This week I’ve been talking a lot about how to prototype a dating site. Lots of companies will throw something up on White Label Dating or Dating Factory and if it takes off, start their own site. Other companies are even lazier and more clever. They create Google ads for a new site which is simply a landing page asking for an email address. If enough people sign up, they will launch the site.
Infomercials are the grandaddy of test marketing. Lots of them state “ships in 6-8 weeks.” This is supposedly because they run the infomercial, take the orders, and if they get enough they will actually create the product.
I’m not sure if this dating-based gaming site actually has a product or not, or if the site is really down, but it caught my attention.
In Dudes Can Pay Hot Girls to Play Online Video Games With Them, VentureBeat says:
If you’re a lonely gamer dude, then GameCrush might be your ticket to meet a hot girl.
That’s the basic pitch of this social networking service, where guys can pay cash to play hardcore video games with attractive females on the GameCrush site.
The site, which launched today, lets dudes view the profiles of “PlayDates.” The profiles say what the girls’ “turn ons” are and show their photos. If you find a girl you like, you can send her a game invite. If she accepts, you get six to ten minutes of one-on-one game time.
A speeddate session based on a game, great idea. This feels like it could be a cam-girl site where the female gamers get paid to play. If not, they should consider that. Lots of men would pay a few bucks to look at a pretty face while fragging each other in Call of Duty.
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Have you seen their commercial? CRAZY!!!!!!!!!!!! So many HOT girls:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOflZKjvpKk
“Lots of companies will throw something up on White Label Dating or Dating Factory and if it takes off, start their own site.”
David, I have to call you on this – I can’t think of a single example of this (or certainly not one of anyone succeeding). What companies (lots?) do you know that started on some kind of white label platform and then moved to their own site?
It simply doesn’t make financial sense for people to do this – the service provided by a white label partner (software, hosting, redundancy, payment processing, security, 24/7 customer care, CRM, marketing, continual innovation, etc) is simply greater than the 40-50% of revenue that the partner pays out to the partner for their services.
Every single partner of ours gets access to a team of developers, customer care execs, marketing, pr and learning support that they simply couldn’t get access to on the kind of revenues most partners will generate (up to £500k/month).
I’m sure this was an off-the-cuff statement on your part and I can understand why it may initially seem rational to use a platform to begin with and then move to your own – but if the platform is performing, it really doesn’t make financial sense to move.
Don’t forget the difference between platform and software – platform providers generally work as a shared-revenue partnership and therefore are very incentivised to work harder to increase partner revenues.
We’ve seen some of our general dating partners generate conversion rates of around 25-30% recently and longer retention rates than ever before – it’s bloody hard work, but as a partnership we have to keep working our butts off.
Ross, the value of white label dating services is clear and no one is challenging that. There are many entrepreneurs who don’t want or don’t have the resources to build a dating site. For them, WLD is a no-brainer. There are large brands which fall into the same category. You have many examples of both currently running on your platform.
No one is arguing about the financial sense for the above types of customers. I was talking about prototyping, for which WLD is fantastic.
I know at least 15 companies who have done market testing on WLD. Most seem to have kept their WLD sites running in addition to their other efforts.
Agree it’s hard work, no doubt about that. And the WLD marketing and support team does a great job. All I’m saying is that there are a number of ways to test out ideas these days that people may not have considered.
Who knows, maybe you’ll get a few $500k/month customers from this conversation.
Hi Dave – agree prototyping and understand conversion is good reason to start on a platform. Where we need to get to is more flexibility and customisation so that partners can provide a more bespoke service to their members.
I’d love video to really take off for consumers – I think it’s just going to take longer for people to feel comfortable using video chat on the web, particularly with strangers.
Yes thats where you and Dating Factory need to be focus some effort. You hear it as much as I do that people are asking for more features and functionality than are currently offered from white label providers.
Video will take off at some point when there is artificial intelligence able to identify and censor inappropriate behavior. Right now it’s simply too much of a liability.
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