SAÏD AMIN BLOG — Jan 15 — BlackPlanet.com's dating section is now free; probably a good move that will help their bleeding traffic.
The full article was originally published at Said Amin Blog, but is no longer available.
SAÏD AMIN BLOG — Jan 15 — BlackPlanet.com's dating section is now free; probably a good move that will help their bleeding traffic.
The full article was originally published at Said Amin Blog, but is no longer available.
The online dating space is hyper-competitive and even in the niche verticals like the African-American segment. A strong value proposition and customer acquisition expertise is how you bring scale which engenders network effects which leads you to the top. That’s what BlackPeopleMeet.com has done and we’re many times bigger than the next closest competitor in the space. BlackPlanet was a distant third and transitioned to 100% ad revenue model in Feb 2008. I’m not the biggest fan of the ad revenue model in general let alone in the dating space since you need massive scale to be make the economics attractive (even facebook/myspace of the worlds will have a tough go at it). I’d be surprised if any free site were to sell north of $20-30M in general let alone in this market.
The online dating space is hyper-competitive and even in the niche verticals like the African-American segment. A strong value proposition and customer acquisition expertise is how you bring scale which engenders network effects which leads you to the top. That’s what BlackPeopleMeet.com has done and we’re many times bigger than the next closest competitor in the space. BlackPlanet was a distant third and transitioned to 100% ad revenue model in Feb 2008. I’m not the biggest fan of the ad revenue model in general let alone in the dating space since you need massive scale to be make the economics attractive (even facebook/myspace of the worlds will have a tough go at it). I’d be surprised if any free site were to sell north of $20-30M in general let alone in this market.
Sites which can’t make it as paid sites are going free, but that is surely just a temporary measure until they close.
The business of running a paid site is vastly different to that of a free site and there just isn’t enough market for more than one or two free sites, especially when advertising budgets are being slashed.
Sites which can’t make it as paid sites are going free, but that is surely just a temporary measure until they close.
The business of running a paid site is vastly different to that of a free site and there just isn’t enough market for more than one or two free sites, especially when advertising budgets are being slashed.