PRESS RELEASE – July 23 – Avalanche, the company behind Date.com and Matchmaker.com, among others, has acquired Golfmates.com, an online dating site for golf enthusiasts. Golfmates.com is the first sports themed dating site to join Avalanche’s roster of 18 niche and general dating sites. The term of the deal were not disclosed.
The full article was originally published at GolfMates website, but is no longer available.
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.
OPW – June 22 – GolfMates.com, a dating site for golf lovers that launched in 2001, is now for sale. Scott Kroeger, the site's founder, is asking for ~$250K. GolfMates.com bringing in $100K in revenue a year. Scott is also selling TennisDate.com for $10K. Please contact Scott directly if you are interested.
SM SMALL BIZ — Feb 13 — Making a bundle in the dating industry, isn't easy for a small player competing against Yahoo! Personals, Match.com and eHarmony. At PlentyofFish, which now ranks among the top 10 dating sites in the U.S. for unique visitors, Frind's strategy was simple. "I undercut them on price," he says. When it comes to the business of love, newbie entrepreneurs need to figure out a way to stand out in a crowded marketplace. Here's how:
– Find a Niche
– Undercut the Competition
– Add Value
– Innovate
More narrowly focused niches have begun to surface. i.e. golfmates.com and vegetariandating.com. The best niche businesses are usually started by entrepreneurs who have a deep understanding of the community they want to serve. i.e. Patrick H. Perrine, a psychologist who spent years studying human sexuality and dating preferences, launched a gay male matchmaking service in San Francisco in 2004, and then expanded the service online – myPartner.com — to a national audience last year. "We discovered there was no space for gay men looking for a serious relationship on the web", he says. To compete with the big guys, Sam Yagan, co-founder of free dating site, OKCupid.com, offers users the ability to craft their own personality quizzes, or choose from 30,000 others. The idea behind the quizzes is that users will share them with their friends who, in turn, may sign up for the service.
The full article was originally published at SmallBiz, but is no longer available.
BUSINESS WIRE — Dec 4 — Oodle, the search engine for classifieds, launched Oodle Personals for consumers to search over a million public profiles from sites such as OkCupid and PlentyofFish as well as smaller community sites Nerve and GolfMates.com. Launched in April of 2005, Oodle provides an index of 19 million listings from 75,000 sources.
Mark Brooks: Lycos Dating Search has gone away. Dating sites paid on a cost per lead basis and fed them a flat file of members periodically. The lead stream wasn't what partner sites were hoping for unfortunately. Oodle seems like a better bet. No flat file, no CPL. Nice! I called them and they tell me they grew 463% since last year. They're funded by Greylock Ventures and Redpoint Ventures. Featured listings are available if you want to move your listings up in the search rankings and pay them some money.
PRWEB — Mar 16 — Golfmates.com has had their first marriage. Golfmates.com has more than 3,000 members. The US National Golf Foundation estimates there are 26 million golfers in the US. 90% use computers at work. 58% use the Internet.