PlentyOfFish May Be Worth $1 Billion

READ/WRITE WEB -- Oct 29 -- In June '06 PlentyOfFish was earning ~$3.5m/yr on Google Adsense. Next year it will earn $10m+. POF gets 1.2 billion page views/month, and ~500,000 unique logins per day and is #2 in the US online dating market and #1 in Canada and UK (Hitwise). Facebook (40 billion page views/mo) has a valuation of $15 Billion thanks to Microsoft's $240m investment last week. According to Markus POF has 5-10 times the click through rate of Facebook so POF's 1.2 Billion page views is the same as 5-10 Billion Facebook page views per month. Markus concludes "Facebook is only able to generate 10 to 15 times as many clicks on ads as my site and it's valued at 15 billion." What's more, some of his direct competitors, eHarmony, Match, etc, are valued in the billions. Markus didn't put a figure on what PlentyOfFish is worth but it's clear he's thinking in the billions. Not bad for a one-man company (plus a new Customer Service Rep!).

The full article was originally published at ReadWriteWeb, but is no longer available.

Comments

[Michael]

I find it very humorous that you too think he was a one man show. There is no way a site with the traffic he talks about doesn't have more people reviewing and doing other things. Everybody, including you thinks it is a one man show. If it is considered a one man show he outsources support and review.

Of course if he couldn't say it was a one man show then the PR wouldn't be nearly as good.

I think it is fantastic but let's be honest with our self. If there weren't more people working on his site then there would be trash profile galore...it wouldn't be good.

But please stop with the non-sense of thinking he just barely started having help.

[Fernando Ardenghi]

How to honestly value PlentyOfFish or other dotcom company:

No more than
1.5 times its revenue
OR
15 times its profit (earnings after taxes, depreciation, etc)

so I think no more than USD10 millions.

"POF ..... is #2 in the US online dating market ...."

online dating market?

POF is an online dating site in the ads market!

POF gets its primary (and unique) revenue from ads, not from memberships (subscriptions) as Match, True, eHarmony and others do!

Kindest Regards,

Fernando Ardenghi.
Buenos Aires.
Argentina.
[email protected]

[Sam Moorcroft, ChristianCafe.com]

Fernando, your "valuation" model makes no sense. If Marcus is making more than $10M revenue per year, how can he be worth "no more than USD10 millions"?

How do you reconcile his traffic numbers with Facebook, which has a valuation now of $15B?

[Ross Williams]

It's a crazy, crazy world :o)

POF is the biggest free dating site by far - but in terms of revenue, it's generating what I would regard as a relatively small turnover compared with paid dating sites.

We are turning over well over $10/million per year already and turnover doubles every 12 months - but we'd find it hard to justify a $100million price tag let alone billions :o)

These kind of figures are all good fun but when it comes to people paying cold hard cash for businesses, it's only ever worth what someone will pay.

POF also has issue with scaling - the more members on a site, the more customer support needed to remove scammers, etc. With free sites, this can only be worse.

It's a great story and one I feel the industry should applaud as it brings online dating into the mainstream media and attracts investment attention to other dating sites which, as a company generating far more revenue than POF, I can only applaud.

Ross

[Andrew Arnott]

A couple of points here.

1. There is no way in Hell Markus runs POF alone, I don't care what he says. Collaboradate has a tiny % of the users POF does and I get 20+ customer service emails a day. He may be the only person on the books, but he has an army of independent contractors... Guaramteed.

2. POF is worth a lot of money, but just like friendster, being the biggest and the first only lasts for so long... something better is bound to come along.

3. The new Google/Myspace API will change the game in many many ways...