General News

If you are planning to start, or just started an online dating site, then you may want to take a look at this blog post at White Label Dating. The post is actually commenting on another post at "Startup Professionals" which attempts to show all new dating site endeavours will fail.

I do agree with most of Startup Professionals reasons about why starting a online dating site is tough:

• Direct competition is huge.
• No longer a growth market.
• Entry cost is very high.
• Intellectual property is tough.
• Social networks and search engines.

The only real exception I have is the point they made about online dating not being a growth market. While growth may be slowing a bit, the Online Dating industry has a huge potential for further growth. The reason is, most single men and women are not online daters. In 2008 there was 93 million single Americans, only 3 million had paid that year to use a dating site (see Stats).

Including the point about "Entry cost is very high" may confuse people who have looked into buying software for a dating site. To buy and setup a readymade dating site script is relatively easy and can be done for under $300. There are hundreds of these type of dating sites out there but they all suffer from a couple of major problems. One problem is getting your website noticed, to do this these days costs money, lots of it. Dating terms in Google Adwords are not cheap and to generate enough traffic to hopefully get people to come back to your site will cost you alone at least $10,000 a month (conservative est.). Of course one month is not enough, you have to keep the marketing dollars flowing. The other problem these dating sites have is no members. People sign up to a dating site to connect with other members, if you don't have any, no one will sign up. This is the same problem as the chicken or egg scenario, which came first?

The White Label Dating post has a successful argument on how someone with a limited budget can bypass these points on why your dating site will fail. White Label Dating provides their clients the dating software, membership database, payment processing, customer support, hosting infrastructure, tax processing and more. All their clients need to do is provide a brand, website design and marketing. If you want to start a dating site but have limited funds, this is really the only option you have if you want a half decent chance at success.

Starting Saturday July 25th, when members of eHarmony logged into their accounts, they found a message about a new feature and profile questions. There are 7 new questions which focus on commonalities. The multiple choice questions look at common traits that include things like your approach to money and food, cleanliness and humor. Once completed you can then see how your commonalities compare with other members when you view their profiles. While these questions are part of your profile, they are not taken into account when you are automatically matched with other members by eHarmony. That is what the other 256 profile questions are for.

Be careful when you fill out the commonality questions, as it looks right now, you cannot edit the answers once you have saved them.

To find out more details about this matchmaking service, read our review of eHarmony.

The dating sites BlackSingles.com and HurryDate (both part of Spark Networks) have partnered with Eizzil Entertainment in a marketing campaign for the movie "SPEED-DATING". The movie is slated for a 2010 release and is a feature length romantic comedy starring Mekita Faiye and co-starring Clint Howard and Chris Elliott (among others). As part of a combined U.S. national promotion tour, Spark Networks and Eizzil Entertainment will present BlackSingles.com and HurryDate events in 12 major cities across the country.

For the full press release, visit SOA World Magazine and for more information on the movie, visit the SPEED-DATING website (including a full cast list). To find further details about the dating service for African-Americans mentioned in this post, read our review of BlackSingles.com.

It looks like our friends over at the Unofficial eHarmony Blog have had their DNS hacked. If you visit their website now, you will be redirected to a site called mybookface (which obviously plays off of Facebook). Unfortunately popular blogs are constantly targeted by hackers. I hope they get their site backup soon as it is a great resource for eHarmony members.

If you are reading this post and would like more information on the dating service eHarmony, check out our in depth review.

Update #1: As of August 7 the site is still down. Hopefully someone from the Unofficial eHarmony Blog can comment on this story and give us an update when things should get back to normal.

Update #2: As of August 8 the blog is back online, sort of. They seem to be having some display and template issues.

Update 2020-05-27: Please note that these coupons have expired and there are currently no coupon codes available for Match.com.

We have found a new coupon for the dating site which won our Singles Choice Award (see Story). This promotion gives singles up to a 74% discount on Match.com memberships (depends on subscription term). Memberships are available for 1, 3 and 6 month periods.

Instead of a percentage discount you could instead opt for 3 Days Free at Match.com. The 3 free days really only makes sense if you plan on signing up for a one month membership. If you are planning to sign up with the 3 or 6 month membership then you will save more money with the up to 74% discount mentioned in the first paragraph.

For further details about what makes this dating site so popular with online daters, read our Match.com review for more information. User reviews of Match.com are also accessible from our review page.

With over 16 million views and 76 thousand comments today, I would say this wedding dance video qualifies as a viral YouTube video. It features the wedding party of Kevin Heinz and Jill Peterson dancing down the church aisle to the Chris Brown's tune Forever.

It even was a topic of an article on the CNN website. Apparently, all of the fame also has had a bit of a downside for the married couple as rival morning talk shows, Good Morning America and the Today show, battled over who got the couple on air first. ABC (Good Morning America) even kicked the couple out of their Hotel room and cancelled their return flight once they learned that the Today show would be airing their taped segment first. Don't worry, the Today show did step in and secured them a new room and flight.