Online Personals Watch: News on the Dating Industry and Business

SeekingArrangement.com Introduces Anonymous Calling Feature

PR WEB – Jan 27 – Sugar Daddy dating site SeekingArrangement.com, the largest sugar daddy and sugar baby dating site, has announced the launch of its new anonymous phone calling service named “ICALLU” that allows members to call each other anonymous through a Voice over IP (VoIP) server. According to the site, over 55% of its members are concerned about privacy and giving out their phone number, and 32% of members have had a negative experience after giving out their real phone number to strangers in the past. The new service, which costs 99 cents per minute domestically and $1.99 per minute internationally, will help protect members’ privacy while still allowing them to make a connection over the phone. Founder & CEO Brandon Wade expects the cost of the service to drop over time as more members being using it.

See full article at PR Web

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‘Sugar Babies’ Seek Friendship And Help With Tuition

MIAMI HERALD - Jan 25 - Three Florida schools, including Florida International University, have had so many students join a sugar-daddy dating site that they’ve been included in the site’s ‘Top 20’ universities of 2011. For the women on Seeking Arrangement.com, what they’re seeking is often dollar-specific: as much as $10K a month, or more, to date a certain well-heeled man. College students make up about 40% of the Sugar Babies on SeekingArrangement.com. 10 to 20 escorts are removed daily.

by Michael Vasquez
See full article at Miami Herald

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College-aged Girls Looking For Sugar Daddies Online

DAILY MAIL - Jan 16 - Sky-high tuition loans are turning more college-aged girls to the internet in hopes of wrangling in a wealthy suitor through an online dating site since it appears to be more profitable than an extra shift at the local coffee shop. Seeking Arrangement brands itself as ‘the elite sugar daddy dating site for those seeking mutually beneficial relationships’ and was established in June 2006. The site has announced that it is seeing a spike in the number of female college students. New York University students top the list, followed by those at the University of Toronto and Penn State University. Even Harvard and UCLA made the top ten.

by Meghan Keneally
See full article at Daily Mail

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Brandon Wade Talks About 'Sugar Daddy' Dating

BUSINESS INSIDER - Oct 20 - According to Brandon Wade, CEO and founder of SeekingArrangement.com, all relationships are monetary exchanges in some respect. His website, a matchmaking service for "Sugar Daddies," makes those exchanges a little more transparent. Unlike most dating websites, where men outnumber women, the Sugar Babies on SeekingArrangement outnumber Sugar Daddies 10 to 1. The average age of a Sugar Baby is 25 and the average age of a Sugar Daddy is 36. There are also a handful of Sugar Mommies and Male Babies on the site, which just hit 1M members.

by Meredith Galante
See full article at Business Insider

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Dating Event Pairs NYC Men and Gold Diggers

NY POST - Aug 17 - At a party, sponsored by the sugar-daddy site SeekingArrangement.com, talking about money and gifts upon first introduction wasn’t taboo; it was expected. ~400 people registered for the mixer. It was a huge turnout, according to SeekingArrangement.com founder and CEO, Brandon Wade, who says that 100K of the current 800K members are based in the NYC area. Wade launched the site in 2006. The site’s seen 20% growth each year, and charges sugar daddies $50 a month to join (for sugar babies, it’s free). There are 10 sugar babies for every sugar daddy. Nearly half of the sugar daddies are married.

by Dana Schuster
See full article at NY Post

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College Students Using 'Sugar Daddies' to Pay Off Loan Debt

HUFFINGTON POST - July 29 - Saddled with piles of student debt and a job-scarce, lackluster economy, current college students and recent graduates are selling themselves to pursue a diploma or pay down their loans. "Over the past few years, the number of college students using our site has exploded," says Brandon Wade, founder of Seeking Arrangement. Of the site's ~800K members, Wade estimates that 35% are students. Wade rewards students who use a .edu email address to register on Seeking Arrangement by automatically upgrading their free, basic membership to a premium membership, allowing them to send unlimited free messages and granting them exclusive access to the site's cadre of VIP sugar daddies. Married men account for ~40% of the site's sugar daddies. Sugar babies outnumber sugar daddies by a ratio of nearly 10 to 1. Noel Biderman, founder and CEO of Avid Life Media, runs a number of arrangement-seeking sites. On one such site, EstablishedMen.com, Biderman estimates that 47% of its 1.3M members are women currently enrolled in college. And on ArrangementSeekers.com, he says 31% of its 387,000 members are female college students.

by Amanda M. Fairbanks
See full article at Huffington Post

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New Dating Site Is Indistinguishable From Prostitution

GAWKER - Apr 7 - "WhatsYourPrice.com is like eBay for dating," says the site's founder, Brandon Wade. "When you see a hot single you want to date, just make an offer and buy the first date." Wade is also the genius behind sugar daddy dating service SeekingArrangement.com. Obviously, the first question about WhatsYourPrice.com is "How is this not prostitution or escorting?" "This is all about paying for the first date. There is absolutely no sex involved, and except perhaps the chance of sex at some point in the future if you are able to successfully charm and seduce", said the site's spokesperson.

by Adrian Chen
See full article at Gawker

Mark Brooks: I prefer the HowAboutWe concept. Imaginative dating ideas driving connections. But WhatsYourPrice has a niche. Guys who have money, and want to cut to the chase. A date, and less tappity tap online.

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Guidebook For Sugar Daddies And Sugar Babies

PR WEB -- Aug 3 -- SeekingArrangement.com has released Seeking Arrangement: The Definitive Guide to Sugar Daddy and Mutually Beneficial Relationships. Author Brandon Wade, the founder and CEO of SeekingArrangement says the new book will serve as a guide to anyone curious about or already practicing the sugar lifestyle and the art of negotiating mutually beneficial relationships. Website officials also hope the book will clarify the difference between sugar and prostitution - once and for all. To purchase the book, visit the Sugar Daddy Book website. FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEB

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Internet Dating Industry Weekly News - 6 Mins

Online Personals Watch Weekly News Summary #7, May 18th, 2009 from Mark Brooks on Vimeo.

Basisnote scent matching, Speedate on Android, Craigslist to moderate Adult ads, Kaplan launches Flirt140 Twitter dating service, Spark revenue 20% down, Indian matrimonials to hit $63m in 2011, sugar daddy blackmailing, and Air News Zealands matchmaking flight.

Internet Dating Industry Weekly News - 5 Mins, Venice

Online Personals Watch News Summary #3, April 19th, 2009 from Mark Brooks on Vimeo.

Spark Networks acquires Engage.com. Sugar Daddy sites criticized. New Facebook apps from GenePartner and DateRaters.com. eHarmony lawsuit and Compatible Partners criticism. Matchmakers doing ok according to CNN. Virtual singles marry online, and Courtland Brooks blog launches. 

This weeks news from Venice, Italy. 

Keeping Up With Being Kept

NY TIMES -- Apr 10 -- Critics say SeekingArrangement is at best a convenience store for adulterers and at worst a virtual brothel, but Brandon Wade, Seeking Arrangement’s founder and CEO, is unperturbed by the criticism. “We stress relationships that are mutually beneficial,” he says. “We ask people to really think about what they want in a relationship and what they have to offer." The site now claims more than 300,000 registered members. About 30% of arrangements on the site involve the daddy paying an “allowance,” usually $1000 - $2000 a month, though the site claims some reach $10,000. Sugar relationships amount to prostitution is hotly debated among the site’s members. Some sugar babies insist that wives who stay in miserable marriages for an American Express black card, mansion or country-club membership are more like prostitutes than they are. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES

Mark Brooks: SugarDaddyForMe.com and Sugardaddie.com are the other two leading Sugar Daddy sites. See how they compare. WealthyMen, MillionaireMatch and MillionaireMate (part of the FriendFinder Network) and the newly launched EstablishedMen, are for well healed guys and the women who would like to date them, but not necessarily sugar daddies. I was rather surprised at the kinds of advertisements MillionaireMate.com is running on their home page. These are great ads for the brainless, but hardly on target for their upper echelon target audience.

Still, when I joined Cupid.com in 2004 they were running banner ads for wheelchairs on their home page, among other equally untargeted and inappropriate ads. Showing these kinds off-target and inappropriate banner ads on dating sites just show that the hand's not on the wheel, for that particular site. (Full Disclosure: WealthyMen is a client of Courtland Brooks)

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Dating Site Caters To Wealthy Men

GREENWITCH TIME -- Mar 28 -- Looking for a sugar baby on seekingarrangement.com turned out to be a nightmare for one Greenwich man who was blackmailed out of ~$100,000 by a 28-year-old woman he met on the site. "This is the first time we've heard of an extortion plot. We do a lot to prevent something like that happening," said Brandon Wade, the website creator. "We have very clear warnings as to what's legal and things members should or should not do." FULL ARTICLE @ GREENWICH TIME

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Love's Great, But Sugar Pays The Bills

PRESS RELEASE -- Jan 12 -- Finding a 'sugar daddy ' is becoming a popular alternative for many daters in today's ruff economy. "We've seen a significant rise in new memberships says an official at SeekingArrangement.com. About 50%" of their users are married. The ration is 10 women to 1 man. FULL ARTICLE @ PRUDENT PRESS AGENCY

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Sugar Babes For Cash

KOMO NEWS -- Nov 19 -- On SeekingArrangement.com, people are expected to be perfectly blunt. Prospective sugar babies let potential sugar daddies know right up front how much they expect to get -- anywhere from $2,000 to upwards of $20,000 per month. The site says it brokers "mutually beneficial relationships," and not only between rich men and younger women, but between rich women and younger men as well. FULL ARTICLE @ KOMO NEWS

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VIP Party Connecting Sugar Daddies With Gorgeous Girls

PR WEB -- Sep 25 -- SeekingArrangement.com, the sugar daddy dating site announces "SUGAR", the exclusive VIP party for wealthy sugar daddies, millionaires and gorgeous girls seeking arrangements. The event will be held in Las Vegas on December 3, 2008. Event ticket for men at the door is $2000, for girls $300. FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEB

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SeekingArrangement & SeekingMillionaire Launch Affiliate Program

PR WEB -- Feb 21 -- SeekingArrangement.com (130k members since 2006) and SeekingMillionaire.com (60k members since 2007), cater to millionaires and beautiful girls and has launched an affiliate program. "While other online dating websites pay a commission only when a customer pays, our affiliate programs pays when a visitor registers, and each time the customer pays to upgrade," said Brandon Wade, CEO of InfoStream Group Inc, which operates the sites. FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEB

Mark Brooks: WealthyMen, MillionaireMatch, FriendFinder's MillionareMate.com and SugarDaddyForMe.com also compete in the high niche.  The current rankings for this niche can be found under the Niche Internet Dating Rankings under the Official Internet Dating Rankings on this site. 

 

Sugar Daddie, Alexa ~ 1/08
1 SugarDaddie
2 SugarDaddyForMe
3 WealthyMen

This post also appears on FrequentFlirters.

Looking for a Sugar Daddy or Sugar Mommy?

CTV.CA -- July 30 -- Seekingarrangement (100,000 users) offers to facilitate relationships between an older and wealthy individual who gives a young person expensive gifts or financial assistance in return for friendship, intimacy or sex. "Sugar daddies" pay $35 a month to access profiles of "sugar babies" on the site. The sugar babies can join for free if they complete a profile and submit a photo. Diamond members pay $1,000 to have their wealth verified. FULL ARTICLE @ CTV

Mark Brooks: Sounds like a form of prostitution really. WealthyMen.com is the category leader.

SeekingMillionaire.com Launches

PR WEB -- Apr 11 --Sugar daddy dating website, SeekingArrangement.com (50k users, 2k new users each week) today announces the launch of SeekingMillionaire.com -- a millionaire dating website aimed at helping wealthy men and beautiful women find real love. FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEB

Mark Brooks: WealthyMen.com (26k Alexa, run by Webdate.com founder) and Sugardaddyforme.com (27k Alexa) are similarly focused dating sites. (Cashcats.com is for sale)