OPW – Feb 6 – Janis Spindel Serious Matchmaking is launching a new dating site 2LoveToday.com. Janis Spindel has 21 years of traditional matchmaking experience. Janis has developed a private registry system that she personally approves and/ or declines members after passing an initial $100 screening process that includes identification authentication of sex offender information and county criminal information. Once approved, members get 2 months free membership. To remain active after the 2 months free membership has expired, women are required to pay $25 every three months and men are required to pay $225 every three months.
Month: February 2012
Valentine’s Day 2012: Canadian Seniors Find True Love Through Dating Sites
THE STAR – Feb 6 – It’s never too early to plan for retirement. And it’s never too late to find true love. “People planning for retirement now are the generation that launched the sexual revolution,” notes Lally Rementilla, VP for LavalifePrime, a dating site where a third of the members are 60+. John Oosterhof was 69 and a widower for almost two years when he joined ChristianMingle.com. Last December, through ChristianMingle, he contacted Marilynn Mitchener, a 61-year-old widow. Eight months later they were married. Both agree it’s important to have someone to talk to at home.
Match.com President On The Formula For Love
FORBES – Feb 5 – Now, at least one in every six new marriages are between people who met on a dating site. This, of course, is fantastic news for Mandy Ginsberg, President of Match.com. With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, Ginsberg shares her own “algorithm” for success, why business school doesn’t have anything on single parenting, and why flirting at work may not be such a bad thing after all.
Q: What advice would you give other women who want to be innovative and “follow the rules” at the same time?
A: Being agile, innovative and decisive are critical.
Q: What’s the best thing you’ve ever done for your career?
A: Pushing myself to do things that were out of my comfort zone.
Q: What your advice is for someone who has a crush on a colleague?
A: I met my husband at my last company while we were working on a project together. Sometimes acting on those crushes at the office might not be a bad thing. Happily, it worked for me.
Q: Match.com is a company that has managed to grow amid a very significant recession. Aside from having a great product, to what do you attribute this success?
A: Even in a recession people want to fall in love. Still, I attribute success to a few things. One, build a brilliant team. Second, take calculated risks. Two years ago we had this unique idea of focusing our TV ads around those first dates. So we asked a few Match.com members if we could film them on a first date. Now over 100 TV ads later from 30 real dates across the country, we have created the most successful campaign in our history.
Q: If you could go back and give one piece of advice to your 20 -year-old self, what would it be?
A: Don’t be afraid of failure.
A Lawyer Finds His Perfect Match
FT – Feb 5 – Greg Blatt is talking fast and loud. So loud that, after a while, your ears begin to hurt. But as the CEO of IAC – the company behind Match.com – enthuses about his business, his big voice ricochets around his glass-walled office with a view of the Statue of Liberty. “It’s been a great year,” he booms. Mr Blatt is excited because it has indeed been a good first year on the job. Full-year results, released last week, showed annual revenues up 26% to $2.1bn, with profits up 75% to $174m. He is unmarried – and has even cancelled his subscription to Match.com. “I’m a single guy,” he says. “I have a bunch of friends in the city. I date ladies from time to time.” Blatt helped Diller spin off the companies that didn’t fit, starting with Expedia in 2005, and continuing with Home Shopping Network, Ticketmaster and others in 2008. “We disaggregated to a group of businesses that have far more commonality among them,” he says. After six years as general counsel, Mr Blatt was tapped to run Match.com, and in 2010 he took over as CEO. Likewise, he does not see Facebook as a direct competitor. Yet the skyrocketing valuations of internet start-ups, led by that company’s pending IPO, has made it harder for IAC to find acquisition targets to fuel its growth. “I went to law school because I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” he says. “If someone had asked me if I would be working in the internet after law school I would have said: ‘What’s the internet?’”
Modern Dating Offers Innovative Ways To Meet New People
SOUTH UNIVERSITY – Feb 5 – Janis Spindel of Serious Matchmaking, says her business has gone up by 62% since shows such as Bravo’s The Millionaire Matchmaker have made her matchmaking services better known. Spindel goes to breakfast, lunch, or dinner every day of the week with a different potential client. She takes note of behaviors such as good eye contact. Spindel’s clients are all men, ranging in age from 27 to 78 years old. She describes them as very well-educated, upscale, professional, awesome men. In order to find matches for her clients, Spindel accepts applications through her website from women hoping to meet them. The women need to be well-educated, well-spoken, intellectually stimulating, grounded, and must follow a healthy lifestyle. Having things in common is also an important part of a successful match. Shannon Smith, a representative from Plenty of Fish (POF), says the site’s matching system is based on a combination of the information members enter into their profile and their user behavior. “If they have specified that they are looking for blondes, but search for brunettes, they will get matched with brunettes,” Smith says. “If a user will not date a smoker, they will not see smokers in their matches. POF has ~38M users worldwide. POF also has a mobile app. “Currently, upwards of 60% of our users under the age of 40 in the US access the site via mobile device", Smith says.
Online Love Comes With Hefty Price Tag
INDEPENDENT – Feb 4 – Irish singletons are spending up to €50 a month in the hope of finding love online. As Valentine's Day looms, a survey by the Consumers Association of Ireland (CAI) has found that Irish dating sites charge between €12 and €49.90 a month. There were also plenty of free internet dating sites, with PlentyofFish the most well-known. Growing numbers of people may be in need of assistance in the dating game, as there was a 10% increase in the number of Irish singletons between 2002 and 2006, while divorcees were the fastest growing dmographic. Almost one in six Irish couples met online, according to a study published last year.
by Aideen Sheehan
See full article at Independent
U.S. Dating Services Market Reached $2.1 Billion
MARKETWIRE – Feb 3 – Market Research has released a new report "The U.S. Dating Services Market". The U.S. dating services market is a now a $2.1 billion business. Dating website revenues are expected to grow only 7.5% this year as the U.S.
WhiteLabelDating.com Hires New GM From News International
OPW – Feb 3 – WhiteLabelDating.com has hired Richard Gale as Commercial Development Director and Bill Richards as General Manager. Bill Richards will be tasked with managing the customer care, moderation and retention teams to ensure total customer satisfaction. Bill has also worked with EMI, IPC Media, SportingBet and MTV.
Top 20 Affiliate Networks
BLUE BOOK – Feb 6 – These rankings are derived from Blue Book's survey of affiliates, publishers, advertisers and agencies in the performance marketing industry. Over 100K responses were analyzed, weighed and then allocated to the various networks. The result is a list of the world’s best CPA networks, with a good mixture of huge networks and small, and of boutique, invitation-only networks and million-affiliate behemoths. Linkshare received significantly improved support from both affiliates and merchants in this years survey.
Top 5 Affiliate Networks
1. Linkshare
2. Commission Junction
3. Shareasale
4. Amazon
5. oneNetworkDirect
Mark Brooks: We review affiliate network payouts to see who is paying out what, and where the best payouts are for the top internet dating affiliate programs. You can download the latest spreadsheet here.
This post also appears on InternetDatingAffiliates.
Subscription & Membership Site Summit, April 24-25 In San Francisco
OPW – Feb 6 – The 2nd annual Subscription & Membership Site Summit will be held in San Francisco on April 24-25th. The second Subscription & Membership Summit features:
#1. One-to-one Site critiques
Get your homepage, paywall and membership marketing evaluated by on-site experts. Walk away with specific changes you can make for better conversions.
#2. Eight Case Studies presented by site publishers
#3. How-to Sessions on Retention Marketing, Content for 2012, Search Marketing, Event Cross-sells, & Local Online Media Biz Models.
#4. Tons of networking with your peers.