of a client. The matchmaker should pay a premium fee for each client they list.
This is very close to what Engage offered, and that got sold off to Spark Networks earlier this year. Great concept, it’s all in the execution. I’d rather see a computer do the work, matchmakers on dating sites don’t offer enough value, especially if they are simply looking at static profiles, anyone can do that. There is a secret sauce here that no one has figured out yet, I’m working on it with a client though, will take some time until it’s ready.
First of all, thank you David for taking the time to share your thoughts about what we are doing here at VirtualDatingAssistants.com. We understand that we are about to jump into a cut-throat industry (this Wednesday, officially…) and have no plans of climbing out anytime soon. This kind of attention and feedback so early on is truly invaluable. Thanks to all of you for your intial reactions and criticism!
Scott, glad to hear from you, enjoyed our phone call this morning, looking forward to hearing more about your new venture in coming weeks.