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Creating your own dating offer: Am I in too deep? (12)

08-02-2011 09:51 PM #1 kurtosis (Member)
Creating your own dating offer: Am I in too deep?

Hey guys,

First let me say that this forum is really awesome. I have learned a ton of stuff on here!

On to business:

I am contemplating creating my own (adult oriented) dating offer.

Now before you tell me that I am insane, let me list some of the stuff which might make it possible for me:

We are currently running about 2k Euro daily in dating leads (to affiliate dating offers obviously)
The offer would be for certain European countries which are under-served (or poorly served) where we know what we are doing in regards to traffic.
Currently running offers are oftentimes complete dog shit
We have the employees to handle support, although this would mean somewhat of a shift in our business
The future of regular dating sites is uncertain (according to some industry sources/blogs), and going into full-on consolidation (match.com anyone?). Adult dating on the other hand is still growing/developing since the core premise is quite different from mainstream dating (i.e. you don't want your facebook buddies to know you just visited hotmidgethookup.com )
We have our own capital for this project as well as investors we could approach.

Now for the stuff that makes me uneasy (i.e. questions for the top dogs here):

I couldn't really find any good dating script which would work without massive modification. Best I found was probably this. Does anyone have a good recommendation?
Creating a good autoresponder series/script (all the dating sites use them and they go on for ever it seems.
Best billing models, retention, and average customer values. Does anyone know some of these figures (even rough ones)?
Major shit I'm missing and would bring me in deep shit?

If anyone has any knowledge to share on this topic, I would be very grateful.

ASIDE: Would it be useful to have a forum section dedicated to offer creation?

Thanks!

08-02-2011 09:59 PM #2 bbrock32 (Administrator)

Hey , I know exactly what you are talking about.

I have been thinking the same thing for quite some time now and researching.

The "fastest" solution would be whitelabeling.

Two solutions I researched are :

http://whitelabeldating.cupidplc.com/

and

http://www.whitelabeldating.com/ .

I talked with a rep of CupidPlc and they said next month they are going to give the possibility to launch intl niche dating sites ( casual sex type included ).

You can get up to 80% of the revenue and you own the member base.

The site is hosted with them and they can even custom design it for

It has its downsides , but honestly creating a site from scratch , finding the right merchant , rebill prices , handle refunds etc is too much for me atm.

Up to you to compare the pros and cons of whitelabel vs brand new sites.

08-02-2011 10:12 PM #3 scotchsales (Member)

Planning something like this for myself as a more stable and long term means of cash.

was looking into these guys datingscripts.co.uk seems to have some pretty good features and is priced cheap.

08-02-2011 10:21 PM #4 kurtosis (Member)

Thanks bbrock for the fast reply!

I have indeed looked at whitelabeldating in the past but have found some problems with them (although it may be different now, will re-check):

English only language/member base -> great if they will be rolling out international whitelabels. Do you know if they provide members for these non-English sites, and what languages/geos are supported (Im guessing this will be all the benaughty languages currently on offer)
Real modification to the script is not possible(?) Would be useful to differentiate yourself from other whitelabels (on more than design) and implement payment processing specific to countries (mobile payments, country-specific bank systems etc.)
Dependence on whitelabel provider (have some so-so experiences with providers in several non-english countries). Although this may not be an issue, since cupid know what they are doing (Benaughty etc.)

Thanks again for the help, will certainly look at white labeling again.
Do you by any chance know how much their bespoke solution costs roughly?

08-02-2011 10:36 PM #5 kurtosis (Member)

Planning something like this for myself as a more stable and long term means of cash.

was looking into these guys datingscripts.co.uk seems to have some pretty good features and is priced cheap.

Great that I'm not the only one. More stable and longterm indeed, especially if you already know how/where to promote and can recruit and teach good affiliates.

datingscripts.co.uk looks quite nice indeed, thanks for the reco.
I saw that they have plugins for mobile billing etc., and the dev license is indeed very affordable.

08-02-2011 10:38 PM #6 bbrock32 (Administrator)

English only language/member base -> great if they will be rolling out international whitelabels. Do you know if they provide members for these non-English sites, and what languages/geos are supported (Im guessing this will be all the benaughty languages currently on offer)

From what they told me next month they should roll whitelabel non english sites ( benaughty style )

Their solution costs $0 because you will do revshare with them. As I said they will handle hosting , design , emailing etc.

Starting from 60%-40% for you can go up to 80%-20% depending on volume.

08-02-2011 11:38 PM #7 scotchsales (Member)

yeah i liked that one because it has good backend features, reporting, and even a setup for fake profiles to help with the initial launch

08-02-2011 11:40 PM #8 chris_m (Member)

I've often given some thought to a whitelabel solution, and looked at Cupids set up. I figure if the dating sites can still make money whilst paying me $3 a lead, then surely there's a better return to be had taking 60-80% of the membership revenue, and I believe Cupid have a policy after a certain threshold that the membership list is 100% your property, so essentially an asset.

08-03-2011 01:40 PM #9 brianb (Member)

I used the Cupid Plc white label platform. It was really good at getting initial payments from free signups, and their technology is far better than what some crappy cheap script is going to give you. The problem I had was that I think there was a huge disconnect between the people who were signing up and the majority of the database demo. I created an account and was like WTF? I would never want to date any of these people...LOL. As a result, I saw ridiculously high chargebacks/refunds, and very few recurring payments. I would suggest targeting UK if you use them, because that's where the majority of their database resides. On the other hand, if you go direct as an affiliate with Cupid on Be Naughty, etc. you can make $80+ per paid user, and never have to worry about chargebacks/refunds.

08-03-2011 03:18 PM #10 kurtosis (Member)

Originally Posted by brianb

Thanks for sharing your experience. The thing is I specifically want to avoid targeting English speaking countries, and would prefer to keep my own database (for more control + re-marketing etc.) as well as the ability to split test landing pages .

Problem with going with their direct aff program is also that they don't serve some of the countries I want to target (going by this list).

08-03-2011 05:12 PM #11 scotchsales (Member)

Wanted to ask more questions on cupid PLC but don't want to thread jack so here's a new one Thread

08-03-2011 07:10 PM #12 st00rm (Member)

guys I have been through this all and lost the dogs bollox with it about $75k of a group of investors money, we even used the same platform that you showed in the post, the PG people are slow and troublesome when it comes to the license of the platform we had it down in an individuals name they he split from the group we could not get any support from the PG people. In the end of it all there was so much money been spend and loads not been made that the group split the site got hacked by one of the partners and everything ended in a ball of shit..

lessons learned: license the software to the company, expect to carry $50k plus before you start making any money, and everyone you try to deal with will try and bleed you dry for your cash....

Knowing what I know now running the same sort of numbers weekly to adult dating offers would I start my own one up again, I would have to say no.

But learn from our mistakes, keep a tight ship , don't expect to make money out of the gate and you can do it

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