Online Personals Watch: News on the Dating Industry and Business

Matchmaking Pre-Session at iDate Los Angeles

PR ZOOM - June 8 - Julie Ferman of Cupid's Coach & eLove host a special 3+ hour pre-conference session for Matchmakers at iDate. The session is designed to assist matchmakers in improving their business models. The session will cover:
- The State of the Art of Personal Matchmaking;
- An overview of the various business models currently in operation;
- The challenges present in the matchmaking industry today as well as the opportunities for collaboration and joint-ventures.

See full article at PR Zoom

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Finding A Valentine With The Help Of A Professional

LA TIMES - Jan 31 - Professional matchmakers use their intuition and extensive social databases to find potential romantic matches for their clients, said professional matchmaker Julie Ferman, founder of Cupid’s Coach in L.A. She claims to have orchestrated more than 1,100 marriages and long-term committed relationships since she started professionally matching couples 20 years ago. Her clients tend to be successful and attractive people who simply don’t have time to look for dates, Ferman said. The cost for her services ranges between $3,000 and $15,000 depending on the level of service a client wants. More individual coaching increases the cost, she said. LA-based matchmaker April Beyer works with only 10 to 15 bachelors each year, each of whom pays her $40K. She does not have female clients, but the single women who register on her website, aprilbeyer.com, can submit photos and their information. FULL ARTICLE @ LA TIMES

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eLove Acquires Los Angeles Matchmaker

PRESS RELEASE - Sep 30 - eLove, the matchmaking company, has acquired Cupid’s Coach. The addition of Cupid Coach’s two locations in LA and Westlake Village brings eLove’s total number of matchmaking offices to 50 nationwide. As the principal of Cupid’s Coach, Julie Ferman has been in the matchmaking business for more than 20 years. The partnership with eLove makes sense for us on many levels,” said Ferman. “We are now the first dating company to offer our clients both traditional matchmaking through eLove’s existing model and mutual selection matchmaking, using detailed personal resumes and professional photos. FULL ARTICLE @ ARTICLE BASE

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Julie Ferman To Air On NBC’s "The Match Off"

PR WEB - Jul 21 - Julie Ferman, Founder and President of Cupid’s Coach will appear on NBC’s “The Match Off”, Saturday, July 24 at 7:30 p.m. PST, repeating again later that evening at 1:00 AM PST. Earlier this year Ferman received the 2010 “Best Matchmaker” award by iDate - The Internet Dating Industry Awards for online dating and matchmaking, winning her category by a landslide. Most recently, Ferman was seen on the E! Entertainment show, “Kendra” in May, as she worked directly with Kendra Wilkinson on setting up her mom Patty with several local suitors in Los Angeles. FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEB

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This is the news for February 10th through February 15th, 2010. Please follow this link to enjoy the high-resolution version. Here is the news we covered:

• Visits to dating sites showing a general decline
• PlentyofFish vs. Match.com
• Mobile Dating and Virtual Goods are big business
• Online Dating is becoming commonplace
• Meetic has posted 2009 revenues
• Match.com and Meetic partner in Latin America
• Match.com joins forces with Neu.de
• New ad campaign for Match directly targets women
• Easydate and Dating Factory partner up
• IMVU teams up with Zoosk
• Avid Life Media and Friend Finder Networks shelve IPOs
• Matchmaking industry going strong

Matchmakers Thrive Despite EHarmony, Match.com

LA TIMES - Feb 14 - "Matchmaking should have been dead by now," said Mark Brooks of Online Personals Watch, a site that's been tracking Internet dating since 2004. Instead, the opposite has happened, he said. Matchmakers not only have survived but are thriving, having been aided and legitimized by the entity that was supposed to have killed them off — the Internet. Like social networking, which had many dating industry experts inaccurately predicting the demise of paid Internet dating sites, Internet dating hasn't killed matchmaking, but fed it. In fact, the three go hand in hand, leading relationship-minded singles to ever higher levels of paid service. Though social networking sites such as Facebook may bring people together and do it for free, there's no guarantee that those brought-together people are available and looking for a relationship. Matchmakers charge $1,000 to $100,000, depending on the exclusivity of the service, the number of matches and how willing they are to go the extra mile.

"You're the therapist, the mother, the best friend, the sister, the nonsexual girlfriend. You have to be everything," said Patti Stanger, star of the TV series "The Millionaire Matchmaker" and proprietor of the L.A.-based Millionaire's Club matchmaking service. Stanger charges men $25k+ a year and female "millionairesses" $55k for 28 months of unlimited introductions. (She finds her female clients take longer to match.)' "

Increasingly, Internet dating is bringing in a matchmaking component. Match's Daily 5 delivers "five matches based on our prediction of which two people would most want to engage in a conversation together," said Match CEO Greg Blatt. Another matchmaking feature called Singled Out, is for "when we have a match with a stronger likelihood of connecting and want to highlight that to our users," Blatt said. "A lot of people put their relationships on the wrong course because they select the wrong people," said Gian Gonzaga, senior director of R&Dfor eHarmony. "A lot of the things that are powerful forces for initial attraction are different from what makes a relationship successful."

"Women are very attracted to the [matchmaking] concept because it's private. They can't be browsed," said Julie Ferman, founder of Cupid's Coach in Westlake Village, a matchmaking service that charges $2,500 to $25,000 annually for an average of 2.2 introductions per month and takes both women and men as paying clients. Matchmaking is strongest among thirty-, forty- and fiftysomethings, according to Ferman. Her average client splits the difference at a median age of 46 and makes at least $50,000. There's thousands of singles using hundreds of matchmakers — eLove, It's Just Lunch, the Millionaire's Club.

It's worth dropping $5k to $10k on a matchmaker if you've got the cash and are looking for a serious relationship, but online sites that charge or have extensive questionnaires can also be a good option, Brooks said. Nonetheless, matchmakers may not have many prospective dates for men in their 20s or women in their 60s, he added.

"The Internet dating services are flawed because they lack service — they have great price, great choice, but not a lot of service," Brooks said. "The matchmaker services are severely flawed because they lack choice."
FULL ARTICLE @ LA TIMES

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Internet Dating Industry Weekly News Feb 9th, 2010

This is the news for January 20th through February 1st, 2010. Please follow this link to enjoy the high-resolution version. Here is the news we covered:

• Real Simple Magazing ranks top dating sites
• Avid Life Media pushing for an IPO
• Match.com launches MatchAffinity
• iovation shows strong sucess in 2009
• 2010 iDate Awards results

Why The 'Love Business' Is Recession-Proof

SOUL'S CODE -- Feb 15 -- Cupid'sCoach.com founder Julie Ferman is hosting an Aura Mixer and Flirt Party, as part of the Soul's Code-sponsored  mega-event, Conscious Life Expo (February 13-16), in Los Angeles. An "aura photographer" will take polaroid shots of each person's aura and attach them to name tags as an ice breaker. According to Julie, the demographic of the single love-seeker continues to drive upward in age. She's hearing less and less from folks in their 20's: they have MySpace and Facebook and bars and clubs. Frankly, they're pretty easy to match up (they have their youth, beauty, energy, vitality, and little baggage). Julie's matchmaking business has never been stronger and she's experiencing a spike in business, just as she did after 9/11. FULL ARTICLE @ SOUL'S CODE

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Julie Ferman, Cupid's Coach CEO Interview

OPW INTERVIEW -- Nov 1 -- Julie Ferman is one of my favorite matchmakers. She hosted the Matchmakers Conference in September and I interviewed her there. - Mark Brooks

How is the conference going?
Its going great. The Matchmaker’s Conference has probably been one of the highlights of my professional career. It’s like a love fest. The level of professionalism is just astounding to me.

Tell us about your company.
Cupid’s Coach is the largest personal matchmaking company in all of California now. I have over 13,000 people registered now with me. It’s free and private for people to be registered but they can’t browse. I’m the matchmaker and I have another team of people that work with me as matchmakers. They’ve been with me for a long time so we know the people.

Our clients are spending $2,900, $4,900, $8,800, $15,000 for a statewide search. And very often I will partner with some of the people here. So I’m not keeping all of that $15,000, I’m strategically placing those dollars very effectively with my buddies within the State of California and we are lining up some amazing candidates for our clients.

How can the matchmaking industry work with the internet dating industry?
They can work very well with each other. Some people on the dating dating sites need more help, so they can bounce up to the next level. Or if our clients are not ready to spend $3,000 so we’ll partner with the internet dating company and just share it back and forth.

Now if I’m not the right resource for a particular person then I’ll refer them to one of my other colleagues who is. There is more then enough business for everybody. There are so many millions of single people looking for help and complaining that they don’t know how to find each other. Then once they do find each other they don’t know how to stay together and love each other and that’s a whole other division.

Cupid’s Coach, the company’s name is really more about dating coaching then it is about matchmaking, but I ended up doing the matchmaking because that’s where the money was.

Walk me through the process, what is like for a brand new client, somebody who has just joined the service. What happens?
First they fill out their resume. Then they come in for their consultation. I’ll only accept them if they are a good fit. I will not take their money if they are not. I’ll send them back to internet dating or to the weight loss center first before they spend the money.

Then, over the phone, we explain them every step of the process including the navigation through our website. They also get their professional photo taken and have a dating/coaching consultation with my chief dating coach. I read every note of all my staff members before I go in and start the search.

I search for men differently then I search for women because you guys are visual and you want to see photos. So if you’re my client and you’re a guy I’m going to present you my top 5 candidates, their detailed resume with photos. When I’m picking those 5, it’s always based on who you are, who you’re hoping to meet and who I think you have a shot at because I know her preferences too.

So I’m going to present you my top 5 candidates and maybe you pick 3 or 4 of them. Then I pick up the phone and call them to tell them about you. When she agrees to meet you, you’ll call her and invite her out for a date number one.

Then we do a lot of follow up, we want post date evaluations from both people and you are going to hear the feedback.

So it’s very organic and my relationship with each client is organic and we learn. My home run is to get an active search client connected with another active search client and they go off into a relationship and we go on vacation. That’s our favorite thing to do. But I will also refer my active search clients to somebody I recruited and they’re not spending any money at all. That’s okay in my model because I know I recruited him specifically for her.

I treat men and women exactly the same. They can be clients or members and members don’t pay. I don’t hide my fees, they’re right on the website, www.CupidsCoach.com. We’re doing very well, our revenue has doubled or tripled over last year.

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Cupids Coach to Provide Matchmaking Event At iDate

PR NEWSWIRE -- Oct 27 -- A special one day Matchmakers business conference has been added to the agenda of the January 21-23, 2009 Miami Internet Dating Conference. Julie Ferman, CEO of Cupid's Coach, will provide a 3 hour intensive session on the business of matchmaking. It is designed for both new and existing matchmakers. The pre-conference will cover:

• Overview of the Matchmaking Industry
• Business Models for Matchmaking
• Financial Examples of a Matchmaking Businesses
• Matchmaking Business Trends
• How to Start a Database
• Local Marketing Strategies
• Customer Service Issues
• Pitfalls Other Matchmakers Face

FULL ARTICLE @ PR NEWSWIRE

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Matchmakers Conference Next Month

OPW -- Aug 25 -- The 2nd annual Matchmakers Conference is happening on September 12-13, 2008 in New Jersey with an optional Sunday matchmaker training session. The conference suits prospective matchmakers, current professional matchmakers and those interested in learning more about the matchmaking business. I'm doing the keynote session "State of the Dating & Matchmaking Industry. Paul Falzone and Terry Fitzpatrick from The Right One/Together Dating, Julie Paiva from Table For Six, John Galloway from Kelleher & Associates, Julie Ferman from Cupid's Coach and many others will be presenting. See the agenda. - Mark Brooks

Professional Matchmaker Makes Dating Less Of A Chase

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR -- Apr 17 -- There are 1,500 independent matchmakers in the US, with sales of $250m in 2006. Being good at making realistic love matches takes honesty, sensitivity, social savvy, and intuition. Julie Ferman has a proven track record. In eight years, her business – Cupid's Coach – has paired 100 couples who married or are still together. Decades of matchmaking have given Ferman insight into human nature. But Ferman has been surprised, for instance, by older women determined to date young men, and older men who don't understand why much younger women won't say yes to a date. The toughest clients aren't fat or bald. They're the unhappy ones looking for a relationship to make them happy. FULL ARTICLE @ CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

Cupid's Coach Founder, Julie Ferman - OPW Interview

OPW INTERVIEW -- Feb 9, 2007 -- The online dating industry is working towards offering higher end matchmaking services. Match.com is developing a VIP service. The company that owns Vintacom is buying The Right One/Together Dating. LoveAccess has a matchmaking service. Here’s an interview with Julie Ferman of CupidsCoach.com. She is a crème de la crème, gorgeous, charismatic, A-list, Los Angeles matchmaker. Julie brings the personal touch to the personals business. – Mark Brooks

What’s your background?
I married the guy who sold me my dating service membership at Great Expectations back in 1990. That was 16 years ago and his name was and is Gil Ferman. So first he took my $1,450, maxed out both of my credit cards and then 2 weeks later I asked him out on a date and 5 weeks later we got engaged and 5 months later we were married, and shortly thereafter, 8 months pregnant with our first child, and I started working for my husband.

Gil and I owned and operated two of the Great Expectation video dating services, the ones in St. Louis and Kansas City and I always loved this business. I think I fell in love with the business at the same time that I fell in love with Gil Ferman. I ended up being Jeffery Ullman’s National Director of Events and Promotions for Great Expectations and later I was the Executive Director of the Great Expectations Licensee Association. 

We sold our two Great Expectation centers when we moved to California and then I launched Cupid’s Coach in 2000. It really wasn’t intended initially to be a matchmaking company. I was going to be producing a lot of events and writing a lot of books and doing a lot of media and speaking appearances. But everybody was asking me, “Julie who do you know? Who do you know? Who can you introduce me to?” So my web developer and I began privately inventorying all of my favorite single friends, members, clients, students and I was delighted to discover how inexpensive it was to do so. I also consulted on the Greater Relations project with Jeffery Ullman right before I started Cupid’s Coach. That project was really the first hybrid. People would go into a bricks and mortar office, buy a membership and then they would access the membership online privately.

Greater Relations didn’t make it for the same reason a lot of these companies don’t make it. They typically start out big without thoroughly testing the sales, service, and technology concepts first. So when Greater Relations failed, I launched Cupid’s Coach and it just kept growing organically into what is now the largest and fastest growing personal introduction service probably in the country.

How does your service help singles meet their mates? How do you assess people?
Anybody can register with me, it’s free, it’s private to be registered and nobody can be browsed. I really like working with people who are highly desirable and highly selective. People I can naturally relate to. I know what it feels like to be that great girl who can’t seem to find the right guy. So whereas there are other services which are really good for people who are struggling with dating, they might not have a competitive edge visually, or they might be somewhat challenged from a social skills perspective, the system I’ve developed works particularly well for people who feel they really have a lot to offer, who want to be really selective, and who are uncomfortable posting themselves online for all to see.

How much do you charge?
I inventory my members privately and the people for whom I’m working actively, my clients, pay me fees ranging from $495, for a consultation and one active search, and then $500 increments all the way up to about $6,800. That’s about as much as I like to charge. I only want to work with somebody for 3 to 6 months on an active search. I present the candidates to my clients; I typically refer my top 5 candidates.  We use detailed resumes with current, flattering face and body photos. I spent $27,000 last year on photography. Photos matter a lot. I like to have as few surprises on the first date as possible.

I present the candidates to my clients privately, so they have a log in and they get to see which candidates I personally selected for them to study. A simple search works like Great Expectations where Jack picks Jill, Jill studies Jack, they both decide if they’re interested and attracted. When they are both interested and attracted then the system instantly reveals last name, email address and phone number.

At a higher service level, which costs twice at much, the client lets me know who he or she is interested in. I then pick up the phone and call and say, “Okay Jack, stop everything and run, don’t walk to your computer; there is somebody I want to talk to you about.” It doesn’t guarantee that the secondary person will be interested and attracted but we run two to three times the match rate on that program.

Where do you find people?
Everywhere. I have a big lasso and I use it all the time. This week, I’ll have over 100 new people filter into my system because I’m producing a big Valentine party. I’m teaching a class for the Learning Annex at night and 1 in 10 people from my classes become clients. Rather than roping everybody in for a big appointment and trying to get a credit card out of their wallet, I would rather book them for a small program first; a $495 in person consultation with me and then I’ll up sell the appropriate people.

I turn away a lot of people after $495, they’re just not the right clients for me and my service might not be the best place for them to invest significant dollars. At a higher level I provide concierge service. I run a search for them, and give them five candidates. They tell me who they’re interested in and when they’re available and don’t hear from me again until I call and say, “That lady Jackie that you want to meet, fabulous, she wants to meet you too and she’s free on Tuesday night. I booked your reservation at 7pm at Ivy, and, don’t be late. Wear that good looking blue tie that I like you in.”

Match.com and other dating services are introducing high end matchmaking services. What will be their major challenges?
They’re going to have tons of challenges. One major challenge is that Match.com does not specialize in telemarketing. If you’re going to sell $1,500 programs, you better do some pretty serious telemarketing. Great Expectations, Together Dating, It’s Just Lunch… these folks have been doing this type of sale for a really long time. They’re good at it but they’ve been getting thousands of dollars from people in person, in consultations in an office and it takes an awful lot of telemarketing to make that happen. So that’s the first challenge.

The second challenge is they’re only able to work with the people who the client can already find on their own. Today I met somebody at Starbucks and I think this guy is fabulous. Whether he’s paying me or not I want him in my community so I can introduce him to my clients. Anybody can do a search on Match.com and look for the best candidates within a 20 mile radius of where they live. Getting Jack to say yes to Jill and to do all the right things. I think that every one in the industry underestimates what it takes to not only get both people to say yes to each other, but so many matches fall apart at the email or phone call stage. I deal with that all the time. I have people on my staff who do nothing but make sure people are responding and make sure that Jack knows to pick up the phone and call Jill and not interview her, not grill her to death but invite the woman out on a date. And who should pay for the date and how do you behave and where to you meet, and all that coaching.

It’s Just Lunch clients complain to me all the time that they don’t get any feedback, they don’t get any coaching, and they don’t get any guidance. That’s part of what my clients are paying a lot of money for.  If they have a 3 month program with me or a 6 month program with me, they’re typically getting unlimited email and phone coaching and that’s no small thing.

What are your goals for 2007?
Keep making money, baby!  And also I will continue to evolve my software system. I am really excited about the industry and doing this thing we call converging. I think it’s really exciting that the chasm that existed in previous years between the online dating and offline dating companies is beginning to be bridged. And what excites me more than anything is that it’s being bridged by people who really care about the end user.

The people who are alive and doing well in this industry right now, the Paul Falzones of the world, the Paul Ziters of the world, the reason they’re still healthy and strong, running concepts which really you might have thought as being archaic a couple of years ago, the reason they’re still doing well, and in many cases better then ever, is because these guys actually care about their members having a good experience. They have discovered that it’s good business to let your heart be engaged in the process of selling and serving the customer.

My business is strong and healthy enough and growing that if somebody wanted to have me working side by side with them consulting on their project they would most likely not be able to afford me. I would have to charge an amount of money that would not make any sense for them to pay. Cupid’s Coach is really strong in Los Angeles and this model could be developed throughout the country. That notion, I would entertain, with the right partnership.