Millionaire Matchmaker Patti Stanger sent out a launch notice about her new dating site, Psxoxo.com.
“Psxoxo.com is my brand new dating site where love and success go hand in hand. You’ll find men and women of all ages, backgrounds, and interests right here. You don’t have to be a millionaire to sign up. Sit back, relax and find the love of your life. Remember, love is always in the air but sometimes you just need a little direction…”
My first direction would be to include a link to the site that works. And it’s not a brand new dating site. The site is actually American Singles. It turns out that Patti did a deal with Spark Networks to be the spokesperson.
I don’t understand why American Singles is promoting the psxoxo.com url. How many people have no idea what psxoxo means? Something tells me that Patti sent out an email that wasn’t tested and the branding not approved by Spark Networks.
It’s difficult for me to get excited about the rebranding of American Singles. The site has suffered from severe neglect for several years since it was popular, mostly because of the dreaded pop-under ads circa 2002. Not sure if that was the best move for Patti, either. The question becomes, why didn’t she launch her own site? The fact that the home page explicitly says “You don’t have to be a millionaire to sign up” doesn’t align with her personal brand at all. Kind of like Isaac Mizrahi going downmarket with Target to reach a larger audience. If she is a millionaire matchmaker, she should have a millionaire matchmaker website.
Only time will tell if it was a smart move for Spark Networks to pick Patti to inject some life into the American Singles brand. For now, we keep an eye on Quantcast (estimated traffic shown above).
No comment on her shoes or accessories.
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Still, its good to see Spark Networks innovating and white labeling. They seem to be quite active these days, on the innovations front. They were very active at the Internet Dating Conference.
(Full Disclosure: The Internet Dating conference is a client of Courtland Brooks)
For argument’s sake I would not call this a white label deal. I don’t know all the details but it seems more of a spokesperson situation. Maybe there is rev share, maybe not. She probably doesn’t own or get direct access to profiles, and whats her ability to communicate with members? Finally, the domain is American Singles, not Psxoxo.com. With this in mind I don’t think the deal can be categorized as white label, but we’ll know more soon enough.
Spark Networks has quote “been managing the decline of the brand” in regards to American Singles for 6 quarters in a row (as evidenced by comments they’ve made on their quarterly earnings calls).
Dave, I normally agree with you, but I disagree with your analogy. Designers like Mizrahi create what are called “Aspirational” brands, basically a cheaper version of their own product. The idea is for people who are up and coming, you’re hooking them earlier on, so they’ll have brand loyalty once they can afford their higher end lines. This is just a straight effort to somehow inject some life into a product line that was down to 14k in paid members from over 100k in 2005.
Spark just rebranded their BBW Personals Plus(R) site, now calling it “MoretoLove.com” (source: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/BBW-Personals-PlusR-Becomes-iw-1912709731.html?x=0&.v=1). In my opinion, yet again, Spark has focused on making cosmetic changes as opposed to actually doing something that might improve their business.
That’s fine by me !
I see your point Ross. I was thinking at some level that the site could be seen as a feeder for her to market her services but realistically I doubt AS members are her target market in any way shape or form.
She is going downmarket to reach a larger audience, just like many popular designers do with big-box retailers. I don’t think you can really refute that.
Spark, like all dating sites, is focused primarily on reducing marketing spend and customer acquisition costs. It’s easy to critique from the bleachers, but they are doing a few things right like managing certain costs given the current market conditions.
When is someone going to buy Spark?
Who wouldn’t want to cut advertising spend? But if I recall correctly, back in 2005 they tried to cut back on their ad spend on American Singles, and that’s when the member decline began.
I believe that they’re just out of touch. They relatively recently redid the Jdate interface. To the best of my knowledge they didn’t add anything substantive, but ended up splitting the user profile (for example) into four pieces. They then announced on their quarterly call something to the effect of redesigning the site. Slapping on some new graphic and minor GUI fixes isn’t a site redesign, it’s more of a waste of money, in my mind.
In short, they’re having trouble because they’re advertising 15+ brands. I’m eager to hear what will happen with Match.com now that they also have all of those niche sites that they bought from someone else. I wonder if that will now significantly increase their necessary ad spend.
As for buying Spark, their shares are currently worth just under $50mm. The stock has traded as low as $2/share, and is currently around $2.30. I feel the worst for Great Hill Investors (the company’s largest shareholder) — I’m sure they’d love to see a return on their investment. The question though is whether Spark would allow themselves to be purchased for a reasonable price. A December 2007 article in the New York Times mentioned a $175mm price tag (although I don’t know what the source was for that number).
Time will tell.
Subtract their debt from the share price and its worth virtually nothing..
So, interesting — if you’ve registered for Jdate (and possibly other Spark sites), you can log in using your username and password from Jdate, and pulls in some of your profile info without telling you that it’s going to do that.
It’s a nice feature — but they should probably have told you that in advance.
Not quite accurate, Markus. As of Q2 2009 they had $18mm in short term liabilities, but only $7.5 million of that was debt of a $30 million credit line with Bank of America. The stock’s current market cap is a bit over $48 million. That said, they’ve had gross revenues of $50.5 million for the past 12 months. Unfortunately, not nearly as much made it down to the bottom line.
Who knows?
I used to own moretoluv.com but I didn’t think the luv would attract enough users so i didn’t renew it. Now I just own bbwmoretolove.com – they must have stolen the idea from me!!!
Well if that’s true, Joe, that’s a shame. Perhaps you should have trademarked the phrase.
I watched her show ONCE! Her ragtag collection of supposedly wealthy morons, douchebags, and the brainless skanks that chase them makes me want to go out on date with someone that just filed for bankruptcy…
Nice article! Online dating can be tough but it can work for anyone.
Online dating has an array of positives, like being able to get to know the person better before even meeting them. this gives it an edge over other forms of dating.
Discrete dating site for those married , or in a relationship,
and looking for discreet married dating.
http://www.marriedaffair.co.uk
Moe:
Just a suggestion… as brilliant as Dave Evans is, I don’t think Patti Stanger reads this blog. Might I suggest checking out her website http://www.millionairesclub123.com/ and trying to contact her there.
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