Are You Selling Profiles?

BETABEAT - Mar 29 - Online dating is a fast-growing industry, with current revenues estimated to run between $1.5 and $3 billion a year. But every new dating site faces the same problem: finding souls to mate. Recruiting new customers is expensive; industry experts put the customer acquisition price at $1 to $5 per person. SaleDatingProfiles and its competitors BuyProfiles.com and DatingProfilesSale.com offer a shortcut. They sell bulk packages of profiles that seem to include a fair number of actual singles alongside somewhat more questionable Russian beauties, Nigerian bankers and half-empty profiles, which sometimes sell for less than a dime a dozen. SaleDatingProfiles is based in Israel and Russia, a representative told Betabeat over Skype, and operates 150 dating sites of its own, which she declined to name. SaleDatingProfiles says its profiles come from users who signed up for a dating site in its network. Mark Brooks, a consultant who works exclusively with Internet dating companies, said he once fired a client for buying profiles. “When people have a bad experience on any Internet dating site, they just label it ‘Internet dating. ‘Internet dating sucks!’” he told Betabeat. “I don’t work with anybody who’s bad for the industry because in ten years time I won’t be working with anybody, because there won’t be an industry.” 

by Adrianne Jeffries
See full article at BetaBeat

Mark Brooks: We did a study recently on profile selling companies.

Comments

[rich]

Hey Mark,

Got a question for you if you dont mind me asking.. What did you mean by this “I don’t work with anybody who’s bad for the industry because in ten years time I won’t be working with anybody, because there won’t be an industry.”

What did you mean by there wont be in industry in 10 years? Are you saying online dating will be gone?

[Ashley]

I bought over 1 million wonderful dating profiles from http://www.datingprofilessale.com and in a few weeks I tripled my revenue. It was such a good deal man I was so impressed with the deal! Really, anyone that has a dating site that need sign ups need to get on over to http://www.datingprofilessale.com and snap up some of their amazing dating profiles up. If I can do it anyone can man, the site is so cool and I am so happy to see my earnings grow each month.

[Mark Brooks]

Entrepreneurs typically build their sites, and think they're almost done once they've completed the site. The fact is, the build is 5% of the job, if that. Most entrepreneurs completely misjudge this and end up desperate to find profiles, and sometimes they resort to rogue marketing practices. This is bad for the reputation of the industry.

If people have a bad experience on a dating site, I think they walk away from the site thinking 'internet dating sites suck' and spend time on a social network instead.

So if there's an uptick in rogue practices, yes, I expect I won't be working for the dating industry in 10 years time.

The overarching goal of Courtland Brooks is to help grow the industry as a whole. So we always advise startups to do the right thing for the industry, and for their long term collective success.

[Billy]

Thanks for getting back to us... You are the a person that knows online dating inside and out!! Again, we appreciate your feedback.. and your site is awesome!

[Datinginsider]

Buying dating profiles = fail. Ashley, you don't even link to your site, so I can't really tell what tripling your revenue means. Like from $5/day to $15 or $25,000 to $75,000? You sound like a paid shill for datingprofilessale. Tell me I'm wrong, please.

[Datinginsider]

Mark, many sites have been built from the ground up with fake profiles, this has been going on for years. You better get out now then, lol. Heck Zoosk did a bunch of unsavory stuff to build their traffic up early on as well and I can name 20 other sites guilty as well, including both yours and my clients.

Truth is you and can't do a single thing to clean up the dating industry. We've both tried but nothing we do makes any difference. We can promote it but not really improve it.

[Billy]

I been in the industry since 1998, i have joined almost every dating site out there for research. And know a lot about online dating...There are really only 12 websites i can name off the top of my head that does not take part in rogue practices (buying fake profiles) to drive traffic to your site. I can spot a fake profile a mile away...like mark said building the site is only 5% ... so i got this awesome site but NO is joining...WHY? B/C most entrepreneurs still have the theory "if i build it they will come" it does not work like that...

[DatingSeekers]

Any sites that buy dating profiles to create a membership database is not really creating a site with the best intentions of daters in mind. POF never bought dating profiles, they did it the right way..