Disqus - Latest Comments for Markus

Re: Plenty of Fish equals Plenty of Money

Markus — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 22:18:03 -0000

I've got no idea who this guy is, but the same thing happens every single time a story is printed.

There are 2 types of people in silicon valley, those who made a ton of money, and those who wish they did. I swear the later category has read some kind of business for dummies book and every time I do something that isn't "correct" they lecture me on the correct way of doing things.

The reason is simple, 2 years ago I was getting calls from other dating sites saying, Sell to us now or we will crush you completely by launching competing free sites. Every major site had consultants coming in telling them to go free before it was to late. Second tier sites were barely profitable in most cases and had nothing to lose by going free

So rather then compete with companies like match or eharmony with billions in the bank as a free service I just released my numbers. After all Plentyoffish is an absolutely massive site and no one in the industry believed I was making so little money. That made it real hard for other sites to get funding, and for paid sites to BS their investors and sell them on the idea of going free.

So what happend? Allegron, RSVP.com.au, datingdirect, lavalife, zencon and a bunch of others All got sold after looking at going free and seeing it wouldn't work. Lavalife and Questpersonals even launched Free Dating sites to try and compete head on. Those all failed.

No one else has figured out how to create a site the size of plentyoffish with under $30 million a year in tech related costs. Combined that with the fact revenues would be so small the big sites backed off, for now.

In the end there are well over 100,000 dating sites at any time, and about 3,000 of those get enough traffic at any one time to be tracked by hitwise and others. Having another few thousand sites started by people who thought they could get rich was a far better option then competing head on with dating sites that had unlimited money.

Also with compete, quantcast and others out there, any idiot could go and multiply pageviews * CPM and come up with a revenue estimate. Not to mention many dating sites buy CPM ads on my site.

Re: Plenty of Fish equals Plenty of Money

Markus — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 02:35:08 -0000

by saying nothing they would have all converted to free. By publically stating my revenues were far below what they thought I undercut their reasons for going free.

Re: Freemium business model case study: AdultFriendFinder ARPU, churn, and conversion rates

Markus — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 23:11:09 -0000

If that is your definition there is no such thing as a subscription dating site then they would all be considered freemium.

All the paid dating sites work the same. 1. Every time you view a profile you are presented with a signup screen. Every time you want to message someone and every time you want to view a profile as a member you must become a paid subscriber. Free members can only view 3 profiles before a paid screen comes up allowing you to view more.

Singlesnet on the other hand is a true freemium dating site. On singlesnet any user can message a paying users but only paying users can message both paying and non paying members.

Re: Google Loses Search Market Share … to Yahoo?!

Markus — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 01:22:40 -0000

Nielsons numbers are complete garbage for the most part and no one takes them seriously. In the dating space they often show 1 page landing sites as the top dating sites in given markets.

Re: Spyware Alert: Are Sites You Visit Spying On You?

Markus — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 02:14:41 -0000

hmmm what kind of "business" ?