Online Personals Watch: News on the Dating Industry and Business

Fling.com Net Worth $4.7 Million By Freewebsitereport.org

HUMSURFER - Feb 9 - Fling.com is ranked #514 in the world according to Alexa traffic rankings. The estimated net worth based on its advertising revenue is ~$4.7M. Fling.com receives 2.1M pageviews per day and generates ~$6,420 every day in advertising revenue. FULL ARTICLE @ HUMSURFER

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Mixergy Video Interview With Mark Brooks

MIXERGY - Sep 8 - Mark did this interview from Malta, where he’s making a name for himself in the online personals industry through his blog Online Personals Watch and consulting company Courtland Brooks.

Q: How are you managing your company from Malta?
A: 3 years ago I took a trip to Shanghai. There was an Internet dating conference in Shanghai, and I decided to stay there for 2 months. And business grew. I learned that my clients did not care where I was based as long as the work got done. I brought 15 people onto my team.

Q: What exactly do you do when you consult online personal sites?
A: We help Internet dating companies make more money. And also companies that want to talk to them. We do PR, business development, and strategic advisement.

Q: Can you tell people a little more about the blog?
A:  In 2004, when I was working with FriendFinder, I noticed that I was getting great snippets of information from the press. And I consistently didn't have time to read all of the articles. So I thought it would be nice if somebody could summarize and extract the best intelligence out of what the press were writing about. So in June of 2004, I started OnlinePersonalsWatch.com. The idea is that we condense three hours of reading into three minutes of reading a day. In January of 2005, I had three jobs offers on the table, so I decided to take all three. And that is how Courtland Brooks started. At a point from there, I knew a lot of people that I thought could do a better job than me. So, I hired them.

Q: Is there still money in the dating world? It seems to me like most people either go to one of the top sites or they go to Facebook.
A: The reason dating sites have a future is because it's one thing to be single and another to be single and available. And it's even another thing to be single and available and looking. You don't find that on Facebook. Yes, you can find people that say they are single. But are they really single? Are they dating? Are they really available?

Q: But Markus at PlentyofFish has blogged that social networks are taking customers away from dating sites.
A: Yes. It is taking attention.  But people want a more focused experience. There are two surprises that we have had in the dating industry. The first one is that social networking didn't kill the dating industry. And the second one is that Internet dating didn't kill the matchmaking industry.

Q: What about the idea that there are already enough established players out there that it is really hard to come in with a new site?
A: It is. Without a doubt.There are thousands of Internet dating services. I rather think it is like starting a restaurant. It's not that difficult, you would think, to start a restaurant. But there's a lot more moving pieces that go into building a successful restaurant than meets the eye. And the same with Internet dating.

Q: Let's say Casey Allen, who I see here in the audience, decides that he is going to start an online dating site. What's the first thing that you'd recommend that he do?
A: First question is, is he a marketer or a technologist? If Casey is a marketer then he should go down the white labeling route and use a service like White Label Dating, DatingFactory.com or EasyDate.

Q: What if Casey Allen happens to be a technologist and he can code something up? What would you advise him at that point?
A: There are two extra routes that he can take. Number one is to use an off the shelf software like BoonEx and another option is use a programming outfit that has already built dating sites in the past.

Q: How do you bring people into a site today?
A: All of the major dating sites spend a lot of money on PPC. So, Overture and AdWords are an absolute mainstay of the industry. PlentyofFish is a wonderful place to run ads. If you can pay an extra 50 cents to a network, then you can get 10 times more traffic. Commission Junction and ShareASale have a good reputation.

Q: What else brings people in?
A: SEO. Also I'm a big fan of affiliates. The problem with affiliates, by the way, is there are rogue affiliates that will send junk traffic. The only way to deal with them is you've got to understand their position. They want to make money. And affiliates tend to be short-term based. They don't care too much about the brand, because they will just switch out to a different brand. So, the only way to really manage rogue affiliates is by laying down guidelines.

Q: We talked about how to get people in the door. What about getting them to multiply? By multiply, we mean viral marketing, getting them to bring their friends..
A: Let's start with Zoosk. They are one of the great, recent, success stories. On a typical dating site, you sign up. You've got to put in all your information. With a Facebook based social dating site such as Zoosk, some of that information can be sucked over. And so that really improves the initial conversions and efficiency. Plus, you know, the kinds of people that are on Facebook are going to be a little bit more social. When people talk about a good or a bad experience they think of as Internet dating. They don't tend to think of it so much as, it's Zoosk. It's Match.com. It's FriendFinder or Fling or whatever. I think the industry as a whole needs to make sure that they have a good experience. That means not allowing scammers. Scammers are actually very good for short-term conversions, funnily enough.

Q: How is that?
A: Because they are very active about communicating with people and getting them to convert.

Q: Do you have a sense of what percentage of sales these scammers are responsible for?
A: I don't know. I think for some sites, it is quite significant. For sites of integrity, it is very small, because they kick them off.

Q: What else do people do to multiply?
A: I am a big fan of success stories. ChristianCafe.com is very good with success stories. So is Match.com and PlentyOfFish.com. Now, there is a bit more to be said for social media these days and mobile.

Q: Can you give me an example of one company that's doing social well and how they are doing it, and then one company in mobile and how they are doing mobile well?
A: PlentyofFish does well as a social dating site in and of itself. In terms of social media, well, actually, Zoosk is a good example. They have had some music videos that have been featured, and so has PlentyofFish. PlentyofFish has been in a video on Lady Gaga. So, that's quite a new thing for the industry. I think OKCupid has the best blog in the industry. Again, they have got material that is extremely compelling, extremely interesting. And so they are getting the press talking about it.
FULL ARTICLE @ MIXERGY

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Finding The Right Online Dating Service

LA TIMES - Feb 14 - Piper Jaffray Investment Research predicted U.S. spending on online dating would reach $1.7 billion annually by 2013, and $1.2 billion was spent in 2008. The Internet is essentially the world's largest bar, explains Mark Brooks, editor of OnlinePersonalsWatch. The first step is figuring out which nightspot is for you: There are those with no cover charges, PlentyofFish and OKCupid, and hookup spots Fling.com and OnlineBootyCall.com. There are "theme nights" geared toward particular interests, such as BikerPlanet.com, and "neighborhood watering holes" based on religion or culture, such as JDate or AsiaFriendFinder. There's comfort in name recognition from eHarmony and Match. Or get a yenta through eLove.com.

"One of our more popular sites as of late is DateaCougar.com," says Stephen Ventura, VP of First Beat Media, which owns GothScene.com, BikerPlanet.com, FitnessDates.com and others.  Want a dash of romance with your social networking? Brooks says to look to Zoosk. It syncs with a users' Facebook's profile page. Spark's Kizmeet is attempting something similar. Still, Brooks says it's unlikely that social networking sites will kill the online dating market. "If people are anonymous, people tend to be more aggressive and more outspoken," he says. "On an Internet dating site, if you want to cut somebody off, you can easily. When you're on a social network, you have to be [polite] because their friends are watching."

Match.com's mobile members alone grew 250% from 2008 to 2009, says Whitney Casey, Match's relationship expert. Industry experts Brooks and CyberDatingExpert.com's, Julie Spira also praise GPS-based mobile applications like Skout and Foursquare. "I'm looking forward to people using Internet dating on the iPad," Brooks adds. "You can look up a profile very easily on that format. The iPhone is still a phone." Spira says to look to webcam dating sites, Speeddate.com or WooMe.com. Hitwise reports that visits to free dating sites like PlentyofFish rose 19% over the previous year.
FULL ARTICLE @ LA TIMES

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Internet Dating Industry Weekly News Nov 5th, 2009 - 4.5 mins

This is the news for the week of October 30th through November 5th, 2009. We hope you enjoy the new weekly news format. Please follow this link to enjoy the high-resolution version. Here is the news we covered for this week:

• White label dating businesses thriving in tough economy
• Mobile dating market expected to double to $1.3 billion by 2013
• Study shows online dating most popular with women over age 50
• Nominations being accepted for first annual iDate Awards

Sex With A Stranger

GLAMOUR MAGAZINE -- Aug 26 -- A startling number of young women are living out a fantasy with guys they meet online – and don’t know at all. Liberating or just plain dangerous? Hookup or “casual dating” websites like Fling, SexSearch, OnlineBootyCall, and others often outperform mainstream dating sites. Match.com had 5M unique visitors in May. AdultFriendFinder had nearly 24M and Fling 18M. Statistics show that ~50% of these users are women. “Most women say they get a rush from sleeping with a stranger. The rush may be largely fear. If you mix the chemicals involved with fear (adrenaline and norepinephrine) and those involved with sexual arousal (serotonin and dopamine), you create the most potent cocktail the brain can handle”, said Kelly McDaniel, author of Ready to Heal: Women Facing Love, Sex and Relationship Addiction. SUMMARY FROM SEPTEMBER 2009 GLAMOUR MAGAZINE

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Adult Dating Market Players

E-COMMERCE -- July 8 --  Last year adult dating sites' growth rate was about 70%. AdultFriendFinder.com is the most popular adult-oriented dating site drawing millions of unique visitors per month. Besides AFF, there are many other sex-oriented dating sites including Fling.com, SexSearch and IWantU.com. Similar to the traditional dating sites, users lie about their personal information – age, marital status and appearance, so what you see may not be what you get. Sometimes men pretend to be women and women pretend to be men. Specialists suggest that up to 30% of all dating profiles are misleading. FULL ARTICLE @ E-COMMERCE

Mark Brooks: People tell white lies.  iDaters should ask 'is your photo up to date' and 'is your profile and marriage status info accurate.'  Sometimes profiles can be online a looong time. Users will join and cycle in and out of relationships (and their idating memberships) and neglect to update their profiles. ProfileHelper.com, LookBetterOnline.com and e-cyrano.com help users put their best profile forward.  IWantU is dead and dying at this stage. See Compete graph of IWantU. (Full Disclosure: Fling is a client. The Founder of ProfileHelper.com is on the Courtland Brooks team.)

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Mars Gets Naughty And Naughtier

CNBC -- May 19 -- Companies spend huge amounts of time and money naming new products to elicit certain emotions. So Mars, the candy company, thought "Fling" would be a good name for a candy bar aimed at diet-conscious women. The bar "tastes indulgent" but has less than 85 calories. "Naughty...but not that Naughty" is the tagline. Women wanting to find out more would probably go online and type in Fling.com right? That would be a mistake. Fling.com sends them to a porn site,"The Hottest Place to Hook Up". Instead, Mars had to settle for FlingChocolate.com. FULL ARTICLE @ CNBC

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Seeking A PC Affair?

MIAMI HERALD -- May 2 -- In March, Ashley Madison claimed annual revenue in the tens of millions of dollars and 3.3m users worldwide. South Florida was its sixth-largest market (177k users), behind New York and Los Angeles. The Gender breakdown is 70-30 men-women; 60-40 in South Florida. Americans spent $957m on dating sites in 2008; in 2013, Forrester projects $1.5 billion. February data from Compete show that Adultfriendfinder and Fling logged 37.9m unique visitors, more than the next 12 dating sites combined. Sites like these and Ashley Madison have one big advantage over the competition: ''Their target audience is going to be on the site forever,'' says Mark Brooks, an Internet dating industry consultant. "The typical dating services are victims of their own success. After three months, people bail -- they sign off because they've met someone, or they skip over to another dating site. The people at Ashley Madison have already demonstrated they're not going to be committing any time soon, and they keep on cycling back around. It's a wonderful cash machine.'' ''Sneaky or deceptive is not my cup of tea,'' said Paul Falzone, founder of TheRightOne, and a professional matchmaker for 30 years. "These guys are totally the opposite of what we're about . . . Do you want to spend your life with someone you're compatible with, that you enjoy, or do you want to live a lie?'' FULL ARTICLE @ MIAMI HERALD

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Online Personals: Changing Norms, Changing Business Models

CLASSIFIED INTELLIGENCE REPORT -- Oct '08 -- JupiterResearch predicts the online dating industry will hit $1.9 billion by 2012, not including matchmaking services at $250m+ in the U.S. Mark Brooks, who monitors the personals industry, pegs 2004 as the year when dating sites matured. "There are less people on dating sites, but they're spending more money." The CEO of The Right One/Together Dating, Paul Falzone has been in the business 20 years. "When times are good, people want someone to share the fun with. When times are bad, they want companionship."

The Free factor - Free has become a very real factor in the industry, with the emergence of PlentyOfFish.com. POF has more than 10m profiles, and 2m active monthly users. "He's the renegade of the market," said Brooks. "He's making the other players think about advertising money." Frind acknowledges that his $10m in yearly ad revenue has gotten people's attention, but he thinks the traditional dating sites are too invested in the paid-membership model to shift gears.

The Facebook factor - Many in the online dating industry believe social networks will not be a negative factor because SN are for friends and people are posting all sorts of material there they might not want a prospective date to see. But Robert Lee, who has been reviewing dating sites at ALoveLinksPlus.com, believes Facebook is going to figure out how to establish different layers of access, so a user can create a dating-oriented profiles that not everyone can see. As of Oct. 18, Facebook had 497 dating applications.

Different marketing and revenue models - "Personals ads" in newspapers was disrupted by the Internet in the mid-1990s but is being revived with a new focus on Web-first publishing, promoted in print. Another model uses the Web as its operating venue, but drives new customers through heavy advertising in traditional media. Cupid.com makes deals with radio stations to run ads for free in exchange for a share of revenue and claims a conversion rate of 13%. eHarmony and Match spend millions on TV advertising. The typical revenue model is "browse for free, connect for a fee." Matchmaking sites such as Kelleher and Associates, Together Dating and It's Just Lunch have a dual role in the online ecosphere. First, they buy leads from online dating sites, creating yet another line of revenue. Paul Falzone bought LoveAccess.com as a way to generate his own leads. In the 1980s, Falzone's cost per lead was $200-$250 using direct mail. Now his goal is to get that number to zero.

Growth of explicit sites - At the Internet Dating Conference held in London in September, the hallway buzz was all about the explosion in numbers of women signing up for adult sites like Fling.com and AdultFriendFinder. "I'd call it a sexual awakening," said Brooks. "Guys have always been interested in the adult sites, but this is new." The average length of membership on a regular dating site is three months, compared with five months on an adult site.

The future - Mobile and video remain theoretical game-changers, enabling potential match-ups by proximity or direct communication. Brooks sees another potential business model emerging from academic research: a dramatic improvement in the quality of matching.
Full report available for AIM clients

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Fling Now #1 Casual Dating Site

OPW -- Sep 9 -- AdultFriendFinder and Fling have been running close on traffic for a while now, but Fling.com just overtook AdultFriendFinder.com for total traffic according to Compete.com. See graph. I included Match.com to give some perspective on the graph.  Fling is up 7.4% for the month with 22m unique visitors, and AdultFriendFinder is down 3.5% for the month with 21.7m uniques. AFF has a LOT of momentum, but Fling rides on a very considerable affiliate network of its own. AFF still has a considerable lead for user engagement and visits. These collossals of the adult dating world will be duking it out for a long while to come but without Andrew Conru at the helm, will AFF be able to maintain a lead? Your comments please. (Disclosure: Fling is a client of Courtland Brooks).

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Niche Dating Sites Grow Steadily As Mainstream Ones Flail

TECH CRUNCH -- Apr 24 -- In the internet dating space, bigger is not always best. According to the latest U.S. numbers from Hitwise, the top niche dating sites are steadily gaining market share while their big mainstream counterparts stagnate. In March 2008, the top 5 overall sites held 7% less market share than they did in 2007 (Plentyoffish and Singlesnet were the only sites to buck this trend individually). Meanwhile, the top sites (Adam4Adam, Manhunt, Gay.com, BlackPeopleMeet, BlackSingles, BlackChristianPeopleMeet, ChristianMingle, JDate, and ChristianCafe.com) from the top five major niche dating categories made considerable gains. The biggest niche in terms of total traffic is casual dating, which consists of sites like Fling, AdultFriendFinder, and SexSearch. While the top 10 mainstream dating sites gained only 0.01% of total Internet traffic over the past year, the top three casual adult sites gained 0.07%. That's a hefty 56% increase in the traffic. (Authored by Mark Brooks)
FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH 

Casual Dating Affiliate Payouts Top The Industry

OPW -- Feb 15 -- Does anyone know of any dating affiliate programs that pay out higher than casual dating sites?  The super fast growing dating sites Fling and SexSearch are topping my research on payouts. SexSearch is paying out $90 and Fling $50 per paid sign up over Valentines. Adultfriendfinder is definitely feeling the heat on its tail from these two. I'm surprised how many dating sites don't have affiliate programs. Match, eHarmony, Perfectmatch and Yahoo! have good programs, but many top and second tier players have relatively small programs, if they have them at all. From the affiliate perspective adult dating sites just plain convert better, which would partly explain the rise in popularity of casual dating sites over the last few years. CJ, Linkshare, Azoogleads, Shareasale, Primary Ads, and Link Connector all drive significant amounts of traffic to dating sites.  CJ seems to have the most offers. Email me at mark@onlinepersonalswatch.com for a copy of my spreadsheet listing all the dating offer payouts on the top affiliate networks. - Mark Brooks 

Singles.com Adds Social Networking Features

WEB WIRE -- June 15 -- Singles.com has launched new social networking features allowing surfers to converse, share stories and get a more thorough idea of the online dating world. Singles.com, with free registration, offers objective reviews of the best online dating sites, including YahooPersonals, Fling.com, Match and AdultFriendFinder. FULL ARTICLE @ WEB WIRE

Mark Brooks: Singles.com (owned by National A1) used to be a Vintacom/Relationship Exchange site.  Now they are a dating site selection service.  Email me at mark@onlinepersonalswatch.com for a roundup and decision analysis tool for white label services, beyond Vintacom. 

This post also appears on SocialNetworkingWatch.

Abe Smilowitz, Webdate COO - OPW Interview

OPW INTERVIEW -- May 21, 2007 -- This is the third of five feature interviews on the topic of scamming. Abe Smilowitz is COO of WealthyMen.com, Fling.com and Webdate.com. - Mark Brooks

What kind of scamming do you encounter across Fling.com and WebDate.com and WealthyMen.com?
Like with every other dating site, it’s an issue that we’re always combating. The two types of scamming that occur are end user scamming and webmaster scamming.

The end user scamming is usually individuals that are coming in primarily from foreign countries pretending to be either attractive women, primarily, or attractive men. They chat and email back and forth with individuals and gain their trust. Then they ask for money or favors or any sort of particulars, but it’s primarily money that they’re looking for.

We obviously try to combat those fraudulent users by having several self reporting tools on the site where other users can report scammers with fake pictures, people that have solicited them for money or solicited them to go to other sites and that sort of thing. We feel that the best method is having the users self report because when you’re doing thousands of sign ups a day it becomes very difficult to manually scan every single sign up and follow what they’re doing.

Some of them are actually quite good. They use authentic photos and they write a full profile or copy someone else’s profile and it seems like a real person. We have users also that work for us that are surfing the site and use the site themselves and chat with other users and kind of get a feel for it and some of them have actually been duped by some of the scammers. They’re chatting and they think that it’s an attractive young woman and they’re talking back and forth for a week and then she comes out with, “Oh I need $200 for my mother’s operation.”

I don’t know if there’s a fool proof way to get rid of them 100%. I think the best way to do it obviously is to have people actively monitor the site, use the site, have the users self report and have a no tolerance policy where if someone’s doing that, a moderator will go and check out the profile, check out the series of emails or chats that they’ve sent back and forth and if it’s found that they are partaking in that kind of activity, they’re automatically disabled and we disable their IP address if possible.

Have you noticed that the number of incidents of scamming increasing or is it level or declining?
I know that it has actually decreased on our site because once we figured out that this kind of activity was going on we’ve actively been pursuing it and monitoring it. We do various types of IP monitoring. We banned several countries from using the site. That’s really the best way to try and get rid of these guys. That in conjunction with moderators and active users reporting back to our customer service and letting them know, “Hey this particular person is a scammer,” or, ”this profile is a bad profile,“ and we go in and police it.

How serious of a problem do you think it is for the industry as a whole?
I don’t think it’s a problem that’s going to destroy the industry but I think that it’s definitely a problem and I think it’s going to continue to be a problem. The only real way to prevent it 100%, I guess, would be to set up some kind of police state where you would have the government run some kind of check on you to make sure you are who you are.

I think that it’s going to be a problem and I think the industry needs to do the best that they can to combat it. It would be good to have obviously some kind of sharing of information because I’m sure there’s other sites and other executives at sites that have figured out different methods of combating it. I’m sure I’ve thought of things that other people haven’t.

The pooling of ideas is always a good thing and would help the industry as a whole but I think it’s always going to exist on the sites and the best you can do is try to educate the users about it.

Anyone that’s asking you for money, you should really obviously never give them money unless you’ve met the person, you know the person and you feel comfortable doing that. But someone you don’t even know, you never met and you’ve just been chatting with them online for a week or so, I don’t think it would be a good idea to send them cash. I think a lot of this really comes down to the users level of responsibility and common sense about what they’re doing. I understand that some of these users are lonely and at weak points where they’re looking for someone to talk to.

It’s a difficult problem and I think the users need to be more aware of it and need to be a little more standoffish and never divulge financial information or give any money to anyone on a community site.

What can the industry do as a whole?  Have you tried reaching out to other sites to share the IP addresses of scammers, for example?
No, I personally haven’t but I think that would be a good idea. I think it would need to come from an independent source. I don’t know that it would necessarily make sense for me as a site owner to go ahead and contact some of my competitors and go through that. I think that it would probably be more credible if it came from a third party independent source.

Do you know of any providers of such a service?
No, I don’t know of anyone that actually does that.

How high on the priority list should it be for the industry to try and eradicate scammers?
I think that it’s something that should be high on the priority list to heighten the credibility of our sites. You want to obviously give your users the best experience possible and you want the site to work for them.  I mean, what are they going to your site for? They’re going there to meet another person and have either some kind of friendship or romantic relationship with another individual that meets the criteria of what they’re looking for. Your end goal is to achieve that for users. Obviously, when someone is tricked and cheated at their most vulnerable time, that’s not a good experience for users, and that’s not the type of reputation site owners want to have amongst users. So I think it’s a very important issue.