Much of my business is helping vendors partner with dating sites. Some provide safety and security services, others are focused on extracting additional revenue and giving members the tools and services they need to make the most out of their online dating experience.
I’m trying to get a better understanding of what it’s going to take to get dating sites excited about earning additional revenue and do something good for their members.
Many dating sites I talk to do not understand (or choose not acknowledge) the value of partnering with these services, or give them the brush-off without any reasonable amount of due diligence. Perhaps it’s the fear of a prolonged and difficult integration effort. Previously troublesome integrations are pretty much a thing of the past. Does stale thinking remain in place? Are dating sites too focused on customer acquisition and to what end when it comes to new features and dater safety?
Dating sites tend to express initial interest and then keep the opportunity on the back burner for far longer than other industries. Markus at Plentyoffish calls a lot of the value-added services “5% features”, loosely meaning that only a small portion of members will take advantage of additional fee-based services.
But what of companies like vindicia? They add revenue without touching the customer. Lots of revenue. Actually, scratch that, they have a lot of dating site customers.
Or IntroAnalytics (sponsor of this blog but come on, proven behavioral matching system via API, what’s not to like? Tell me please.)
Datingheadshots is another company I’ve mentioned here many times before. Lots of research has been published about the importance of great photos and profiles, but yet few dating sites offer any sort of profile writing/photo services. Seriously scratching head on this one.
I don’t ever want to sound like I am over-zealously pushing a specific solution, but it feels like there are a handful of value-added service providers out there that are capable and useful enough to dating sites to warrant a full-fledged strategy and awareness campaign.
I’ll probably tone down my efforts to work with dating site vendors unless the deal seems like a slam-dunk (and I hear that from enough dating sites to get everyone at the table excited.) Otherwise we’re all wasting each others’ time.
Take dating safety services. There are literally over 100 pounding on dating site doors, with little to show for it, even with Match’s legal issues. 97 of these have no business doing deals with dating sites. They don’t scale, they don’t understand the market, their pricing is off or they just don’t feel right for any number of reasons.
Several years ago I said that there were too many weak dating startups, and I started working more with tier-two sites ( generally categorized as revenue in the single digit millions heading for double-digit growth). Lately all the action is in startups and a new crop of vendors that are wise beyond their years (not that this means anything to a dating site’s bottom line but their ability to deliver services that focus on dating sites and solve real problems people care about certainly can’t hurt).
Want proof? Just look at tonight’s eAmore Dating Summit presenters.
There are also some great niche sites out there currently undergoing serious due diligence as well. I spent a more time now than ever before talking about accelerator capital, Asian dating sites and niche M&A opportunities.
One thing I’ve learned over the years is that as soon as I get down on some aspect of the online dating industry a new site, feature, vendor or investor pops up to get me excited again. Who’s next?
