VERIFIED MARKET REPORT – The Premium Matchmaking Service Market report by Verified Market Reports (March 2025) estimates the market will grow from $1.2B in 2024 to $2.5B by 2033, at a CAGR of 8.9%. Growth is driven by rising demand for personalized, high-end dating services among affluent users, especially in Asia-Pacific. Online matchmaking now accounts for 60% of market revenue, with key players including It's Just Lunch, VIDA Select, and EliteMatrimony.
Category: VirtualDatingAssistants
Meet The Man Using Google to Steal Customers From Tinder
AHREFS – Scott Valdez developed VIDA, a service that takes over and automates dating app interactions, including swiping, messaging, and flirting to the point users get out on dates. VIDA monetizes SEO keywords like "Tinder pickup lines" or "Tinder vs. Bumble" which has high commercial intent. Reddit offers further potential as it captures substantial traffic on dating discussions.
Scott Valdez Turned Swiping Into a Career
NEW YORK POST – Matchmaking company Vida Select offers a service where employees, like Andrew Boese, swipe on dating apps on behalf of clients, handling all aspects of online dating for a fee. Boese, who has worked as a ghostwriter for the company for a decade, adopts various personas to match clients' preferences. Vida Select claims that typical dating app users spend ~12 hours a week on platforms, suggesting their service as a time-saving alternative. The company, founded in 2009 by Scott Valdez, who met his wife through the platform, charges clients upwards of $2,595 per month for their services.
Scott Valdez, VIDA Select CEO: Why Singles Need a Coach
ATLANTA MAGAZINE – Feb 10 – The owner of Atlanta-based VIDA Select explains why single people need an online dating coach. Busy with work and unsuccessful in love, Scott Valdez decided to leave flirting to a pro. Now, it's his business. "Men sometimes are frustrated online because they haphazardly throw together a profile and start to send random messages. You get good results online by having the best possible photos and by standing out in your profile text and your messages. With data, we can see exactly what words or emojis or photos work best. The person we're messaging with doesn't know the person is using VIDA Select. Some people think this method is deceiving, but we've been successful in representing our clients in a way that they feel is accurate," he explains.
When the Dow Is Down, Love Is up
ESQUIRE – Dec 11 – VIDA Select is a modern matchmaking experience. It does match its clients with one another like a traditional service, but it also gets them set up on two to four dating apps. VIDA handling all the swiping and messaging, too. 15 people or more could be involved in the setup of an account. Its packages start at $895 per month. CEO Scott Valdez says his cheaper service is just as or more effective than expensive matchmakers, mostly because "the idea of relying on your own database of paying customers is something that made sense when there weren't huge online dating platforms available." Selective Search would disagree. "It's almost like self-serve at a grocery store versus someone that's actually making you gourmet food, organic, farm-to-plate, in your home," founder and CEO Barbie Adler says of how her team differs. Its custom programs can range from $25,000 to $1M. Amber Kelleher-Andrews, CEO of Kelleher International, thinks she knows why online dating doesn't work for everyone: There's no vetting. The company only makes matches for highly successful entrepreneurs, royalty, celebrities, and otherwise notable people, and only two percent of applicants are accepted. A Kelleher International membership costs $25K – $300K a year. In a pandemic-ridden world, the matchmaking industry is experiencing an unprecedented boom.
by Lauren Kranc
See full article at Esquire
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Vida Dating’s Founder Defends His Business Model
FOX13 – Nov 28 – Scott Valdez, the founder and CEO of VIDA, a virtual dating assistant company. Dozens of remote consultants – from a stylist, to a photo analyst, to an app-swiper – work together to curate and manage users online dating profiles for them. They even have a ghostwriters, who flirts with their matches on their behalf. The end goal is to set up a date for their clients.
How ViDA, the Virtual Dating Assistant, Works
VICE – Aug 3 – When Facebook launched in 2004, Scott Valdez used it to find women who attended the University of Georgia. He sent them dozens of messages using one of five pickup lines, and then recorded the women’s responses and response rate in a spreadsheet. He applied his algorithm to POF, and hired a guy on Craigslist to manage his POF profile for him. His personal experiment laid the groundwork for his matchmaking service, called ViDA Select. It’s now the biggest virtual dating service of its kind. Dozens of remote consultants – from a stylist, to a photo analyst, to an app-swiper – work together to curate and manage users online dating profiles for them. They even have a ghostwriter, who flirts with their matches on their behalf. The end goal is to set up a date for their clients.
by Caroline Pahl & Evan McMorris-Santorro
See full article at Vice News
Increasing Number of People Pay Virtual Dating Assistants to Get a Date
GQ MAGAZINE – Nov 14 – For people too busy to swipe themselves, there's a new generation of cyber-cupids to help them hook up, break up and everything in between – from polishing profiles, to messaging potential dates. With a budget of £15K, Scott Valdez used Craigslist to hire two freelance writers and a PR manager, then founded Virtual Dating Assistants (styled Vida) in 2009. Since then, the business has grown exponentially. Vida has hundreds of clients. In the last year alone, it has seen a 50% increase in sign-ups and almost a third of its customers are women. The team has grown from a staff of three to 80, with matchmakers, profile writers, photo analysts and app swipers joining the ghostwriters. With pay-as-you-go monthly packages ranging from £400 (20 hours of dating assistance and an expected two-to-four dates per month) to £2k (100 hours, and eight to 20 dates per month), Vida already has a seven-figure revenue stream, and it's just getting started. Vida says that 99.6% of clients get dates, 63% of which turn into serious relationships, usually after 12 dates within three and a half months. After Vida obtains a phone number from a potential date, the client is sent an email with the full transcript of the conversation to read over and memorise (they are then expected to takeover via SMS).
by Eleanor Halls
See full article at GQ Magazine
How Virtual Dating Assistant Works
QUARTZ – Apr 26 – There are two main types of writers at Virtual Dating Assistants: "Profile Writers," who create profiles based on facts their clients have supplied about themselves, and "Closers," who log in to clients' accounts at least twice a day to respond to messages from matches. Profile Writers follow strict guidelines, often recycling the same half-dozen clichés over and over again. The process for Closers is a bit more complicated. The initial training period lasts several weeks before they're given access to clients' accounts, during which they must read several training manuals and submit draft responses to fake matches. A third type of employee, "Matchmakers," send out opening messages en masse across every dating platform. Originally a sales guy with no time for "real dates," Scott Valdez grew ViDA's brand out of his own experiences in the dating world. "I found myself wishing there were two of me," he continued. "I thought, 'Why couldn't I just take what I had developed, and train someone else to sound like me, and outsource my online dating to him?'" The company's practices may be unethical – but they're not illegal. Once the company obtains the client's permission to impersonate them online, there are no laws against what Closers do.
by Chloe Rose Stuart-Ulin
See full article at Quartz
Singles Paying People To Impersonate Them Online To Score Dates
GLOBALNEWS – Jan 30 – Anne Marshall runs an outsourced online dating service. She offers three packages that range from $175 to $500. Her client base is mostly busy women 30-60. Some of her clients eventually tell their partners that they hired her. The majority of people who use U.S.-based Virtual Dating Assistants don't tell their partners, said company founder Scott Valdez. The company has ~200 clients. "We manage our clients dating profiles from start to finish," explained Valdez. His most popular bundles tend to be for 20 hours ($460) and 40 hours ($840).
by Patricia Kozicka
See full article at GlobalNews