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David Evans
Editor, Online Dating Insider. Snowboarding, fishing.
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Good point Markus. There are a lot of gray areas when it comes to affiliate marketing that are always being exploited. FB takes down thousands of ads every week that don't meet their guidelines, let along finding improper affiliate ads.
Got Rogue Affiliates?
OPW - Aug 30 -A rogue affiliate is running this ad on Facebook. We removed the identity of this site to protect the [somewhat] innocent. The site in this ad is definitely NOT 100% free. Its a paid dating site. This is NOT COOL. It's not good for the idating industry as a whole when affiliates...
Every dating site with an affiliate program has a few if not many rogues. If it drives members, dating sites tend to turn a blind eye. I think you will agree that most dating site affiliate ads are not very good, surprising and how little effort is placed on such an important marketing channel. Look at Fling.com, there is a reason why they crush it, dynamically-generated ads based on location and lots of different types of ads.
Got Rogue Affiliates?
OPW - Aug 30 -A rogue affiliate is running this ad on Facebook. We removed the identity of this site to protect the [somewhat] innocent. The site in this ad is definitely NOT 100% free. Its a paid dating site. This is NOT COOL. It's not good for the idating industry as a whole when affiliates...
David Evans is now following Katherine Warman Kern
Aug 17, 2010
Why does the consumer have to pay? Why not have the service subsidized by brands and other parties? Reminds me of credit companies saying "Pay us a monthly fee and we'll make sure you are alerted about fraudulent activity", when they should be doing this all along as part of their business.
The story about your mom reminded me about the show where the guy's Tivo thought he was gay, so he had to watch adult and boxing and monster trucks for a while to re-train the service to pre-fetch content more in line with his tastes.
What "They" Think They Know
[UPDATED] The Wall Street Journal is publishing a series exposing the data collection practices by ad networks and search engines and is providing helpful, but little publicized information about links to "opt out". Although most of the controversy is about faceless commercial entities creating...
Why does the consumer have to pay? Why not have the service subsidized by brands and other parties? Reminds me of credit companies saying "Pay us a monthly fee and we'll make sure you are alerted about fraudulent activity", when they should be doing this all along as part of their business.
The story about your mom reminded me about the show where the guy's Tivo thought he was gay, so he had to watch adult and boxing and monster trucks for a while to re-train the service to pre-fetch content more in line with his tastes.
What "They" Think They Know
[UPDATED] The Wall Street Journal is publishing a series exposing the data collection practices by ad networks and search engines and is providing helpful, but little publicized information about links to "opt out". Although most of the controversy is about faceless commercial entities creating...
Meetcha is a well-executed service and I'm not just saying that because they are my landlord and friends and I date their members and have a free membership and go to their parties and appear in their videos.
Dating Site For Those Over 40 With Face-To-Face Component
CHICAGO TRIBUNE - June 3 - Jeff Taylor is the founder of Meetcha, new online dating service, which targets over-40 singles exclusively. Launched in April, the site is an offshoot of Taylor's baby boomer social networking site, Eons. Meetcha is a subscription service ($30 a month), and Boston-a...
Fact: Background checks don't work in the dating space. Dating sites and people will only use identity verification services. There is a lot of research and real-world use cases that prove this time and time again.
Trufina, Backgroundchecks.com, Honesty Online and at least a dozen other companies already offer these services to dating sites (with low take rates) and the large lady has sung.
Site Checks Social Media For Dating Fakes
WPBF - June 2 - MyMatchChecker.com is a new site that can help people find out if their Internet date is a fake or the real deal. The service was created by former police officers and performs background checks. The price for a search on MyMatchChecker.com ranges from $10 for the simplest one ...
I read that as "Iris Robinson, wife of First Minister Peter Robinson, admitted that she engaged in an extramarital affair with a 19-year old lover, Noel Biderman, CEO of AshleyMadison.com."
Iris Robinson’s Infidelity Scandal Is Not So Scandalous
PRESS RELEASE - Jan 12 - Iris Robinson, wife of First Minister Peter Robinson, admitted that she engaged in an extramarital affair with a 19-year old lover. Noel Biderman, CEO of AshleyMadison.com, says this is just another example of the evolution of traditional marriage in our society. Ashley...
Not that I don't like to see people try to come up with new and innovative dating niches, but this is a false start. It features virtual dating based on Omnidate. Highly motivated women desiring NSA sex are not going to spend time in a virtual chat room. Maybe the nervous ones will pay to flirt, as many men do on adult sites who never plan on meeting anyone in person, in which case the Omnidate partnership makes sense. But horny women paying to join a niche dating site looking for sex? I just don't see it. That's what sites like Mate1 are for.
New Casual Dating Site Launched
PRESS RELEASE - Jan 7 - CityDate has launched a dating site, SensualityDating.com, which caters to women seeking romantic experiences without commitment. SensualityDating features a virtual dating app which allows people to get to know each other in a virtual coffee shop or a restaurant, flirt ...
Skeptical about 10,000 people a day given the traffic profiles of other sites, unknown issues like the ad spend that day compared to other days, media mentions and other factors. Homewrecking has never been more profitable.
Massive January Snowstorm Boosts Adultery Website
PR NEWSWIRE - Jan 11 - It's been reported that on a typical day, anywhere from eight to ten thousand people sign up to AshleyMadison.com, infidelity dating site. Last Thursday, over 25,000 new members signed up. That's someone new joining the infidelity service every 3 seconds, making it Ashle...
It's the busy season (valentines day), which drives ad spend, which drives traffic. Not much to do with the weather. Why are we talking about these sites? Feels like we're back in "only writing about clients" mode again.
Online Dating Soars As Temperatures Plunge
BBC NEWS - Jan 7 - Mysinglefriend.com says visitors to its website soared by 55% on Tuesday alone, with its busiest time coming at 3pm rather than the traditional 10pm. Meanwhile rival site Singles365.com says its visitor numbers grew 27% across Tuesday and Wednesday compared with a year ago. ...
At first glance, it's a novelty site that leaves the same taste in my mouth as Ashley Madison. Sure it's going to exist, just like drug dealers (they both serve a need unsavory to some, necessary to others.)
But we have to remember when Online Booty Call came out and everyone thought "oh, another casual/adult" dating site, and look where their efforts led them (profitable and launching Herway).
Perhaps Beautiful People has really nailed their niche. Or it's just another dating site that will limp along making some money but not enough to really be considered seriously.
Spark.com Thinks BeautifulPeople.com Acted Ugly
CNN MONEY - Jan 7 - Spark.com, created by the same people behind JDate.com, BlackSingles.com and ChristianMingle.com, will offer one month free to all 5,000 members ousted from BeautifulPeople.com yesterday for allegedly putting on a few holiday pounds. To take advantage of this special offer,...
That was brochureware, where is the "study?"
Ross, disagree strongly, the beauty of services like Crowdflower is that they have built-in failsafes to deal with bad calls. If you talked with them like I have several times you would see that they deal with your concerns.
Outsourcing can be powerful rejuvination of resources, leaving people free to do more important things, like testing landing pages and affiliate creative.
Having people look at photos is stupid and will go away in a few years. You can't imagine how many interesting stats and trends we're seeing with photo verification and evaluation services, fascinating stuff.
There are no issues with data protection, we're talking about profile photos which are (should be) covered with the most basic TOS.
Profile Approval Outsourcing To Amazon's Mechanical Turk
OPW - Jan 4 - Courtland Brooks did a preliminary study of Amazon's Mechanical Turk service recently. We wondered if it was appropriate to use this service for profile approvals. Probably not. However, you can see the study at the Courtland Brooks blog, here.
Josh great overview of how you operate. The more you make it public the better you will fare because the dating industry doesn't like tests, or new innovation, and everyone thinks they have the perfect solution. Moreover, no tests of any kind of significantly added squat to the effectiveness of a dating site.
If you don't spend a lot marketing your site it's going to fail, plain and simple. I don't care how good your systems may be.
"In short, instead of pretending to know what 'the right questions to ask' are within a stock survey, at Matchmaking by Cinekin, our members relate to each other, and to us through the vast realm of human experience as represented by thousands of movies."
This is why cinekin is a feature and not great idea for a dating site. You would be better off licensing the IP than spending millions marketing your site. Call it my first 2010 prediction.
Cinekin.com Uses Movie Ratings To Make Perfect Matches
PR WEB - Dec 30 - Movie ratings are the key to predicting romantic compatibility according to a new dating site Cinekin.com. With movie ratings alone Cinekin matches people with their ideal mate without the lengthy questionnaires. In a study of approximately 3,000 people conducted by Dr. Pascal...
This value proposition can't be beat. Reminds me of how Match had a companion "friendship" site years ago. Challenges: majority of people think matchmaking is not worth the expense, they will most likely have to spend a huge amount on marketing and they are going to have do deals with several big online players to make the most of their competitive advantage.
Terry Fitzpatrick, COO Of International Dating Ventures
OPW INTERVIEW - Dec 21 - International Dating Ventures’ holdings include eLove, the first dating service to fuse both traditional matchmaking and online dating. COO Terry Fitzpatrick details the differences between eLove’s two programs and how the company has been able to grow despite the diff...
I hope they succeed. Astro-matching is much maligned by the experts (see above), but it certainly seems to have some merit based on a few thousand years of usage, as opposed to a decade for online dating based on tests. All I'm saying is keep an open mind.
AstrologyDating.com Launches
PRESS RELEASE - Dec 18 - AstrologyDating.com has launched the beta test of its astrology-based dating site. AstrologyDating.com analyzes the planet's zodiac signs based on a person's birth-date, birth-location and time of birth, along with other technological and celestial information to prov...
As one of 100+ dating sites to launch recently, let's give the company six months to establish traction and we'll see where things stand.
I question any company that throws ridiculous valuations in a press release, its amateurish and the investors I work with would most likely agree.
The $20 lifetime membership is an interesting idea, although I don't like them missing out on all of that reoccurring revenue. Unless this is a launch special?
Lovetropolis.com Named Finalist For Multiple iDate Awards
PRESS RELEASE - Dec 16 - Dating site Lovetropolis.com has been recognized as a finalist in five of eleven categories for the 2010 iDate Awards. Lovetropolis.com is a nominee competing for top honors as Best Dating Site, Best Dating Site Design, Most Innovative Company, Best Marketing Campaign ...
I was just reading some FTC data on blog ads, disclaimers and restrictions. If these companies are your clients, you should call them clients. Sponsors means advertisers, which your tag line says you have none of. We need to be careful about these things is all I'm saying.
Thanks To Our Sponsors
I visited Online Buddies HQ yesterday, Impressive operation. Very open about their business and lots of potential for growth with the DList acquisition.
Jonathan Crutchley And Adam Segel, Founder Of Manhunt And CEO Of Online Buddies
OPW INTERVIEW - Dec 14 - Online Buddies runs Manhunt.net, one of the most prominent gay dating sites. Manhunt recently acquired DList.com, a social networking site for the gay community. We have interviewed the founder of Manhunt, Jonathan Crutchley, and Online Buddies CEO Adam Segel about the ...
Impressive number of nominations. When I read this in their investment prospectus my head exploded: "This past March, YouNoodle predicted the value of Lovetropolis.com would reach $44.7 million, by summer’s end. At that point, the dating site will only be about six months old." I see 3,000 monthly visitors in the US or is the growth more on the international side?
My usual statement- they need to be spending a few hundred thousand dollars a month in marketing costs *at the bare minimum* to even come close to being a top-25 dating site. If they ain't spending it, they ain't making it.
Lovetropolis.com Named Finalist For Multiple iDate Awards
PRESS RELEASE - Dec 16 - Dating site Lovetropolis.com has been recognized as a finalist in five of eleven categories for the 2010 iDate Awards. Lovetropolis.com is a nominee competing for top honors as Best Dating Site, Best Dating Site Design, Most Innovative Company, Best Marketing Campaign ...
That's a nice service, just like several others out there, perhaps more reach. Because spoofing sentiment in social media is so easy, I don't trust these numbers in the least. Problem is that I bet I could send out a few hundred tweets and positive blog posts and game the system, but it is nice to be able to review commentary in a single place.
Obvious that certain brands are undertaking social media efforts.
A few people are talking about Zoosk, which gets more positive mentions with no strength and a lot of reach.
The same people are talking about OBC to counteract the negative comments.
Socialmention needs a data visualization designer to do some magic on these numbers to make it easier to grok trends and alerts.
Nice find, you should clean up the data and do monthly reports on this. Much more useful than traffic stats, which lately, are so far off as to be unreliable.
Not sure what the total possible number of mentions is?
Social Media Mentions On Internet Dating Sites
OPW - Dec 15 - I've been playing around with SocialMention.com to monitor social media mentions of dating sites. I picked some of the more distinctive names in the internet dating industry and here are the social media results... Strength is the likelihood that the brand is being discusse...
This thread is yet another example of why I and most other people versed in the world of private label dating have a difficult time recommending specific vendors. I just point people to these threads and tell them to go with their gut.
Running a thriving white label dating site depends on the site manager being an expert online marketer with a big pile of money to support advertising initiatives. If you're not those two things you're not going to be successful. It's as simple as that. Of course there are issues with templates, administrative functions and customer service, but in this day and age of being able to purchase any sort of traffic you want immediately, it's really all about how hot the women in your ads are.
This may seem counter-intuitive to my above comment about being an expert marketer, but your traffic sources are key and being able to identify lucrative partners is incredibly important. Most people running a white label site don't have enough domain knowledge or resources to be competitive in the space.
How appropriate that the article that started all of this is not even reachable.
White Label Dating Analysis
MAKING A MILLION -- Dec 3 -- I've used a few (white label dating) systems to run my own brands on, but most recently whitelabeldating.com and worlddatingpartners.com. I have run enough volumes, over long enough periods to produce what I consider reasonable data sets. Key Performance Indicator ...
The talent, energy, money and support seems to be settling in NYC these days and I hear from more and more Bostonians who are splitting time between Boston and NYC to get things done.
It's easy to say Boston is great for startups, but the SV comparison is stale. We'll never be SV, and SV will be where the lion's share of innovation/people/money is.
Absolutely nothing wrong with that in the least, we have plenty of good stuff to work on right here inside 128.
What Makes Boston's Start-Up Scene Special?
(follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/bussgang) A few weeks ago, Fred Wilson posted a presentation he delivered on What Makes the NYC Start-Up Scene Special. I was inspired to deliver a similar presentation today to a group of Harvard Business School students who are interested in entrepreneu...
Qite the juxtaposition, here in the US on Wall Street the number of bankers acquiring handgun permits is on the rise, supposedly to fight off a presumed rebellion by shareholders. In the UK, the downtrodden financiers would rather cheat on their wives. It's a strange world indeed.
IllicitEncounters.com Sees Spike In Bankers Seeking Affairs
THE GLOBE AND MAIL - Dec 2 - IllicitEncounters.com said it has seen a huge increase in the number of financial workers signing up to have affairs after the collapse of the markets in October last year, and that “finance” continued to be one of the most represented professional areas on the sit...
Keeping an eye on this one, for several reasons. A bit too much personal founder hype for my tastes, perhaps that's what people will respond to. Going to take a ton of ad dollars to get anywhere.
HappierCouples.com Helps Save Relationships
BUSINESS WIRE - Dec 1 - With 50% of U.S. marriages ending in divorce, and 75% of America’s 168M spouses identifying themselves as ‘unhappy’ after only ten years of marriage, a new website HappierCouples.com seeks to stem the rising tide of unhappy marriages. Created by matchmaker Jeff Ullman –...
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