BUSINESSWEEK - Feb 28 - The $30M advertising and marketing push had made ChristianMingle an unexpectedly popular dating site with 8M registered users, 154K paying subscribers at $19.99 a month. That’s almost double the 84K paying subscribers of SparkNetwork’s groundbreaking Jewish singles site, JDate. SparkNetworks.com was founded in 1997. JDate grew rapidly by word of mouth. ChristianMingle was launched in 2004 and remained small until 2010, when Spark consulted with local ministers and prominent Christian leaders about how best to serve their constituents. As a result, the company founded an advisory council of church leaders and hired ChristianMingle spokeswoman Ashley Reccord, a pastor’s daughter, to help conduct outreach. Then the company launched Believe.com, which features Christian editorials, and redesigned the site into something more devout-seeming than JDate. Spark reported the number of ChristianMingle paid subscribers grew 89% for the Q4 of 2012 vs. the period a year earlier. There are other suitors in the market for Christian romance; eHarmony and ChristianCafe.com.
by Logan Hill
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Spark Networks has spent big to get this growth. Sam at ChristianCafe is none to happy. eHarmony does not compete with Christian Mingle. Its for everyone. Not a niche dating site for Christians.
Posted by: Mark Brooks | Mar 01, 2013 at 05:42 PM
Interesting article, it's a pity the facts weren't exposed, as it's all on public record – go see for yourself. I can only put it down to lazy reporting - which is a surprise from a giant like Bloomberg.
When examining figures, you have to bear in mind it's one thing to have huge revenue (trading turnover) but it's a very different story for the actual net profit. Realistically, this is a market where the various players are making a profit margin something to the tune of 25-50%. Yet, this company consistently loses money!
Staying with the facts for a change: before ChristianMingle, it was AmericanSingles.com that sucked all their money and almost tipped them into bankruptcy. So they wound down that one and re-emerged with AmericanSingles (Version 2) aka "ChristianMingle" – with the same perpetual money-losing business strategy!
In fact, what's keeping this company afloat is the extraordinarily successful JDate, which is unique. Extremely eyebrow-raising, actually. The reality is this, that without the high profits from JDate, they would've hit the wall in the late 90's, just after they started.
My question: Why didn't the reporter balance the story and point out the obvious business facts? The information is all available - and more importantly verifiable - because they are publicly traded.
Posted by: Stu O'Connor | Mar 02, 2013 at 08:00 PM