Dating Services

Unfortunately Spark Networks has continued their downward trend. Revenue for Q2, 2009 was $11.2 million, which is a 25 percent decrease when compared to $15 million from Q2, 2008. This is also a 7 percent decrease in revenue from Q1, 2009. Revenue dropped due to continued declines in subscriber numbers from JDate and the General Markets dating sites. Average paying subscribers for Spark Networks as a whole in quarter 2, 2009 is 163,217. This is a 3 percent decrease when compared to the last quarter and a 14 percent decrease when compared to the same quarter last year.

JDate saw revenue drop 18% to $7,1 million when compared to the same quarter in 2008. This is the result of subscribers falling 10 percent to 82,769. The Other Affinity Networks had revenues which totalled $3.3 million and 65,409 subscribers. Compared to the same quarter last year, revenue fell 3 percent while subscriber numbers increased 3 percent. General Market Networks saw the worse of it. Revenues dropped 68% to $701,000 and subscribers fell 58% to 14,022 when compared to quarter 2, 2008.

The planned decrease in revenue for General Market Networks is largely attributable to an 85% decrease in the marketing spend for this segment in the second quarter of 2009 compared to the same period in 2008.

For the full 2009 Q2 release visit Spark Networks News Room.

Related Story: Spark Networks First Quarter 2009 Financials

First the largest free dating site PlentyOfFish.com, decided to offer a paid upgrade service 6 months ago (see Story) and now the second largest free dating site, OKCupid is doing the same. Members who upgrade their free membership on OkCupid are called A-List users. As an A-List user you get the following 10 perks:

• The ability to attach photos to messages.
• Create both public and private photo albums (reminds me of an adult dating site).
• Store up to 5000 messages.
• Send messages to users who have a full inbox.
• Save multiple search settings.
• Access to A-List forums.
• Ads removed from the website.
• Advanced search features.
• Give awards to other users and read and write reviews about them (testimonials).
• A little more exposure (you may be placed in the special A-List Matches column of results).

A few of the perks have left me scratching my head. First of all I am not sure why someone would want to store 5000 messages. I know there are some OkCupid fanatics who will want this but, it is not really a selling point for general use users. Sending messages to users who have a full inbox is also a little weird, at first I thought, why would I want to send messages to someone who doesn't even check their mail? On my second read through, I realized this feature is aimed more for users who file away all messages they receive (for the 5000 message users) and not for the user who's mailbox is full because he never logs in.

In terms of advance search features, A-List members can now filter by Match Questions, Data Persona and Popularity Ratings. You can also custom order your search results by personality traits. Another nice feature is the Similar Users option. If you have found someone you liked and they are already taken you can use this option to find other people who are just like them.

The cost to become an A-List user is $9.95 USD per month and you will be auto billed every month until you cancel. The first 1000, users are also offered a free T-Shirt in a number of different colors. I was offered one today when I visited the signup page. Dave over at Online Dating Insider blogged about OkCupid A-List users on August 12th, which was 5 days ago. I guess this means that the A-List user memberships are not really flying off the shelf yet.

It appears that free dating sites are hitting a wall in terms of revenue generation. Online advertising dollars were in decline before the economy turned south and since then, we have seen the 2 largest free dating services start to offer a paid membership on their websites. Both of these dating sites offer their paid members some useful feature but I think they missed the point of online dating, as I had mentioned in a previous post about Plenty Of Fish going paid. Users of online dating sites want to be noticed. They are on a dating website for a reason, to find a partner. The best way for a dating service to do this is by displaying their profile to more interested members. Both dating sites visibly mark members who have upgraded but as far as I can tell none allowed me to search just for these type of members. I also think these members should be displayed higher in search results than free members (if they fit reasonably within the search criteria). This not only would give upgraded members more responses, it is also a winning scenario for free members since they would be seeing members who are most actively seeking a partner first.

To find out more about this dating site, read our review of OkCupid.

Every dating site has its own spin on the dating profile format. In this series, I'll take a look at some of the different profile formats and how you can write your best profile for that particular service. Lavalife.com offers a few different profile options. You can choose from Dating, Relationship, or Intimate. (Why they call casual sex "intimate" I have no idea. I'm pretty sure you can't be "intimate" with someone you barely know. You can have sex with them, but that certainly doesn't make it "intimate." Anyway....)

Three Profiles

Beware! When you first sign up for Lavalife, you will have all three profiles activated. If you have no interest in casual encounters, you will want to delete your "Intimate" profile. Likewise, if you have no interest in long-term relationships, you should delete the "Relationship" profile.

The Writing Portion

There is only one open section to write in for a Lavalife profile, and that's the one that is originally presented to you as "tell others about yourself" during the sign-up process. Once you move into editing your profile, this field changes and is called "In My Own Words." This is the place where you'll want to talk about who you are and the type of person you'd like to meet. Keep it short and sweet and tell a story that others will want to join in! Think about the last book you purchased. You probably read the back cover (about 300 words) and thought, "Wow, I really want to read this!" If your profile reads like the back cover of a book, it should convince people to pick you up! (Pun intended!)

The great thing about having a couple different profiles (Dating/Relationship/Intimate) is that you can edit the "In My Own Words" for each one separately. I recommend having both Dating and Relationship active and test-driving different profile texts in each to see which gets you more results. Internet marketers do this with sales pages, why not do it with your dating profile?

Fill-Ins

Each type of profile also has some interests and fill-in-the-blank type questions to fill out. Dating and Relationship have the same interests list. I like the fact that they've given you the ability to select whether you enjoy participating in or just watching sports. So if you play softball but love watching football, you can be clear about that in your profile. Very handy!

Pictures

Lavalife offers the ability to upload up to 30 pictures and select which pictures appear with which version of your profile. This is a great way to keep your profile fresh if you happen to have 30 recent pictures. Since Lavalife will hold them for you, you can alternate and swap them out until you find the combination that seems to get you the most results!

Here's hoping that you find someone to click with you at Lavalife!

For more information on the dating site mentioned in this article, read our Lavalife.com review.

An interview with Anupam G. Mittal, CEO Of Shaadi.com is available over at Online Personals Watch (OPW). In the article Mittal discusses how he founded the website back in 1997 when he returned to India for a few months and by chance met up with a traditional matchmaker. In India, traditional matchmakers not only foster a relationship between people looking for a partner but, with their families as well. Family is considered very important in India. When Mittal talked with the matchmaker, he further learned that she had about 50 or 60 people in her network. It was easy for him to see that moving part of the matchmaking process onto the internet would increase the matchmaking pool by thousands.

In the interview Mittal also discusses:

• How Shaadi works from a user's perspective. There are about 75 Shaadi centers across India and one in Canada now. In the United States singles must rely on just the website.
• The prices and services offered by Shaadi and how they differ depending on what country you live in.
• How the economy and Facebook has affected the dating business in India.
• Where Mittal would like to see Shaadi by the end of 2010.

For the full interview, visit OPW and for further information on the top matrimonial service in India, read our review of Shaadi.com.

We got word that there will be a Free Communication Weekend at eHarmony in the United Kingdom (eHarmony.co.uk), starting Friday August 28th to Monday August 31st, 2009. Having this popular promotion and combining it with their big TV advertising campaign going on at the moment, means eHarmony UK members should have lots of matches to review and communicate for free with during the last weekend in August.

There is no information yet of a Free Communication Weekend coming soon for eHarmony here in Canada and the United States but we expect it will happen at the same time or in the first few weeks of September.

Read our review of eHarmony for more information on this popular online matchmaking service.

The Wall Street Journal in an article called "Marriage-Maker Claims Are Tied in Knots" attempts to find out if some of the statistics are true, in regards to the number of marriages a dating site claims to have generated. eHarmony is targeted because of their claim that 236 members get married everyday (see Story). I believe this works out to 2% of the total number of Americans who got married last year met through the site. Match.com is also mentioned due to stats they released recently (and then pulled) that says 12 couples got married or engaged everyday on their dating site (see Story).

The author, Carl, in a way defends the dating sites published stats when he says that:

One obstacle to further research is that newlyweds are hard for researchers to find. So online-dating companies looking to tout their success as matchmaking yentas have sought novel ways to enumerate marriages.

Less than 2 percent of Americans get married every year. To perform a survey and to get an accurate sample size 1.76 million phone calls would need to be made says Dr. Gonzaga of eHarmony. That would be a costly endeavor, so dating sites are forced to find creative ways to come up with some marriage numbers. The closest thing to an election-quality poll Carl could find was a Pew Internet & American Life Project survey, which in 2005 reported from a poll of 3,215 adults, that 3 million Americans found a long term relationship (not necessarily marriages) through a dating site.