ATLANTA MAGAZINE - Feb 10 - The owner of Atlanta-based VIDA Select explains why single people need an online dating coach. Busy with work and unsuccessful in love, Scott Valdez decided to leave flirting to a pro. Now, it's his business. "Men sometimes are frustrated online because they haphazardly throw together a profile and start to send random messages. You get good results online by having the best possible photos and by standing out in your profile text and your messages. With data, we can see exactly what words or emojis or photos work best. The person we're messaging with doesn't know the person is using VIDA Select. Some people think this method is deceiving, but we've been successful in representing our clients in a way that they feel is accurate," he explains.
21 posts categorized "VirtualDatingAssistants"
Scott Valdez, VIDA Select CEO: Why Singles Need a Coach
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When the Dow Is Down, Love Is up
ESQUIRE - Dec 11 - VIDA Select is a modern matchmaking experience. It does match its clients with one another like a traditional service, but it also gets them set up on two to four dating apps. VIDA handling all the swiping and messaging, too. 15 people or more could be involved in the setup of an account. Its packages start at $895 per month. CEO Scott Valdez says his cheaper service is just as or more effective than expensive matchmakers, mostly because "the idea of relying on your own database of paying customers is something that made sense when there weren't huge online dating platforms available." Selective Search would disagree. "It's almost like self-serve at a grocery store versus someone that's actually making you gourmet food, organic, farm-to-plate, in your home," founder and CEO Barbie Adler says of how her team differs. Its custom programs can range from $25,000 to $1M. Amber Kelleher-Andrews, CEO of Kelleher International, thinks she knows why online dating doesn't work for everyone: There's no vetting. The company only makes matches for highly successful entrepreneurs, royalty, celebrities, and otherwise notable people, and only two percent of applicants are accepted. A Kelleher International membership costs $25K - $300K a year. In a pandemic-ridden world, the matchmaking industry is experiencing an unprecedented boom.
by Lauren Kranc
See full article at Esquire
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Vida Dating's Founder Defends His Business Model
FOX13 - Nov 28 - Scott Valdez, the founder and CEO of VIDA, a virtual dating assistant company. Dozens of remote consultants - from a stylist, to a photo analyst, to an app-swiper – work together to curate and manage users online dating profiles for them. They even have a ghostwriters, who flirts with their matches on their behalf. The end goal is to set up a date for their clients.
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How ViDA, the Virtual Dating Assistant, Works
VICE - Aug 3 - When Facebook launched in 2004, Scott Valdez used it to find women who attended the University of Georgia. He sent them dozens of messages using one of five pickup lines, and then recorded the women's responses and response rate in a spreadsheet. He applied his algorithm to POF, and hired a guy on Craigslist to manage his POF profile for him. His personal experiment laid the groundwork for his matchmaking service, called ViDA Select. It's now the biggest virtual dating service of its kind. Dozens of remote consultants – from a stylist, to a photo analyst, to an app-swiper – work together to curate and manage users online dating profiles for them. They even have a ghostwriter, who flirts with their matches on their behalf. The end goal is to set up a date for their clients.
by Caroline Pahl & Evan McMorris-Santorro
See full article at Vice News
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Increasing Number of People Pay Virtual Dating Assistants to Get a Date
GQ MAGAZINE - Nov 14 - For people too busy to swipe themselves, there's a new generation of cyber-cupids to help them hook up, break up and everything in between - from polishing profiles, to messaging potential dates. With a budget of £15K, Scott Valdez used Craigslist to hire two freelance writers and a PR manager, then founded Virtual Dating Assistants (styled Vida) in 2009. Since then, the business has grown exponentially. Vida has hundreds of clients. In the last year alone, it has seen a 50% increase in sign-ups and almost a third of its customers are women. The team has grown from a staff of three to 80, with matchmakers, profile writers, photo analysts and app swipers joining the ghostwriters. With pay-as-you-go monthly packages ranging from £400 (20 hours of dating assistance and an expected two-to-four dates per month) to £2k (100 hours, and eight to 20 dates per month), Vida already has a seven-figure revenue stream, and it's just getting started. Vida says that 99.6% of clients get dates, 63% of which turn into serious relationships, usually after 12 dates within three and a half months. After Vida obtains a phone number from a potential date, the client is sent an email with the full transcript of the conversation to read over and memorise (they are then expected to takeover via SMS).
by Eleanor Halls
See full article at GQ Magazine
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How Virtual Dating Assistant Works
QUARTZ - Apr 26 - There are two main types of writers at Virtual Dating Assistants: "Profile Writers," who create profiles based on facts their clients have supplied about themselves, and "Closers," who log in to clients' accounts at least twice a day to respond to messages from matches. Profile Writers follow strict guidelines, often recycling the same half-dozen clichés over and over again. The process for Closers is a bit more complicated. The initial training period lasts several weeks before they're given access to clients' accounts, during which they must read several training manuals and submit draft responses to fake matches. A third type of employee, "Matchmakers," send out opening messages en masse across every dating platform. Originally a sales guy with no time for "real dates," Scott Valdez grew ViDA's brand out of his own experiences in the dating world. "I found myself wishing there were two of me," he continued. "I thought, 'Why couldn't I just take what I had developed, and train someone else to sound like me, and outsource my online dating to him?'" The company's practices may be unethical - but they're not illegal. Once the company obtains the client's permission to impersonate them online, there are no laws against what Closers do.
by Chloe Rose Stuart-Ulin
See full article at Quartz
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Singles Paying People To Impersonate Them Online To Score Dates
GLOBALNEWS - Jan 30 - Anne Marshall runs an outsourced online dating service. She offers three packages that range from $175 to $500. Her client base is mostly busy women 30-60. Some of her clients eventually tell their partners that they hired her. The majority of people who use U.S.-based Virtual Dating Assistants don't tell their partners, said company founder Scott Valdez. The company has ~200 clients. "We manage our clients dating profiles from start to finish," explained Valdez. His most popular bundles tend to be for 20 hours ($460) and 40 hours ($840).
by Patricia Kozicka
See full article at GlobalNews
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Online Dating Assistants
CNN MONEY - Feb 9 - "People on dating sites need a lot of help", said Scott Valdez, founder of Virtual Dating Assistants. Valdez was an active Match.com and POF user himself. "I found a writer on Craigslist and paid him to send my messages for me," he said. Soon, friends and family were begging to use his assistant too. So in 2009, he launched Virtual Dating Assistants. The business offers profile writing for $200 or communication, which runs about $23 an hour. Tinder packages run a bit more, $25 to $30 per hour. Writer Lisa Hoehn also became an online dating coach. Her "Profile Polish" offers three packages, which range from $48 for a "Tinder special" with photo insight and editing help, to a $98 profile analysis, to $198 for the "whole shebang." LiveDatingAdvice.com launched this month with $250K in funding from the founding team, friends and family. The founders -- dating coaches Hunt Ethridge, Antonia Geno and Israel Irensteing -- plan to make dating assistants virtually accessible to the masses. They are offering its services on pre-sale now for $49 a month, which will give clients live advice, daily access to a trained dating adviser, and a free profile review.
by Sara Ashley O'Brien
The full article was originally published at WPTV, but is no longer available.
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Writers Sought To Professionally Woo Women On OKCupid, Tinder
CHICAGOIST - Aug 10 - A Chicago Craigslist ad was posted by Virtual Dating Assistants to find writers to professionally woo women on OKCupid and Tinder. The company is offering to pay their writers $13 to $15 an hour to act as virtual dating assistants who will do all the legwork to find and court a client's ideal woman.
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Online Dating Outsourcing Kills The Romance
COURIER MAIL - July 22 - We've become so busy that romance is being outsourced. First, it was dating, now it's wedding proposals. A few years ago, Scott Valdez set up Virtual Dating Assistants (ViDA), a service that outsource online dating. Another growing niche market is marriage proposals. More men particularly are turning to businesses to help them make their proposal very public and memorable.
by Karen Brooks
See full article at Courier Mail
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Virtual Online Dating Assistants
DAILYMAIL.CO.UK - Dec 3 - One New York 'Wall Street Professional' has posted an advertisement for a 'good writer' who has a 'passion for social media' to manage his online dating schedule. The business executive states he is seeking a woman only for the Online Dating/Manager role. He isn't the first to use this dating outsource tactic however. Professional services to outsource online dating do exist. Virtual Dating Assistants employs people to help manage online love lives, and Scott Valdez, its 27-year-old CEO said he started the company after advertising on Craigslist himself. The number of matches, and the nature of the services, depends on the fee paid - which can range from $147 a match to $1,200 a month for the full dating service.
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The Love Letter Ghostwriter
FT - Nov 11 - Kelly Hitchcock works as a virtual dating assistant. She is penning profiles and making contact with potential matches on behalf of men and women who are too inept, too strapped for time or simply unwilling to do so themselves. Ms Hitchcock is employed by Scott Valdez, who launched Virtual Dating Assistants in 2009. The US census calculates that of the nation’s 87m singles, 40m have tried online dating. Annual revenues from dating sites are $1.2bn in the US and $3.5bn worldwide, according to Courtland Brooks, an internet dating consultancy. Mark Brooks, a consultant to dating sites, believes virtual dating assistants have a future. “A significant proportion of people don’t have time to filter through online matches. They are cheaper than matchmakers, who typically charge between $5,000 and $50,000”. Virtual Dating Assistants charges $147 for a basic profile, while $600-$700 a month will buy you date selection and correspondence.
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Online Daters Growing Weary
VANCOUVER SUN - Apr 15 - Online dating is a booming business in Canada, where PlentyofFish gets ~105M hits a month. But according to U.S.-based Socialone.com, growth in the industry is trending downward, dropping 58% this year alone. It could be that it’s too much work. The solution may be to hire some help. Scott Valdez offers that through his international online service, Virtual Dating Assistants. Valdez’s dating assistants, a group of professional writers and coaches, will take care of all that onerous administrative stuff: Creating an online brand, writing the profile, and sending the engaging emails. VDA offers several different packages starting at ~$400 and going up to $1440. Dates guaranteed.
by Denise Ryan
The full article was originally published at Vancouver Sun, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: Sure, uniques are down, but revenue isn't. The nature of the industry is changing, and social networking is drawing users away. But idating is a more focused and refined premium experience.
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Online Dating Tips From VirtualDatingAssistants.com
- Tailor your approach to your audience: While women of all ages respond well to humor, women in their early 30s and above responded well to longer, more thoughtful emails. Women in their 20s rejected these more serious emails.
- Profile Updates: Increase your visibility by keeping your content fresh
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Valentine, Don't Sweat Online Dating: Outsource
CNET NEWS - Feb 11 - Virtual Dating Assistants makes heady promises on its site. For example: "We do it. You date. Online dating, simplified." For the lowest price of $360 a month, VIDA will scour between one and three online dating sites and do all sorts of things that make you look better than you really are. They will write your profile, choose your photos and correspond with all potential candidates. $1,440 a month VIDA will give you an executive briefing before you go on your date and date concierge services.
The full article was originally published at CNet News, but is no longer available.
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