Category: SexSearch

OPW Experiment – Changing Credit Cards

Posted on September 21, 2006

CreditcardOPW — Sep 21 — I signed up for eHarmony, Sexsearch, TRUE, Yahoo Personals, American Singles and Match in November 2005. I ran an experiment starting in July 2006. What would happen if I cancelled the card instead of cancelling with the service? Would they cancel the service automatically, email me for my new card number, or transfer the charges to the new card. Here's the results three months later.

American Singles – cancelled, no more charges
eHarmony – cancelled, no more charges
Match – cancelled, no more charges
Sexsearch – cancelled, no more charges
TRUE – cancelled, no more charges
Yahoo Personals – carried on charging the new card
(Yahoo also continued charging for Overture. Google Adwords cancelled out)

I called in to Yahoo Personals to see how lenient their refund policy was. They cancelled the membership but were rigid on their refund policy, despite the card number change. August and September charges were not refunded. Interesting. So, how lenient should your membership refund policy be?

Membership to my little Silicon Valley social club, Ace Club, is $19.95 a month with a 90 day no quibble money back guarantee. 1 in 200 takes me up on refund within the 90 day period. Short refund policies and long refund policies work best. So, 3 to 7 day trials and 90 day money back guarantees. The people who request refunds within the 90 day period should provide you with good feedback/service improvement information for your service. If they're not happy, you need to know why. A 90 day money back guarantee will open up that feedback channel. Listen intently. The keys to the future profitability of your internet dating service are within that feedback. 

I've heard some internet dating services have considered going free. No need. Just try a 90 day refund policy. Your conversion numbers will be favorable. Your long term return rates will be favorable. Just find a way to track them. See what happens 😉 Your comments please.  – Mark Brooks

FriendFinder Celebrates Ten Years and 130 Million Registrations

Posted on September 15, 2006

Friendfinderlogo_1MARKET WIRE — Sep 14 — FriendFinder was founded in 1996 by Andrew Conru. Passion.com is for those interested in "spicy" romantic liaisons. AdultFriendFinder.com, the most popular site of all with more than 1 million new registrations a month, caters to people interested in finding a more intimate but not necessarily romantic partner. Other communitires include OutPersonals, Senior FriendFinder, Bigchurch, Amigos and AsiaFriendFinder.  "On some of our sites, more than 40% of all those who have registered remain on our active file," said Dr. Conru. "We are rapidly moving into the mobile phone arena, upgrading payment systems to make it easier for people to purchase our premium products directly through their mobile phone carriers, and we are launching more sites that meet the needs of specific groups."

Mark Brooks: Sexsearch (7 million registrants since 2003) is FriendFinder's top competitor and is biting at AdultFriendFinder, Passion.com's and Outpersonals heels. It's newer, glossier, and more straight to the point. It's amazing how large this adult dating 'niche' is, and how rarely it gets covered in the press…because it's still viewed as porn by most of the press and analysts. Yes, it's risque, but it's still internet dating: the antithesis of eHarmony. I noticed that Hitwise is now including AdultFriendFinder in their Australian rankings.

Monogamy or Monotony?

Posted on September 1, 2006

PolygamieTHE VILLAGE VOICE — Aug 30 — "I prefer to cheat with other married people because they have as much to lose as me typically" says a 35-year-old executive at a large corporation in midtown Manhattan. Married for seven years, he and his wife have sex twice a week. He cheated for the first time with another married woman he met through the Ashley Madison Agency. He's one of over a million members of Ashley Madison, which—like Married Secrets, Affair Match, Discreet Adventures and International House of Wives—caters to cheaters. The company's founder, Darren Morgenstern wanted to offer a service where folks could be up-front about their marital status.  Membership costs $240 for three months. Sites like Ashley Madison tap into a very profitable niche within the online personals arena by bringing honesty to the dishonest practice of cheating. Statistics show that 12% to 25% of women and 22% to 60% of men cheat.

The full article was originally published at Village Voice, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: Sexsearch is into threesomes. AdultFriendFinder markets to swingers. Polymatchmaker also.  In some ways Ashley Madison, and others are providing a service to the dating industry by soaking up the marrieds that would otherwise venture onto mainstream dating sites and give them a bad reputation. By their mere existence they also encourage infidelity.  Do these services provide a useful public service? For or against? Your comments please.

FriendFinder Introduces Mobile Direct Billing

Posted on August 18, 2006

FriendfinderlogoMARKET WIRE — Aug 17 — FriendFinder.com launched a new payment system that permits its members to be billed directly by their cell phone operators. The system uses the Premium Short Message Service (PSMS) protocol. It was recently rolled out in the U.K. for all FriendFinder.com programs. It will be introduced over the next few weeks in Australia, Germany, Austria, France, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Korea, Taiwan and China. In the U.S. it will be available for FriendFinder.com and Passion.com members only, starting in September. Members can handle the entire membership transaction simply by entering their mobile phone number in a box on the billing page. The PSMS payment option is provided by Vidicom.co.uk. A billing confirmation message is sent to the member's mobile phone. When the member replies to the confirmation alert, the cost of the service they requested is charged to their telecommunications provider, providing a convenient alternative for people who do not wish to use a credit card.

Mark Brooks: This will increase FriendFinder conversions, especially on it's casual/adult dating properties.  AdultFriendFinder is the top adult personals site, followed by the newer, sexier SexSearch.com.

OnlineBootyCall, Only a Single Marriage

Posted on August 5, 2006

Obclogo1bn3SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE — Aug 3 –  OnlineBootyCall.com, a division of Mobeze, is proud to announce that they have received only one confirmed report of marriage since their Web site's inception three years ago. "Reaching the one million member mark with only a single reported marriage is a tremendous accomplishment," Moses Brown, Founder and CEO said.  While most dating sites focus on lengthy profiles and complex matching systems, OnlineBootyCall.com prefers a simpler approach; the sign-up process can be accomplished in less than one minute.  OBC makes 30,000 connections each day; that equals one marriage per 32,850,000 booty-call connections. "Nobody else can boast that kind of success," Brown said. The OBC membership base has grown through a very generous referral system: $100,000 in cash prizes to members. Every member who refers at least five people during the course of one month is placed in a random drawing for $1,000; five winners are picked each month.  he Booty Call Ten Commandments guides members towards success. The first commandment is "Thou shall get out before the sun rises." FULL ARTICLE @ SEND2PRESS.COM

Mark Brooks: Casual dating sites (Sexsearch.com, AdultFriendFinder) are doing very well, alongside the personality profiling 'serious dating' sites (eHarmony, PerfectMatch, LoveHappens).

Online Video Shakeout

Posted on July 25, 2006

Youtube_1SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE — July 17 — While YouTube dominates Web of today, about 240 sites have dreams of success — or getting gobbled up for big bucks.

You've heard of YouTube. You might have also heard of iFilm, Revver or Grouper. But have you heard of Frozen Hippo? Blennus? Eefoof? By one count, about 240 sites now dabble in online video…setting the stage for a shakeout. On any given day, people watch more than 100 million videos on YouTube.  "People lump us in with YouTube, but we have the technology to be much more than that," said Dmitry Shapiro, CEO of Veoh.  Veoh hopes the computer will become the future set-top box for television. Guba, meanwhile, sells movie and TV downloads from Warner Bros. and Sony. FULL ARTICLE @ SF GATE

Mark Brooks: As users warm up to watching TV on their computer, the online personals industry should warm up more to video dating. And don't forget video dating on your cell phone. That's next.

OPW Interview – Adam Small, CMO of Sexsearch

Posted on May 28, 2006

SexsearchaOPW INTERVIEW — May 28, 2006 — Sexsearch is different. It's glossy, sexy and growing gangbusters. The casual dating and, at the other end of the spectrum, serious/relationship dating segments are growing ever stronger. Sexsearch has been barreling along for a couple of years now. Now they are second only to AdultFriendFinder in the casual/adult segment. I interviewed (ex-Yahoo) Adam Small who is CMO of Sexsearch. – Mark Brooks

What’s your story Adam?
After school I moved to New York City and I worked as a financial manager for Prudential. From there I decided I wanted to run my own company and I started a website for college students which was called CollegeU and we ran a discount card program for students and local businesses. I had a friend who was working at Yahoo, and he convinced me to join Yahoo in New York, where I worked for a number of years. I worked with clients such as Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, American Express. I met Damian, the owner of my current company through some of my Yahoo friends and decided to move to Toronto to start building SexSearch.

What's the Sexsearch story?
Sexsearch took us one and half year s to build…and we launched it in January a little over two years ago. We knew how well dating did, we had worked with Adult Friend Finder and we actually approach them to see if we could do more marketing for them but they weren‘t interested in allowing us to have a private label site at the time. So, we decided to build our own dating site with an adult twist to it. We liked certain aspects of what they had and we added all our own bells and whistles and gave the site a unique design with a more straight-to-the-point focus.   

Who is your target market?
Our target market is anyone over the age of 21 who is interested in sex…which is almost everybody. Other personals sites beat around the bush. We get straight to the point. We know that there‘s lot of people out there who are interested in sex.

How many members do you have now?
We have a little over 6.5 million registered users…and it’s growing fast! 

Are online personal users moving more towards casual dating sites or towards relationship dating sites?
I think online personals users are moving towards lot of different niche dating sites and I think they are definitely moving more towards casual dating sites. We‘ve seen a big increase in the number of members and I know there’s been a decline with some of our main stream competitors. So, I definitely see a trend of users moving more towards casual dating sites like SexSearch. 

What do you have in store for SexSearch?
Towards the end of the summer we will be launching private labels capability, which will allow us to launch more sites for ourselves, such as a mainstream dating site with an edge, of course. We will also launch a gay dating site. Offering private label sites will give us the ability to do deals with other companies who are interested in using our very established database and back-end to offer their own dating site.

Ultimate List of Dating Industry Jobs

Posted on May 4, 2006

May 4 — I'm rolling the list of internet dating, social networking and business networking industry jobs links into a handy little list.  Please let me know if you have any new links for the list by emailing me at mark@onlinepersonalswatch.com.  Thanks.  – Mark

CommunityConnect
Cupid
Friendfinder
Friendster
Hi5
Lavalife
Match
Mate1
Meetup
MySpace
PerfectMatch
PlanetOut/Gay
Shaadi
Spark Networks
Webdate
Yahoo Personals

Spark Networks Reports Q1 Results

Posted on May 3, 2006

Sparknetworks_2SPARK NETWORKS NEWSROOM — Apr 27 — JDate revenue and average paying subscribers increased 8% and 13%. During Q1, Spark redesigned and rebranded its Christian community (ChristianMingle.com) as Relationships.com, already the most-visited Christian community.  Revenue for Q1 2006 was $16.8 million, up 2% on Q1 2005. Spark has reduced spending for AmericanSingles in order to lower customer acquisition costs. Net income was $710,000. EBITDAS profit of $3.4 million, the best to date, up 10%.  Direct subscriber acquisition costs for JDate was $13.20, up 47%, and $35.19 for AmericanSingles, up 37%.

The full article was originally published at Spark Networks website, but is no longer available.

Mark Brooks: One can argue that niche dating sites could be quashed by the big dating sites improving their search capability (e.g. reverse search). However, that argument doesn't take into account the power of a niche dating brand; the attraction of a focused site geared towards a particular demographic, interest, fetish, etc.  E.g. Jdate (Jewish), Webdate (first date on a webcam), ChristianCafe.com (Christians), DateMyPet (Pet Lovers), Sexsearch (Sex Lovers?).  All are powerful brands, worlds apart.  Specific interest dating sites will endure and enjoy especially good word-of-mouth marketing efficiencies, if they do a good job.  Spark (American Singles) has recognised, 'if you can beat 'em, might as well join 'em,' and is shifting it's attention to it's niche dating sites. 

Married Man Sues After Dating Service Won’t Match

Posted on March 28, 2006

Eharmony_7SAN JOSE KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS — Mar 27 — John Claassen is taking eHarmony.com to court, because the popular online matchmaker refused to find him the perfect mate.  Why? Because he is married.  Claassen says he is legally separated. Claassen cites California civil code, section 51 and seeks $12,000 in civil penalties. 

Mark Brooks: Black or white, married or not.  That's the way eHarmony sees it.  That's their position, and when users are paying $50 a month to meet serious singles who are ready for a relationship (i.e. no baggage), why not. Ashley Madison takes a different (appalling) position.  Sexsearch.com doesn't mind separated singles.