Calling All Dating Site Blogs! I’m creating the Online Dating Insider Network at Feedburner. It’s an experiment with only one side-effect, more traffic to your blog!
If you run a dating site and have a blog, email me through the contact form or leave a comment with the url of your blog.

Once the network starts to grow, people can add one RSS feed which will include all of the posts from all of our blogs.

I don’t know about you but I could sure use the time we’ll save reading a single feed.

Added bonus, we can insert ads if we choose to, although that is definitely not what I’m doing this for. I’m tired of tracking 25 blog feed when one will do.

If you are otherwise interested in reading about the online dating industry (singles, media, finance, legal), now you’ll be able to keep up on the industry easier than ever before.

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I finally got around to turning email subscriptions on in the sidebar. If you keep forgetting to check back regularly (what, you aren’t reading every day?), you can subscribe via email or the ever-so-tasty RSS feed, depending on how you take your news.

If you’re not familiar with RSS, check out Google Reader or Bloglines, both are web-based newsreaders which make it absolutely dead-simple to keep up with tens if not hundreds of different blogs. I couldn’t live without NetNewsWire, a desktop RSS client for Mac, to track around 200 blogs.

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Okay, so maybe your relationship is not going so well. Maybe you're even thinking about a breakup. Whatever you do, please do not end your relationship on Valentine's Day. Remember, your partner may have no idea you're planning to...

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Facebook Gifts: Pushing the limits of rationality:

facebook, Features, social networking

So today is the biggest day of the year in the world of dating and relationships. By now you've hopefully purchased the card, bought the chocolates, and planned a memorable evening. Just remember... while it's important to make a...

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Valentine’s Day is like Tax Day for accountants. All of our hard work: marketing, programming, partnerships, acquisitions and new services, are launched and bringing in thousands of new people every day. How many happy couples did your dating site create this year?

Are your customers more satisfied with your service than they were a year ago?

What problems did you encounter this year? How did you deal with them?

What are your plans for the next 12 months?

The Dating industry high season doesn’t begin for another 9 months. Go take a vacation and come back ready to get to work. We have a lot to accomplish this year to gain back people’s trust, improve customer service, add new features, develop new marketing plans and find new ways to advertise.

Or you can choose to sit back and watch social networking take your business and empty your bank account. The ball is in your court. What are you going to do about it?

Try something new this year. Add a free or VIP tier of service. Try videochat, sign up for your competitors sites, evaluate and take a risk or two with your marketing budget, try offering a trial period (a REAL free trial, please).

You would be surprised at how easy it is to bring in a few percent more visitors every month, and converting them to paid members. Often without breaking the bank.

Subtle pitch: the first step is to perform a thorough evaluation of your dating site. You probably think your site is working just fine, but I guarantee the information navigation, layout and flow could use a refresh, resulting in more happy customers. I can help with that.

Enjoy the day, and make sure you tell someone you love them!

Site Reviews

Investors Business Daily has a great article chock-full of statistics about the health of the online dating industry.

Last year, only 10% of Internet users visited at least one online dating site, down from 16% in 2005 and 21% in 2002, says the report by Jupiter Research.

Jupiter says 5% of Internet users polled said they signed up for an online dating service last year, a percentage that’s stayed about the same in the five years of the annual survey.

Yahoo Personals, a unit of the most-visited Web portal, ended December as the No. 1 online dating site in the U.S. Still, traffic to Yahoo Personals declined 10% to 4.4 million unique visitors in December vs. a year earlier.

Another research firm, comScore Networks, says traffic to Yahoo Personals declined 24% in the last year. Go figure.

The article has a lot more fascinating information about traffic to dating sites. A must read if you’re in the industry.

Research, Traffic, unique+visitors

How can dating and social networking sites increase market share without breaking the bank? How about translating your site into another language?

Enlaso, a leading provider of online dating and social networking translation and localization solutions, will present a live Webinar March 1st, 2007, titled “Go Global and Localize the Online Dating Experience.”

Enlaso has performed translation services for several popular dating sites. Read the Match.com and Meetic case studies.

This Webinar will cover the fundamentals online dating and social networking site operators need to take into account when going into new markets and new languages. With intermittent humoristic examples, Lang discusses the following topics during his presentation:

– International expansion
– The prerequisite: internationalization
– Culture vs. language
– Localization and customization rather than simply translation
– Adapting to different cultures, practices, and online payment methods
– Case studies

Webinar: “Go Global and Localize the Online Dating Experience”
Date: Thursday, March 1st, 2007
Time: 11:00 am - 12:00 pm PST
Where: Your desktop
Register at: http://www.translate.com
Cost: Complimentary

This is a great idea. There is little reason for vendors to schlep down to Miami every year to hawk their wares to a mostly disinterested audience when the features and benefits can be demonstrated on the net in webinars.

affiliate+marketing, enlaso, international, Technology, tools