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.
