Most dating sites rely on advertising and premium memberships and live on the margin between advertising costs and revenue from membership fees. This is a hard business - not many reach the status where they make more then 1 Euro on every Euro they spend on advertising. Also, it is hard to get members to sign-up on a dating site and not every "expensive" visitor through a sponsored link (e.g. Adwords, Facebook) will result in an active member and not every active member will end-up paying something.
Now that the financial crises reaches many countries, also people are less willing to spend money on online dating. This might kill many dating sites that already had a hard-time trying to make more money on membership fees then spending on advertising, customer support and everything related to running and maintaining the website.
Another danger for many dating sites is Facebook: in real-life many people meet their partner through friends. Now with Facebook, it becomes even easier meeting friends of friends and Facebook also helps singles to meet their partner directly or indirectly. People also have a limited time to spend online every day - the more time they spend on Facebook - the less time they will spend on other websites such as dating sites.
Facebook, however, might become victim of its ipo in the near future - the stock market can be a friend of a business or an enemy.
Dienstag, 20. Dezember 2011
Montag, 19. Dezember 2011
Dating sites check - December 2011
How are the dating sites doing now?
Plentyoffish.com - Pof.com
Plentyoffish is still "in recession" - the traffic still keeps on falling for the last 3 months.
Match.com
One of the internet dating dinosaures is now also loosing some traffic - however only slightly. They still seem to be *kind-of* stable.
Flirt.com
What about the stock-market rockers Cupid Plc and their flirt.com site? Flirt.com is run by people with loads of money and loads of knowledge about how to pull the last cent out of every visitors nose and how to maximize the conversions. Also they always find cheap dating sites to acquire (12-36 months revenue as a sales price) which usually reach their break-even after 3-6 months. But what about their flagship, flirt.com? How does it perform?
Let's put it this way: it could do better. All the breaks in the graph is probably when the advertising budget is reduced...and the spikes when they spend loads of money on advertising within a short time.
Flirtomatic.com
What about the wanna-bes from flirtomatic? Those people are really experts in getting venture capital - but are loosers in effectively spending the money and creating a decent revenue stream with it:
So the rearlight of this comparison if flirtomatic - a really sad example of how venture capital can be spent the most useless way.
Hang on - I almost forgot about a site....
Smartdate.com
What about those French internet guys with all the media coverage last year on how cool this company is?
They also received (and spent?) millions of Euros...and what's the status of Smartdate.com?
It looks dead if you ask me:
I love the final blimp on Alexa...the last resurrection attempt...fighting with its venture capital death.
If you have a pet, you probably know this already: If you feed animals too much they die.
Ilove.de
Speaking of internet death - those German visitors amongst you might remember the Jamba guys with their ilove rip-off website - it died some time ago - but somehow it refuses to die decently:
Plentyoffish.com - Pof.com
Match.com
One of the internet dating dinosaures is now also loosing some traffic - however only slightly. They still seem to be *kind-of* stable.
Flirt.com
What about the stock-market rockers Cupid Plc and their flirt.com site? Flirt.com is run by people with loads of money and loads of knowledge about how to pull the last cent out of every visitors nose and how to maximize the conversions. Also they always find cheap dating sites to acquire (12-36 months revenue as a sales price) which usually reach their break-even after 3-6 months. But what about their flagship, flirt.com? How does it perform?
Let's put it this way: it could do better. All the breaks in the graph is probably when the advertising budget is reduced...and the spikes when they spend loads of money on advertising within a short time.
Flirtomatic.com
What about the wanna-bes from flirtomatic? Those people are really experts in getting venture capital - but are loosers in effectively spending the money and creating a decent revenue stream with it:
So the rearlight of this comparison if flirtomatic - a really sad example of how venture capital can be spent the most useless way.
Hang on - I almost forgot about a site....
Smartdate.com
What about those French internet guys with all the media coverage last year on how cool this company is?
They also received (and spent?) millions of Euros...and what's the status of Smartdate.com?
It looks dead if you ask me:
I love the final blimp on Alexa...the last resurrection attempt...fighting with its venture capital death.
If you have a pet, you probably know this already: If you feed animals too much they die.
Ilove.de
Speaking of internet death - those German visitors amongst you might remember the Jamba guys with their ilove rip-off website - it died some time ago - but somehow it refuses to die decently:
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