40k a month with online dating site. Need help!

[mbeg11]

Hi,

I've been lurking on this forum for the past 3 months and now I decided to register for an account and share my situation with you. A while back I purchased a good domain and installed a adult dating script. Signing up for the plattform is free and the user can also do a lot of stuff like browsing, looking at pictures etc. for free. The only thing a male user can't do is to send a message to a female user. If he wants to do that he has to pay. Now we don't do anything more than answering mails and keeping the service alive.

Now the site grew pretty big by now, we have an alexa rank of around 18'000, around 1 million visits a month, 22 million page impressions a month, 2.5k new users every day, 750k registred user and we earn around 40k a month.

We recently made an API deal with AFF, so that they have all the email adress and user info of our new user, so that they also get signed up with AFF and get their emails. We hope we will earn some CPA money of that.

What I wanted to ask you guys now, don't you think 40k a month for these stats are a bit low? How can we get a better subscription rate of male user to the paid membership? How can we make more money?

An idea was to sign up with a lot of CPA networks like neverblue etc. pay their affiliates for every lead they generate, earn some interest on these leads and send the additional generate userdata to AFF and earn something of them. We also considered becoming an Affiliate of these CPA networks and send out promotional emails to all the new user. But is there some real money in it?

Ah yeah, and banners are out of the question for now, that just screws the site up and we think isn't converting well.

I would be thankful for any advice how to make more money


Thanks in advance.

 

[BreakAllTheClocks]

Hi,

The only thing a male user can't do is to send a message to a female user. If he wants to do that he has to pay.
...
How can we get a better subscription rate of male user to the paid membership? How can we make more money?

Is every male member already receiving messages from female profiles that require payment to either read or reply to? (Split test hiding the message entirely vs restricting reply access) Fairly common practice for this industry.

 

[DexterShop]

If I was you I would go with a few big affiliate companies, since most of the time that's a win win situation. you gotta make sure though that your pay per lead is not to high and leads are converting a little so you don't loose money over it. But I am sure if you figure out a good pay per lead your all set to go. And for monetizing it further, I would watchout with this aff thing cause some ppl might not like the fact that they get signed up their automatically. I would just promote it to them in a newsletter or something.

 

[mbeg11]

Is every male member already receiving messages from female profiles that require payment to either read or reply to? (Split test hiding the message entirely vs restricting reply access) Fairly common practice for this industry.

No, no member is receiving any messages from fake female profiles. Isn't that typical fraud? I think the FBI would be knocking on my door in no time...

 

[mbeg11]

If I was you I would go with a few big affiliate companies, since most of the time that's a win win situation. you gotta make sure though that your pay per lead is not to high and leads are converting a little so you don't loose money over it. But I am sure if you figure out a good pay per lead your all set to go. And for monetizing it further, I would watchout with this aff thing cause some ppl might not like the fact that they get signed up their automatically. I would just promote it to them in a newsletter or something.

Yes we are testing it with AFF, but not through the banners as I mentioned. I think just sending out newsletter doesn't convert very well, whos gonna read that? I think the coregistration method is the one that pays the most, because AFF already has all the information (country, zip, sexual orientation etc.) and the person already has his login. So the newsletter from AFF is pretty customized to the person. We will see how many ppl will get mad about this.

What do you mean with "make sure that your pay per lead isn't too high"? Could you please explain this? We choose the 75%/55% commission per lead...

 

[mbeg11]

Does anyone have an Idea what we should do with the 750k email adresses we already got and the 85k email adresses we get every month? Just sending out newsletter and promoting various sites/services (like sextoys, other adult sites, etc.)? Can anyone recommend something? Does this convert?

 

[misulicus]

can we see a link to your website ?
i personally would like to see how it looks

 

[birdiebob]

you didnt share the entry price or free trial ...guessing you are using a free trial all ready ..but a scaled price point may increase the activity . start at 4 bux or something for 5 replies ?

and,of course, the best method to use to expand participation is to ask them .
you are where I want to be . 40k a month is huge , to me .

 

[mbeg11]

you didnt share the entry price or free trial ...guessing you are using a free trial all ready ..but a scaled price point may increase the activity . start at 4 bux or something for 5 replies ?

and,of course, the best method to use to expand participation is to ask them .
you are where I want to be . 40k a month is huge , to me .

We don't have a free trial membership. There is just a trial that costs something but it doesn't become a monthly recurring membership. That's somethign we consider to do, but I think ppl will get angry, when their trial membership becomes a recurring...

To those who request a link, I will obviously don't do that unless there has been established a relationship of trust with somebody that is willing to help, coach or mentor me over a period of time. If somebody is interested in that send me a PM.

 

[newss]

Yes we are testing it with AFF, but not through the banners as I mentioned. I think just sending out newsletter doesn't convert very well, whos gonna read that? I think the coregistration method is the one that pays the most, because AFF already has all the information (country, zip, sexual orientation etc.) and the person already has his login. So the newsletter from AFF is pretty customized to the person. We will see how many ppl will get mad about this.

What do you mean with "make sure that your pay per lead isn't too high"? Could you please explain this? We choose the 75%/55% commission per lead...

Yeah I would make sure you get feedback from your userbase about this practice... After all, if I am signing up on fantasticdates (dot) com and start getting emails from AFF, I personally would be like WTF.

Not only that, I would expect the number of people signing up to your site to be less. Since some people will sign up to AFF, and figure well I am not going to pay another $15,20,30 a month for another dating site.

 

[jay2success]

You have high page views per month, try to sell your ads space on buysellads.com. 1 ad can generate $900 per month, imagine if you have 10 ads then you will generate $9000 per month. This is very good extra by doing nothing then sell your ads space, you only have to put the ads script like google adsense type of script.

This is just 1 idea, there are many other ways to make money if you have high traffic and page views. Hope this helps.

 

[mbeg11]

Yeah I would make sure you get feedback from your userbase about this practice... After all, if I am signing up on fantasticdates (dot) com and start getting emails from AFF, I personally would be like WTF.

Not only that, I would expect the number of people signing up to your site to be less. Since some people will sign up to AFF, and figure well I am not going to pay another $15,20,30 a month for another dating site.

Yes you are right, we also expect the numbers of signups to go down, but I think we will try it out. We have to discuss it with AFF how they are going to approach these new users. If they doesn't send out an immediate welcome email we shouldn't have too much trouble. But if it doesn't play out well, we have to think of something different.

 

[crashed]

I own a UK Sex toy company if you are interested in promoting some of our stuff? We could even put specific packages together for ya if interested?

 

[mbeg11]

Can somebody explain what exXtr@ ment with: "make sure that your pay per lead isn't too high"? How should we do that?

 

[blazen]

Can somebody explain what exXtr@ ment with: "make sure that your pay per lead isn't too high"? How should we do that?

If you are doing things legit you don't have to worry about that.

 

[mbeg11]

Anyone has some conrete affiliate programs or websites we could promote as an adult online dating site?

 

[loclhero]

No, no member is receiving any messages from fake female profiles. Isn't that typical fraud? I think the FBI would be knocking on my door in no time...

LMAO...you'd be one in a looong line. You do know that the majority of female profiles are completely bogus. right?

 

[mbeg11]

Yes I know, but we talked to a lawyer about this issue and he gave us the advise to not do it, since it could be considered as fraud.

LMAO...you'd be one in a looong line. You do know that the majority of female profiles are completely bogus. right?

 

[Wikolia]

So do you actually own this site yourself?
Have any employees and/or partners?

Look in all honesty your on blackhat world... 99% of any advice you will receive your lawyer would tell you not to do.
It comes down to a fine line between illegal and blackhat.

For example, you couldnt do yourself or hire someone else paid by the company, to send messages to your male members. However, they have no say as to what you spend your personal post-taxed income on, and have no right/reason to ask. So "hypothetically" you (personally) could pay someone/people to create fake female accounts in order to send messages to your male members to encourage them to sign up so they can reply.

Now your company, being an individual legal entity in its own right, is completely independent from your actions (of course dont take that the wrong way, if you were doing something serious like laundering money both you & your company would be screwed).
Oh and thats also assuming you are a registered company with limited liability?

But I know, its easy to say these things when you are not sat in the drivers seat and its your own livelihood on the line.
Whatever you do, dont bother asking your lawyer if its ok. He/she is not legally allowed to say 'yeah sure sounds good, do it' on something like that


Another thing to think about it starting up your own affiliate/referral scheme (directly by you not via someone else) - whereby you need a way to track it, but allow marketers to not only bring in new members, but ALSO convert existing free members to paying ones.
That way you can probably get BHatter's here to do the dirty work for you and your company remains completely safeguarded by using a 'legitimate' scheme. The only thing you will have to do, is have a process in place for complaints/abuse reports.

 

[JohnnyB.Goode]

Can somebody explain what exXtr@ ment with: "make sure that your pay per lead isn't too high"? How should we do that?

I believe he means " Make sure that the price your paying for each lead does not cost too much money for you. For example, if an affiliate gets 1 lead for you and that lead is $3.00 for a free sign up, make sure that its a good lead and it will convert. Cause you will lose money if your paying for $3.00 leads and they are not converting well.

Make sure you can afford this money for each lead and you still are profiting very well. If your not getting enough free sign ups that convert, then you will need to decide if you want to keep the affiliate a part of your team. Usually affiliate managers will use a percentage. For example, the affiliates free sign ups will need to convert no less than 25% of the time. If it gets less than that, than something might be wrong and the affiliate might be promoting your site in a bad way. Many affiliates promote dating sites all kinds of ways. These different kinds of ways can effect if the free sign up will register as a paid member or not. They may not convert well if they are tricked to sign up.

Hope this helps