Virtual goods company Viximo has published a report for online publishers entitled “Raising Money For Charity Through Virtual Goods And 4 Keys to Success. The paper details some of Viximo’s recent experience in the space, and four keys to implementing such a campaign successfully.

Topics include:

• Opportunity to Increase Goodwill
• Opportunity to Convert Non-Users to Customers
• Opportunity to Increase Overall Revenues
• Opportunity to Increase Customer Lifetime Value

I mention this because I was surprised that more dating companies didn’t sport Haiti donation buttons on their sites.

Related posts:

1. Viximo Launches Its Turn-Key Virtual Goods System
2. Viximo hires tech vet CEO
3. Getting Flirty with viximo

Viximo, purveyors of fine virtual goods, have hired former IGN Entertainment executive Dale Strang as its new CEO, replacing interim CEO Dayna Grayson. Viximo founder Brian Balfour has more on the announcement.

Viximo has enjoyed the company of several CEO’s in recent years, here’s to hoping that Strang can bring something to the table to get viximo a larger slice of the billion-dollar virtual goods industry.

Part of the problem is that dating sites think they can create their own virtual goods platform. Certainly a number of sites have the in-house capabilities to offer virtual good, but then they are managing yet another service. And not giving it the care and feeding it requires, or adding new gifts, which can lead to disappointing results.

I think the value proposition driver that HotOrNot and Facebook make hundreds of millions a year with virtual goods is not such a solid argument anymore. If they are, why aren’t more dating companies partnering with viximo? Is the rev share deal not strong enough? Are the virtual goods ho-hum? Do dating site operators not care enough at this point? (what do they care about?)

Virtual goods has been a small slice of dating industry revenue, and until viximo proves they actually improve the online dating experience and drive significant revenue through a series of large partnerships, the majority of their business may remain on the social networking side.

Update: New viximo publishers include BlackPlanet.com, SmartDate.com and FanIQ.com. New milestone is the fact that Viximo’s Network has grown to 60 million users.

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A warm welcome to our latest sponsor. Viximo provides a turnkey virtual goods platform for dating, gaming and social sites, available on the web and mobile phones. They also have a developer kit for the iPhone which makes creating mobile content a snap.

Over the past year I’ve gotten to know the viximo team, and being local, we see each other at events around Boston. It’s great to have such an innovative company as a sponsor. Make sure to click their link to see how they can increase dating site revenue and engagement between members.

And of course a shout-out to the rest of our sponsors:

Milabra
DatingHeadshots
Boonex
Matchmaker
Honesty Online
SkaDate
iovation

Want to reach online dating executives and key decision makers? Contact us.

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For those of you looking for a new spin on virtual goods, check out Mokugift.

Mokugift helps monetize dating sites with environmental virtual goods. Mokugift is an official partner of the United Nations Environment Programme. We are offering dating sites a way for dater to plant a tree for another dater. Mokugift trees are planted in Central America, Africa and Asia. The recipient gets an online representation of their tree that they can display on their profile.

I bought a few trees for my mom, the ordering experience was straightforward and she was delighted. Mokugift can create a page for your company and provides a wealth of promotional and viral marketing tools to spread the word.

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Shayan at Zoosk turned me onto this article – What could Facebook do to increase its digital goods revenue. Fellow Zoosk’er Alex Merh says The economy of social advertising simply doesn’t work.

If you run a dating site and are not actively blogging, you’re doing it wrong. Most people despise online dating and any way a brand can connect with visitors and members is a good thing. Shayan and Alex are doing a fantastic job talking about their business, themselves and the future.

Blogging is now part of any marketing 101 college course. No reason not to jump in. Ask me if you want some guidance, I’ve helped set up many blogs, focusing on editorial tone, topics, categories and calendar. It’s not as difficult as you think once you have a game plan in place.

Or you can continue to miss out on a valuable connection with people, the choice is yours.

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Boston-based virtual goods company viximo hosted a party last night to show off TrueFlirt, their iPhone virtual gifting application. I stopped by the say hello, catch up with Ravi and get the skinny on the latest viximo apps. I even got to see some unreleased iPhone stuff built by viximo as well as (I think) third-party developers with VixML, their iPhone app development system. VixML looks very easy to develop with, like you could let your cat run across your keyboard and out would pop a nice looking application. I applied as a developer this morning, interested to see what kind of stuff I can come up with. Ravi, I want a Guitar hero rematch. Follow @viximo, read the viximo blog, learn.

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The Inside Social Games blog continues to track the convergence of games and social platforms, a key theme emerging in 2009 is the rapid pace of innovation happening in payments. Entrepreneurs are rapidly moving to fill the market need as social game developers increasingly turn to microtransactions to monetize their games on Facebook, MySpace, and the web through the sale of virtual goods.

This is a good read, will add it to my RSS feed for a few weeks to check it out.

Related posts:

1. Inside The Virtual Social Networking and Dating Conference
2. Dating Sites Should Be Infatuated with Social Gaming
3. Fixed blogroll, New Social Networking News Blog

Columbian flower growers expect a 20% reduction in sales in 2009. I wonder how much that has to do with the recession and virtual gifts? Thanks to the anonymous tipster that sent this in.

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Avalanche, owners of Date.com, Matchmaker.com and Amor.com, has introduced virtual gifts.

This Valentine’s Day, our members have the option of showing affection and interest by spending $1 on a virtual bouquet of roses which will digitally last forever. Compared to $75, the average cost of a dozen roses, which only lasts one week, it certainly seems like a viable option for millions of online daters who may have brought a bouquet of roses to a first date in healthier economic times.

Members purchase tokens that can be converted immediately, or at a later date, into Virtual Gifts. Online gifts, which range in price and start at $1, run the gamut from romantic to flirty. Everything from roses, hearts, Cupids and boxes of chocolates to martini glasses, food, stuffed animals, and even a shiny red sports car are available for purchase. Specialty items and limited edition items will be introduced in future updates of the feature.

Branded Virtual Gifts will also be available to advertisers that are looking for innovative ways to market products to online daters. Singles do not have to be paying subscribers of the sites to purchase, send or to receive Virtual Gifts. Virtual Gifts can be purchased using all major credit cards as well as via PayPal.

Dating sites are approaching virtual gifts one of two ways, by partnering with viximo or building out their own virtual gifting system. The tradeoffs are clear. Dating sites hold on to more money if they roll out their own system at the expense of diverting resources towards development resources. Or they do a revenue split with viximo.

It appears that small and medium dating sites that do not have the resources to allocate to a full-scale project are warming up to a partnerships with third-party vendors like viximo, whereas larger sites are content to build out the feature internally.

One thing is for certain, virtual gifts continue to grow in popularity, but the fact remains that the ROI for dating sites seems to be a primary point of concern for dating sites. I think that once the quality and caliber of virtual gifts improves (customized Flash apps and music), we’ll see increased adoption rates.

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I met Peter Vogel at iDate. Peter currently serves as senior director of marketing and industry scout for Memolink. He’s written a few articles about virtual economies and social advertising I found interesting.

http://venturebeat.com/2008/09/09/facebooks-virtual-economy-may-be-making-up-to-100-million-this-year/

http://www.adotas.com/2008/06/dont-lol-social-ads-rev-up-revenue/

http://www.adotas.com/2008/07/social-media-back-to-basics-for-cash-bonanza/

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