PR WEB -- Oct 11 -- The Heart2Heart Network, a leading provider of targeted online dating services, today announced the launch of its free, all-access dating community, Datopia.
The full article was originally published at PR Web, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: Ever since Markus Frind showed off his $900k check for January and February from Google Adsense I've seen free dating site after free dating site launch. I've added a top 3 ranking for the free dating sites on the right bar. Plentyoffish is way ahead. OKCupid and Matchdoctor are doing well also. It falls off significantly from their.
Things like this make little business sense.
http://www.h2hnetwork.com/index.smpl?arg=partner&sec=partners
They provide the back end for Major news papers, Quest personals and others? When a provider sets up a competing service for free with the intent of driving their customers out of business it doesn't make much sense.
I would think the Globe and Mail, or Quest personals would throw a fit if they found out?
Posted by: Markus | Oct 11, 2006 at 06:02 PM
Many persons speak/write about or promote the FREE condition of a dating site; they are only CHEAP CHANNELS for deliver ADS, i.e. infomercial-advertainment companies on the web. When you post your profile to a "FREE dating site" or when you search for compatible real persons, you are spending precious time. TIME that you are paying with your LIFE. If you "quantify" the time you spent in a "FREE dating site", suppose USD5.00/hour x 45 hours (1/2 hour x 3 months) == USD 225.00, USD 75/month!!! It is worth than many SERIOUS dating site's subscription fee!!!!
The MUST HAVE marketing theory: Any prospective client must have almost ONE VALID reason to buy a product or pay for a service subscription.
Applying this concept to Online Dating Industry:
Reason #1: PRECIOUS TIME more valuable than MONEY. Nothing is real free!!!
Reason #2: AVOID BEING HURT IN OWN FEELINGS
A client will pay a fee to create a barrier which will avoid free users, who could hurt other clients' feelings.
Regards,
Fernando Ardenghi.
Buenos Aires.
Argentina.
[email protected]
Posted by: Fernando Ardenghi | Oct 11, 2006 at 09:09 PM
Fernando,
I don't see how your logic adds up. Take 2 dating sites for example, one is pay and one is free and they both have a million plus members. You would spend the same amount of time on either site finding someone. You still need to take the time to write potential dates, get to know them, meet them, etc. So on a pay site, you are still spending time finding a date and also paying their membership fee on top of it.
Posted by: Luke | Oct 12, 2006 at 02:55 PM
You can see the top ranking free dating sites on the left bar of this site, and on onlinepersonalsrankings.com.
Top 5 Free Internet Dating Sites for USA
Hitwise ~ 6/06
1 PlentyofFish
2 OKCupid
3 MatchDoctor
4 VietSingle
5 BookofMatches
You'll see commentary on Online Personals Watch from Markus from PlentyofFish, Sam from OKCupid and Luke (above comment) from MatchDoctor. Thanks for your contributions to OPW.
Mark Brooks
OnlinePersonalsWatch.com
Posted by: Mark Brooks | Oct 17, 2006 at 10:13 AM