Online Dating Insider » White Label

Dating Factory and Matchmaking Pro December Updates

David Evans — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:30:08 +0000

Dating Factory December Update

This week Dating Factory have introduced an optimised pricing model for those dating affiliate partners who run Disabled Dating sites with us.

Cross promote not only to different niches (Adult, Dating, Gay) but also different niche markets within one niche. (Ed note: white label providers make most of their money in the adult markets.)

Performed AB testing on selected websites and came up with interesting results regarding how particular colours and design layouts affect your customers. New templates resulting from these tests have been implemented and are now available.

The big Christmas Countdown is still going on and has increased free to paid conversion rates on the sites throughout the system by 3.7% so far.

Matchmaking Pro Update

Last week I participated in the Matchmaking Pro webinar. their new suite of tools for matchmakers, including white-label dating, was impressive. Matchmakers should check out the system, which is focused on managing leads, clients and bridging the matchmaking world with online dating, something that has taken far too long to happen.

The next Matchmaking Pro CRM & White Label solutions Webinar is Thu, Dec 17, 2009 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM EST.

Sharing:

World Dating Partners Reshuffle

David Evans — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 17:15:01 +0000

Received this email from World Dating Partners:

As You might be aware of, there has been a change in ownership of the majority shares in Datech Ltd. Because of this, a new Management Team has been appointed.

My name is Julius Thomas and I am the coordinator for this Management Team and thus also the CEO of WDP. I have a legal and financial background and I have Masters academic degrees in both these fields having worked over 20 years with corporate efficiency programs, last three years however exclusively for Internet platforms.

The Management Team consists of experienced professionals in the fields of Financial Management and Business Law as well as Technical Development, working on behalf of the new major shareholder (who remains passive in his position).

In our organization during the last decades we have made many companies very successful by restructuring their core business focusing on revenue-driving activities, new applications and designs.

Robert Fathers remains in the company and will continue to guide the company in particularly the Marketing areas.

Any time I hear that a company has had a change in ownership and is now run by an executive specializing in corporate efficiency programs I tend to get seriously skeptical.

Consider:

It’s obvious that someone, somewhere, put a lot of money into WDP and was not happy with the results.

The deal with Relationship Exchange.

Last year Christine Johanson was tapped to be the new CEO of North American Operations. Is she still in this position?

The WDP blog has not been updated in a year.

Final straw: the wife of the previous CEO left to start her own white label dating company.

Let’s see if WDP puts together some big wins in coming months. If you use WDP, leave a comment and let us know what your experience has been.

Sharing:

Online Dating Insider Update 11-22-09

David Evans — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:11:57 +0000

I had a super first trip to Toronto last weekend where I spoke at an FICP conference about social media and social tools. Thanks to Kris Covino at Date.com for showing me around town and taking me out for a great lunch. I got to meet up with a few other people but unfortunately wasn’t able to meet everyone I wanted to (sorry Sam!)

Love this Google/Match.com mashup, courtesy of Adam Richardson.

Skout is using Crowdflower to manage user created content. Crowdflower is a very cool company which, among other things, is built on top of Amazon Turk. Crowdsourcing done right.

A though for the day: The problem with hosted white label dating solutions is that you get what you get, can’t change course midstream, as often happens with custom development. The services which allow customers to change around the look and feel, features and offer the best marketing advice and back-end CRM tools is going to win. There are six or so white label providers out there and a few more on the way. The market is not even getting started yet, expecting many small and mid-tier sites to move to private label solutions, but only if marketing and CRM systems advice are strong, it’s the missing piece.

Tired of Farmville? Try FarmersOnly. I’ve lived in the suburbs or cities all my life and I wouldn’t have the faintest idea what goes on in a feed store, but singles who lead the flannel life might want to check out FarmersOnly.com.

Foursquare Lets Others Play With Its API. Dating sites, take advantage of this!

Patrick Perrine, great, guy, past clients, owner of the original gay eHarmony site, myPartner.com, has written a second book, Sex vs. Love: The Ultimate Showdown.

Unlike my first book, Bringing Perfect Back, Sex vs Love (SvL) is written for men, women, gay or straight! It is an easy read, with a fun and insightful look into sex, love and relationships as they exist today. SvL deconstructs and compartmentalizes sex, love and relationships in a way that helps the reader understand their individual desires and how one can go about fulfilling them through a multitude of satisfying ways.

I hope you enjoy the book, if nothing else, it will make a great stocking stuffer!

Order your copy here: http://www.amazon.com/Sex-vs-Love-Ultimate-Showdown/dp/1439259763/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258394033&sr=8-1

Tweaking the blog this week, let me know if you see anything broken.

Sharing:

Skout Offers White Label Mobile Dating Service

David Evans — Tue, 05 May 2009 14:03:15 +0000

Christian at skout.com emailed with some big news.

Get your own mobile dating service: Skout will white label its’ solution to enable anyone to run their own mobile dating service. The structure is simple;

1) You provide logo and colors,
2) Skout provides your branded solution (destination site, mobile web, iPhone App, and news letter),
3) Skout provides the user base,
4) You drive traffic to the site/App
5) You rev share with Skout on every subscription you can sell.

This solution is great for companies that have solid traffic but a hard time to monetize the user base. CPM/CPC rates are going down drastically, and Skout can provide an alternative source of income by the partner driving traffic and converting people to subscribers of the branded dating service. It’s almost like Ning for Mobile Dating. We will initially bring in a few big brands (TBA soon), and then let smaller actors on as well. We could create a Techcrunch Singles for you, for instance.

Traction: Skout is seeing 2000-3000 users per day signing up with no ad spend. There are currently 80,000 logins per day on average (15,000 uniques). Total number of mobile chat messages in Skout’s network is 300,000 per day, and growing rapidly. According to Pinch our iPhone users spend ~50 minutes per day on average flirting and finding love. This metric is consistent with their internal stats engine.

They have changed the concept of “friends” to “hotlist”. “Friends” adhered to the facebook paradigm, with friend requests being sent out. The new “hotlist” adheres to the twitter paradigm, where you simply follow singles you find interesting. Future revisions of Skout will include FB Connect and will also be deployed as a FB App. Subscriptions being launched in the next few weeks.

A new website is up at skout.com.

This is all great news for mobile dating. One issue I have become acutely aware of is that Skout needs to do a better job with filtering the fakers on the site. A too-stringent boot policy could hurt growth, too wide a net and the site risks getting overrun and turning into MySpace. Skout is going to have to watch who’s on the site and what they’re up to closely.

If you want to add mobile dating to your website, talk to Skout, tell them I sent you.

Sharing:

Paul Revere is in The House

David Evans — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 21:08:30 +0000

It’s Marathon Monday here in Boston. As part of Patriots Day, Paul Revere just rode by on a horse, fighter jets screamed across the sky for the Red Sox Game and I’m monitoring several friends Boston Marathon progress via text message (go cousin Mike!).

This morning I talked to someone who has a ton of good dating-related domains, hopefully we’ll be able to post some of them here and get your reaction.

I also had introduction call with Mike Rogers, VP of sales at Friendfinder. Mike is an absolute sales and marketing titan with an amazing pedigree and he is in a strong position to make some great things happen at FriendFinder Networks.

Mike mentioned their white label solution, which drew a blank for a moment until I understood that he was talking about their SpringStreet Networks acquisition. Depending on how you define white label dating, SpringStreet was one of the first third-party providers of online dating services, the precursor to White Label Dating, if you will.

The white label dating sector is really heating up, new market entrants are coming and I’m in a much better place to understand how the current crop of companies operates and how to differentiate between them, which is more difficult than it seems.

Sharing:

A New White Lable Dating Platform Emerges

David Evans — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 16:52:05 +0000

International Dating Ventures has launched a co-brand dating solution for media outlets. This appears to be a direct shot across the bow of White Label Dating, which has landed several media parters in Europe and is ramping up expansion into the US market. The service appears to have been around for a while but a recent press release came across the wires.

Nelson Rodriguez, the company’s Chief Technology Officer, was the founder of LoveAccess, which was acquired by The Right One, which is owned by International Dating Ventures. These guys are at the forefront of using online traffic to drive qualified leads to their offline matching service, although it looks like they are not focused on LoveAccess, traffic is down 50% according to compete. Dating Ventures claims more than three million members.

This is Spring Street Networks all over again. Maybe they’ll be able to monetize the dating pages on media outlets with ads effectively, which is what kept Spring Street from succeeding, according to people in the know.

Cheaters, a tv show airing in more than 100 countries, has incorporated the co-branded dating solution on their website, as have a number of daily newspapers including the Washington Post, Boston Herald and the Cape Cod Times. I can’t a dating page any of these sites, maybe I’m just not seeing it?

White Label Dating is clearly on an International tear as the original white label dating providers (remember Vintacom?) have died off, leaving companies like International Dating Ventures as the primary competition.

Sharing:

White Label Dating Offers 100% Revenue Share

David Evans — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 21:11:46 +0000

White Label Dating is making a concerted effort to grow their business in the U.S.

We’re offering every partner that sends a minimum of 1000 members per month to a site on our USA network between 1st March and 31st May 2009 a massive 100% revenue share for those months.

This means our partners will receive every single penny that their site generates through these months. Given that the offer starts on 1st March, it’s important for anyone interested to get in touch asap so that we can ensure their sites are up and running as fast as possible to benefit from the offer.

Click the link in the sidebar and check them out. That way I can track interest in the offer and make some beer money. I’m very interested in hearing people’s experiences with WLD, comments appreciated.

Sharing:

How Much of the White Label Dating Market is Adult?

David Evans — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:28:59 +0000

Surely to be a contentious statement, Tim Reece, who used to work for a white label dating provider, had this to say about the marketplace:

Adult dating vs. dating: Itâ€™s no secret most white label partners run and see best results with â€adult datingâ€ sites. There is a void between the two which some sites are filling very well now.

Tim’s blog is Making a Million.

Sharing:

White Label Dating Platform Conversion Rates

David Evans — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 17:40:01 +0000

In the past it has been difficult to get unbiased information about white label sites. White Label Dating and World Dating Partners only went so far as to tell you how fantastic their conversion rates are, which is all fine and good, but not exactly useful when it comes to potential customers comparing services.

In recent posts, Ross Williams from White Label Dating has provided information about partner revenue and marketing costs. I applaud Ross for sharing this information publicly.

Some companies have contacted me to say they have seen precipitous drops in revenue when moving to white label platforms. I think this is not a trend, but a function of marketing spend and channels.

Certain niche subscription-based sites perform well on white label sites, but I’m hearing from a few sites that white label platforms are not converting anywhere near promised rates. Is this happening with a minority of sites or is it more widespread? I’m interested to hear from people who have moved to, or started out on white label dating site platforms. What has your experience been in regards to conversions and working with white label providers in general.

Making the move to a while label provider means addressing differences between your existing system and whatever white label provider you choose.

For example, what are the issues surrounding importing profiles from dating software? What happens when the software you are importing from has more profile fields than the white label platform? What if you let people have 25 photos and the white label only allows 10 photos? How do you deal with the potential for decreased functionality if the white label doesn’t do search or email or chat like your customers are used to?

I urge Ross and other white label providers to jump into the comments and address these issues.

Sharing:

DYI Dating

David Evans — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 16:43:02 +0000

In this interview at Dating Ad Network blog, white label dating service DIY Dating talks about UK online dating market and how it is affected by the recession, as well as about his forecast for the upcoming 2009.

Sharing: