Tuesday 6 April 2010

Traditional or Casual?

The traditional and casual dating audiences have gradually come closer together as many sites that are considered as being casual are accepted into the mainstream. Mostly because this is a better fit for real life and realists have concluded that we do not go out actively looking for a husband or wife as soon as we turn 21.

What we really want is to continue having fun with our friends and at the same time to make new friends and have a lot of fun along the way.

Of course this doesn’t mean that there is no room for traditional dating sites.. actually quite the opposite. They compliment each other very well and because of this reason it could actually be worthwhile creating both a traditional and a casual dating site and use the opportunity to cross promote your sites.

It is generally well known that casual dating sites can provide a higher income, mostly because they can convert better and the Average Revenue Per User can be higher. However, this doesn’t always need to be the case and it is very much dependent upon your source of traffic.

My advice would be to launch both a traditional and casual dating site and cross market them to get increased ARPU. What have you got to lose?

Consolidation is the key

As you may have read, EasyDate has just acquired the online dating portfolio of Allegran, which was property of Associated Northcliffe Digital. This strategic move has now rocketed our growth and gives us a very substantial market share in the UK.
It is always worth looking at acquisitions as an excellent way of accelerating your growth. Even if you are a smaller company, looking to grow rapidly, there are always acquisition opportunities out there. It is just a matter of finding them or making sure they find you.
Our most recent acquisition brings the popular LoopyLove, GirlsDateforFree, QuickFlirt, MatureDating.co.uk and DatingforParents into our portfolio.