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Inside The Online Dating Industry
by Joe Tracy,
publisher of Online Dating Magazine
Back to Reality...
Breaking Into the Online Dating Industry
Welcome
to the first installment of “Inside the Industry,” a weekly column
that takes a closer look at the business of online dating.
The purpose of this column is aimed at both education
and action. I aim to educate readers while providing
action techniques for smaller online dating services
to better compete with the “big guys”. Of
course, many techniques I discuss could apply to the
well-respected “big guys” as well.
Whether
you’re an online dater or a player within
the industry, educating yourself on each service can
work to your advantage. That’s why Online Dating
Magazine, in conjunction with this column, has launched
a new area covering the Online
Dating Industry. Check
it out. The Online
Dating Industry section is a continual
work-in-progress that is updated weekly with new information
and insight.
To
understand how to build and/or run a good online
dating service, it’s vitally important to first
understand the industry.
If
you’re thinking about breaking into the industry,
here are a few things to consider:
1) Buying
an “online dating site” from
eBay for $1.99 won’t make you millions of dollars.
It will only make you $1.99 poorer.
2) Launching without a Business Plan, Marketing
Plan, Web Marketing Strategy Plan, Consumer Service
Plan,
Competitive Affiliate Plan, and lots of money is
like putting $10,000 on number 13 of a Roulette wheel
and hoping it hits on one spin of the wheel.
3) Putting
your dating site on a $7.99 a month shared hosting
plan shows the exact faith you have in your business
to succeed. Add the $7.99 to the $1.99 eBay
template purchase and now you’re down $9.98,
a meal for three at Taco Bell.
4) If
you haven’t won the lottery or don’t
own 100,000 shares of Google, then think twice about
what you’re doing. The online dating field
is highly competitive and the top sites spend millions
of dollars a year in advertising alone. If you do
own
100,000 shares of Google, then just buy one of the
top three online dating services!
This
isn’t meant to discourage those looking
to start an online dating service – only to bring
you back to reality so that you can examine the marketplace
from a realistic standpoint. Obviously, it’s
too expensive to start a service to compete with Match.com,
eHarmony, and Yahoo!
Personals, so why not start
a niche site? That’s where the potential to make
decent money with minimal effort lies. Plus, the valuable
experience you gain by starting niche and small will
be of great aid to you should you decide to expand
your empire.
But even
in starting a niche service with minimum investment,
it’s vitally important that you have
a business plan and marketing plan in place. And the
number one question you have to answer is “how
will I get my members?”
This question
and more we’ll explore in several
future columns because attracting sign-ups and getting
those members to convert to a paid membership are the “holy
grail” of the online dating industry.
And that
brings us back to reality…
Many people start an online dating service in hopes
of attracting even a small sliver of the billion-dollar
pie. The problem is that there are thousands of these
people for a marketplace that is already established
through giants like Match.com, eHarmony,
and Yahoo!
Personals. Each of these companies already have
money (millions of dollars) and hundreds of thousands
of users; thus providing an immediate impact for
someone
new
to online
dating. So how are you going to compete
with them?
Let me ask
you; if you were getting into online dating for the
first time, would you go to a site with over a million
members so that you could have an immediate selection
of potential dates, or would you go to JoesNewDatingSite.com
that just opened a week earlier and has, maybe, 100
members (none paying and none in your area)? For
nearly 100% of the Internet population, the answer
is easy – you
go with the established and "proven" service.
Now here’s where things get interesting… Many
of the top online dating services know
they have a “monopoly” on the marketplace.
And as a result they start to lose focus of what is
most important to their business – customer
satisfaction.
Instead of becoming more customer friendly, many of
these services will do the following:
1) Raise Prices.
2) Automatically
charge your Credit Card monthly “for
your convenience”.
3) Make it harder for you
to leave their service.
4) Make it difficult for
you to contact them.
5) Make it difficult for you
to communicate with others (by not allowing non-members
to respond
to paid member
inquiries).
Do these services think that leaving negative impressions
on users will help the industry grow? They are killing
a lot of the potential growth through insuring that
a large number of consumers have bad experiences.
Now contrast that to a company like Apple.
What did Apple do to get back into the marketplace
full force?
They listened to consumers and created
innovative products at outstanding
prices and all with the user experience and
customer satisfaction in mind. They make it easy to
contact them. This creates loyalty and loyalty means
returning
consumers
and a
growing marketplace.
You may be the innovator of a new online dating service
concept and you may have a philosophy of always putting
consumers first in order to grow a loyal following
that never has to think about contacting the Better
Business Bureau in order to get a situation resolved.
You may have the best ideas in the world, but if you
don’t approach this business with a realistic
view and a full-proof battle plan, then it will fail.
The industry is over-saturated with competitors. Keep
that in the forefront of your mind because if you ignore
it then your new service or concept just adds to the
problem.
Next week
we’ll explore some new approaches
some people are taking in launching new online dating
services. In addition, I’ll provide my first
tip in building up a member userbase.
Until then,
I’m going to leave you with a link
on research into why some people are
more likely to be contacted during their online dating
experience than others. It’s enlightening to
both online daters and industry insiders:
What Does She Have Over Me?
Related Links:
» So You Wanna Start an Online Dating Service...
» Starting an Online Dating Service
Joe Tracy is
publisher of Online Dating Magazine and is often quoted
by the media in relation to online dating topics. His Inside
the Online Dating Industry column is published monthly.
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