Online Personals Watch: News on the Online Dating Industry and Business

Inside the World of Dating Profile Ghostwriters

SALON.COM - Mar 6 - "Everyone is doing online dating, and now everyone is trying to optimize themselves and make themselves stand out more because there is a lot of competition," said Alex McDermott, the co-founder of PimpMyProfile. PimpMyProfile offers three packages: For $99.99, a client receives ten pre-written messages; $199.99 includes profile writeup and three opening messages. For $399.99, users can get a personal consultation and professional photo editing, in addition to what is offered in the second package. Eric Resnick has been in the business of writing online dating profiles since 2004, when he worked at Match.com back when they had writers on staff to pen profiles. Once the feature was no longer offered to users, he started his own business called ProfileHelper in 2005. Resnick has made his living off of that ever since. Resnick's company offers three different packages that range from $49.95 to $199.95. The highest tier includes an hour one-on-one consultation with Resnick, which he says is the most popular package. His workload ranges from having 1 to 15 clients a day. Eddie Hernandez, a professional photographer based in San Francisco, specializes in online dating photos. His customers can choose four "looks," which include wardrobe and location changes, for $875.

by Nicole Karlis
See full article at Salon.com

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Online Dating Profile In 5 Minutes

MSNBC - Feb 7 - ProfileWiz promises a 500-word custom dating profile in 5 minutes. It costs $4.75. ProfileWiz generates the profile based on answers to 22 questions. Some are big questions like, "If love was a place which would it be?" or "What does happiness mean to you?" Others are more mundane, such as "If you had an extra hour today, what would you do?" or "What do you like doing on holiday?" There are other services that offer profiles writing such as ProfileHelper.com or DatingprofileCoach.com. FULL ARTICLE @ MSNBC

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Need Help Finding a Date? Now You Can 'Ask the Expert!'

New advice column gives singles everywhere the chance to ask respected dating expert, Eric Resnick, how to manage the ins-and-outs of online and offline love.

PR WEB -- Sep 7 -- The People2People Group (P2P) has teamed up with Eric Resnick, of online dating assistance site, ProfileHelper.com, to create the "Ask the Expert!" dating advice column to be featured weekly in over 250 newspapers around the country. Eric will answer questions on everything from how to write a great online dating ad, to how to look for signs that the person you are seeing really is who they say they are, and even how to tell when it's the right time to move things to the next level or how to walk away. The People2People Group (P2P) provides personal ad services to nearly 80% of the daily and weekly newspapers across the U.S. Founded in 1998, P2P remains at the forefront of the newspaper voice personals industry. FULL ARTICLE @ PR WEB

Mark Brooks: Congrats Eric. LookBetterOnline.com (David and Merav) and e-cyrano.com (Evan Katz) are Eric's main competitors. All of these sites/people are very keen to partner with online dating sites.

Online Dating Profile Help

BRADENTON HERALD -- Aug 12 -- ProfileHelper helps online daters enhance their profiles, whether it's the written portion or the photo. "The best way to think of a profile is it's a movie trailer, it's not the movie. The trailer is supposed to give you just enough information that you want to buy a ticket," lead advisor Eric Resnick says. 11% of adults who use the Internet - 16 million of them - have gone to an online personals site, according to a Pew Internet & American Life Project published in March of this year. LookBetterOnline charges $129 for 12 pictures. The move toward hiring professionals to improve profiles started a couple of years ago, says Mark Brooks, editor of Onlinepersonalswatch.com.  It's worthwhile for internet daters to make a compelling profile and a photograph that brings out the best in them. If they take the time and money to seek out professional services, Brooks says their responses should double. 

Mark Brooks: Internet daters need profile improvement services. Unfortunately internet daters still don't realise this. It behooves internet dating companies to offer, or at least guide them, to reputable profile improvement services. The better daters profiles look, the better the internet dating services looks as a whole.

Handsome but Clueless? Online Profile Writers can Help

COLUMBIA NEWS SERVICE -- Mar 14-- Chase found online dating consultant Evan Marc Katz, who urged him to be honest about his athletic obsession, but to package it differently. For $1,000, Katz revamped the profile and counseled his client for several hours on how to market the Chase machismo. His E-Cyrano service offers a basic profile rewrite for $49. Profilehelper.com offers an "extreme profile makeover" for $49.95.  With prices nearing the cost of a monthly dating Web site membership, profile consultants are not for the intermittent dater. "Most people don't want to cough up the extra 100 bucks," said Mark Brooks, an online personals industry analyst and editor of onlinepersonalswatch.com. The trick is simple: be honest and be specific. LookBetterOnline.com is the most successful of all profile helper sites and charges $129 per shoot.  FULL ARTICLE @ COLUMBIA NEWS SERVICE

Mark Brooks: Profilehelper.com, E-cyrano.com and Lookbetteronline.com are all great services.