OPW Interview - Adam Small, CMO of Sexsearch

OPW INTERVIEW -- May 28, 2006 -- Sexsearch is different. It's glossy, sexy and growing gangbusters. The casual dating and, at the other end of the spectrum, serious/relationship dating segments are growing ever stronger. Sexsearch has been barreling along for a couple of years now. Now they are second only to AdultFriendFinder in the casual/adult segment. I interviewed (ex-Yahoo) Adam Small who is CMO of Sexsearch. - Mark Brooks

What’s your story Adam?
After school I moved to New York City and I worked as a financial manager for Prudential. From there I decided I wanted to run my own company and I started a website for college students which was called CollegeU and we ran a discount card program for students and local businesses. I had a friend who was working at Yahoo, and he convinced me to join Yahoo in New York, where I worked for a number of years. I worked with clients such as Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, American Express. I met Damian, the owner of my current company through some of my Yahoo friends and decided to move to Toronto to start building SexSearch.

What's the Sexsearch story?
Sexsearch took us one and half year s to build...and we launched it in January a little over two years ago. We knew how well dating did, we had worked with Adult Friend Finder and we actually approach them to see if we could do more marketing for them but they weren‘t interested in allowing us to have a private label site at the time. So, we decided to build our own dating site with an adult twist to it. We liked certain aspects of what they had and we added all our own bells and whistles and gave the site a unique design with a more straight-to-the-point focus.   

Who is your target market?
Our target market is anyone over the age of 21 who is interested in sex...which is almost everybody. Other personals sites beat around the bush. We get straight to the point. We know that there‘s lot of people out there who are interested in sex.

How many members do you have now?
We have a little over 6.5 million registered users...and it’s growing fast! 

Are online personal users moving more towards casual dating sites or towards relationship dating sites?
I think online personals users are moving towards lot of different niche dating sites and I think they are definitely moving more towards casual dating sites. We‘ve seen a big increase in the number of members and I know there’s been a decline with some of our main stream competitors. So, I definitely see a trend of users moving more towards casual dating sites like SexSearch. 

What do you have in store for SexSearch?
Towards the end of the summer we will be launching private labels capability, which will allow us to launch more sites for ourselves, such as a mainstream dating site with an edge, of course. We will also launch a gay dating site. Offering private label sites will give us the ability to do deals with other companies who are interested in using our very established database and back-end to offer their own dating site.

Comments

[Dan]

Have you looked at sexsearch and the way they advertise? A greater percentage of there advertisements are of paid models or porn stars! (not real members)

This is deceiving the public.

They also advertise with video clips of supposed members. If you view these supposed members video clips they mention sexsearch.com several times in each video. Obviously these are models being paid to make a video. If you are a member of the site where the person is viewing the video, why would you mention the site at all? You are at the site it should be obvious they are members of that web site!

Fake ads, fake videos and fake profiles. They should be investigated.

[Adam Small]

Some of our ads use paid models, and some use real members. It depends on the type of ad. We paid models to make videos that we use for promo materials. All of them can be contacted through their profiles.

Adam

[Jim G.]

I bet Dan is from AdultFriendFinder.com :)

Jim G.

[Online Dating]

Welcome to the world of advertising Dan! You must be new to America... FYI: My gut feeling is that Sarah Jessica Parker probably doesn't color her own hair using Clairol's instant hair color either. But what do I know? I say the top marketers in any industry deserve respect. Cheers. Jason

[Pepe]

I thought I should post some commentary regarding my experiences so far, with sexsearch.com which as of yet from my perspective, seems to some elaborate form of internet fraud. The service upon payment purports to supply the user with a password to be mailed to the customer’s email address. If however basic membership without payment is sought, this email is received, yet if payment is made to “upgrade”, as in my case, no such password is provided. The only contract which the customer is allowed to enter into stipulates that the payment of subscription is to renew every month, until when a revocation of the contract is sought. Customer support and revocation of the contract can only occur via the sexsearch website itself, to which end potentially no actual contact or complaint with the vendor can be made. I come to these conclusions for as of yet as I have had not response whatsoever from the sexsearch customer service.

[Peter]

Pepe - Any user on the site can request their password at any time. There is a link when you login 'forgot password' and if you enter your email address you will be emailed your account information which will include your password(s). In addition to this if you contacted us on this matter we would would have sent your account information.

With regards to cancelling a paid subscription - any time a member upgrades their membership they will receive an email confirmation from the billing processor. Within this email there are instructions on how to cancel. The cancellation is done via the billing processors website. Please look at our FAQ page for more info. When requested by the Customer, the Customer Service team will also cancel subscriptions.

We have a very efficient response time to customer inquiries. I find it surprising that you say you have had no response from my team. Next time, please include Attn: Manager and I will reply to you as soon as possible.

[David]

have been trying to cancel the service, but no response from customer support

yes, I even included Attn: Manager - still no response

Adam - the courtesy of a response would be appreciated

[Richard]

I got scam by sexsearch.com recently but I cancel my account 2 days later. Now my question is, what should I do to ensure that I won't be bill again for sure? Would it be a good idea to call my credit card compagny to block any further billing? Is CCBILL LTD a safe online billing compagny or could it be tied to sexsearch in the scam process?

[Will76]

Hey adam, why does your company buy advertising from scumware like Zango?

Where you steal traffic from your own affiliates and other webmasters promoting other companies.

What is your companies position on spyware ?

[Chris]

Adam,

It's a known fact that Sexsearch (just like Adult Friend Finder) does business with Spyware companies such as 1800/Zango and eXact Advertising. Don't you think this is unethical?

[Carl MacKay]

Sexsearch is a scam. Almost none of the female members are real. Most of them are computer generated or employed by sexsearch. How much can one make by working for sexsearch to pose as a fake member?

[Paul Miller]

Anybody unhappy with sexsearch please contact me.

[Steve Lewis]

Have tried it on a one month "silver" membership basis - initially I received a barage of e-mails from attractive women with whom I seemed to be able to exchange one or two messages. Interestingly all were from Birmingham - which struck me as odd since I was based in Bristol. Also all wrote inane remarks which in now way seemed to tally with my profile - most were illiterate.

A month on I have tried to initiate contact with over 100 women and NOT HAD A SINGLE RESPONSE - even out of curiosity! Call me vain but I don't believe I'm that bad looking.

I've heard this site has a team of women employed to entrap men into paying more and more to sustain their membership. Looks like the rumours are true!

[chris]

Ok, so if this site is a spam then is there any site or some chatrooms at all where i can find some real girls(real members) for casual fun? Anyone with information, please tell me.

[fred]

In 3 months I hooked up with two hotties using sexsearch!

[rob]

I've been a member on SexSearch for three months now and I'm not having any problems with the site. So far, I've had 5 hook ups. For those who are having trouble meeting women on the site, perhaps you need to sharpen up your profile or post better pics. Just a suggestion.

[Rio]

Has anyone figured out how to use the member to member instant messenger? Has anyone found out how to delete the auto censor? I have had a difficult time because of not having ability to timely communicate (phone-im) Anyone help!!

[Marcus]

Hey, I not a member of sexsearch.com but wanted to do some research before i sign up -- it looks discouraging from what you GUYS are saying.
I get about an email a day from a different girl; but since I have no membership I can't reply or anything special.. is this the way it was for you guys?

thanks.

[chris]

Hi guys - I have been a member on sexsearch for two years now. I have found loads of women where they need to know me better before I can hook up with her and having lots of casual fun. Sexsearch is definitely 100% NOT scam. Be awake some ladies won't respond cos she's looking for a bloke that live so close to her place but many of them don't mind. Any other site have real women that I could have casual fun with them??

[Sike]

All the people that say this site is real, or the fake ones on sexsearch.com. It's a scam. Trust me.

[Tube Search]

Nice Article, i personally think that sex.com is a story for itself. it has been slipped through so many hands and every owner want to capitalize it at its fullest. what does that mean after all? its capitalism ;-)