Internet Dating Affiliates

Dating sites Using NY Affiliates Now Subject To State Tax

THE PARADIGM SHIFT -- May 22 -- If you use affiliate marketers based in New York, you are now subject to new York Sales tax. This means eHarmony, Match.com, True.com and all other major sites with an affiliate program are now subject to this law. The Law comes into full effect in 10 days. FULL ARTICLE @ THE PARADIGM SHIFT

TRUE Live On CX Interactive

FF -- Dec 20 -- TRUE canceled their Commission Junction affiliate program and relationship and I just got a heads up that they have started up with CX Interactive. They canceled with CJ because, they said, they had an unacceptably high level of fraud. CX have just run their first couple of million impressions with TRUE.  They're running all standard ad units. CX seems keen to ad more dating offers from other providers.

Is TRUE Paying Affiliates?

FF -- Nov 29 -- Word on the street is that TRUE is leaving affiliates awash and not paying out.  Here's the word from TRUE... 

" We have been migrating to Link Connector for some time now in response to the amount of fraud that comes in from Commission Junction. We are eliminating Commission Junction and will be building an in-house affiliate solution in the future. We do continue to use many affiliate networks through our major partners."

TRUE has been unhappy with CJ for sending them craptastic fraudulent traffic. They've settled their differences and gone their separate ways. I guess that means if you're a CJ affiliate marketing TRUE, you're high and dry. Change out those links. I tried reaching CJ for comment but got the usual zilch response. I've been monitoring dollars-per-unique earned from the affiliate links on Online Personals Watch for a while now and TRUE has been one of the best paying dating programs. I used CJ for a while and switched out to their offer through Primary Ads because the payout was better. My recommendation, if you want to run TRUE offers, use Link Connector. They hold Link Connector in good favor. Looks like they're still running on Primary Ads as well.

Payout comparison: Back in May 2007 CJ was paying out a bounty of $30 per paid membership plus $2 per lead (free sign-up) with a 21 day cookie. They were also running on Azoogleads for $2.30 per lead in May. Right now Primary Ads is running TRUE offers and paying out $3.50 a lead, and Link Connector is paying out $2 per lead. 

[12/4 - I just got this heads up from LinkConnector. "TRUE no longer has an active campaign with LinkConnector.  It is our understanding that they have ended their campaigns with other networks as well."]

Which Dating Sites Convert the Best?

OPW -- Jan 2 -- Online Personals Watch is for online personals marketing managers and executives to stay ahead of the news, and for the press to research the industry. It's not really designed for end users. Having said that, I make a few bucks from affiliate text links. $5k last year. Not too shabby. I thought I'd share the conversion numbers with you, for open discussion. I'm listing companies with which I had more than 1000 click throughs. I'm told affiliates will usually send an affiliate program 300 clicks before drawing initial conclusions on conversions. Here's the rankings drawn from stats for January 1st 2005, through December 25th 2006.  I'll redo them for a smaller date range later this quarter.

	Dating site	Affiliate System	Total Commission	Total Uniques	Income per Unique
#1	PerfectMatch	Commission Junction	$899	2567	35c
#2	SexSearch	In House	$1,580	4690	34c
#3	TRUE	Commission Junction*	$1,459	5626	26c
#4	AdultFriendFinder	In House	$1,523	6144	25c
#5	Yahoo Personals	Commission Junction	$1,595	6780	24c
#6	eHarmony	Commission Junction	$502	3536	14.2c
#7	American Singles	Commission Junction	$285	3591	7.9c
#8	Match	Link Share**	$503	4887	7.7c
#9	Cupid	Direct Track	$210	3334	5c
#10	Joint: Webdate and Love Access	Both In House	$0	2923/1916	0c

  * I switched out to TRUE under Primaryads.com and they are paying out a little better.
** I've not had a good experience with LinkShare.

All the sites pay out slightly differently.  Where I had an option, I opted to be paid by % of revenue generated. I've focused on Dollars per Unique for this comparison.  If you want the full spreadsheet, email me at mark@onlinepersonalswatch.com and I'll send you the stats including the number of registrants, paying members, revenue and additional ratios. Your comments please…

OPW -- Jan 2 -- Online Personals Watch is for online personals marketing managers and executives to stay ahead of the news, and for the press to research the industry. It's not really designed for end users. Having said that, I make a few bucks from affiliate text links. $5k last year. Not too shabby. I thought I'd share the conversion numbers with you, for open discussion. I'm listing companies with which I had more than 1000 click throughs. I'm told affiliates will usually send an affiliate program 300 clicks before drawing initial conclusions on conversions. Here's the rankings drawn from stats for January 1st 2005, through December 25th 2006.  I'll redo them for a smaller date range later this quarter.

	Dating site	Affiliate System	Total Commission	Total Uniques	Income per Unique
#1	PerfectMatch	Commission Junction	$899	2567	35c
#2	SexSearch	In House	$1,580	4690	34c
#3	TRUE	Commission Junction*	$1,459	5626	26c
#4	AdultFriendFinder	In House	$1,523	6144	25c
#5	Yahoo Personals	Commission Junction	$1,595	6780	24c
#6	eHarmony	Commission Junction	$502	3536	14.2c
#7	American Singles	Commission Junction	$285	3591	7.9c
#8	Match	Link Share**	$503	4887	7.7c
#9	Cupid	Direct Track	$210	3334	5c
#10	Joint: Webdate and Love Access	Both In House	$0	2923/1916	0c

  * I switched out to TRUE under Primaryads.com and they are paying out a little better.
** I've not had a good experience with LinkShare.

All the sites pay out slightly differently.  Where I had an option, I opted to be paid by % of revenue generated. I've focused on Dollars per Unique for this comparison.  If you want the full spreadsheet, email me at mark@onlinepersonalswatch.com and I'll send you the stats including the number of registrants, paying members, revenue and additional ratios. Your comments please…

Online Dating & SN Site Google Page Ranks

iDATE FORUMS, Marc Lesnick -- Nov 20 -- Here's Google's Page Ranks for various online dating and social networking sites:
9 -- Match.com
8 -- Y! Personals, MySpace, Orkut, Chemistry, Friendster, Perfect Match, YouTube
7 -- eHarmony, JDate, Date, Lavalife, TRUE, Bebo, Facebook, Friendfinder, iLove.de, LinkedIn, Meetic, HotorNOt
6 -- Bolt.com, Cupid.com, eCrush.com, Gay.com , Parship.de, Plentyoffish
5 -- Baihe, Dating.dk, Mate1, Neu.de, MatchDoctor.com, Manhunt.net, Sexsearch
4 -- Adam4Adam, Gaia Online, SportsFansMatch, Tianji, WebDate
3 -- 51Friend, eRomance, JWoo
0 -- GreatExpectations, AmericanSingles, Friendscout

iDate2006.com got a page ranking of 6. Google scores 10 (of course). So did the New York Times. NASA and the White House. CNN, Yahoo, Dell, Hotels.com, Mapquest, eBay, Amazon and Columbia University got a page rank of 9. American Express, Travelocity and Sony got a page rank of 8.  Scoring a 7 were Citibank, HSBC Bank, Coca Cola and Pepsi. Google gives a ranking of 6 to Lancome, Revlon and model Pamela Anderson. How did the other models do? Page ranking of 5 to Heidi Klum and Cindy Margolis. Unbelievably, Cindy Crawford got a page ranking of 3. FULL ARTICLE @ IDATE

Mark Brooks: ...and Online Personals Watch scores a 5. What does your site score?  What have you done lately to improve it? Does it matter? Your comments please...but not here. Click here.