I was reading an article in The Times today; it was talking about the decline of Christianity in the UK. It raised an interesting point. Is Christianity in decline or has it just become unfashionable? When I was growing up in the 70’s it was still very much the done thing to go to Church on Sunday, the audience was much larger. However, was the high attendance due to social requirement to be there or were they really committed Christians. Has there just been separation of the wheat from the chaff, has the church not just exchanged quantity for quality.

When you know that everyone in the Church on a Sunday is a committed Christian, it becomes much easier to communicate and connect with that group for the people running the establishment. When the church or anything becomes too broad in appeal then the message has to become diluted and inoffensive, leading to apathy and decline in the long run.

What, I hear you ask, has all this got to do with the Online Dating Industry? Well I think it’s an interesting parallel to the decline the big mainstream dating sites are seeing right now. This isn’t because there is a reduction in the opportunity that is online dating, it’s more because the big brand sites like Match.com are trying to appeal to the biggest audience in the world, everyone. If you try to produce something that appeals to everyone then by definition it will be bland and inoffensive, or in other words boring.

It is much easier to produce a compelling experience for a niche audience. The people who embrace that niche will be much happier with the experience and enjoy coming all the more, very much like the hard core of true committed Christians who still go to Church on a Sunday morning in the UK, they are proudly unfashionable. The production of content becomes easier as you don’t really have to worry about upsetting the people who don’t “get” the niche. Your communication will be better received and the responses will be much higher to the messages you are sending out. A more targeted message stands a better chance of converting the non-committed if it doesn’t have to pull the punches it would have to if it were going for a broader audience.

So if you are really looking to develop an active and more importantly profitable community, make sure you do try the niche approach. Communicate often and with highly relevant messages to your members and you margins will soar.

One of the appealing features about Google AdWords is the ability to control exactly where and when your ads appear. And yet despite that control, most people run their campaigns from midnight to midnight with no changes or variations in between – they’re missing a trick:

more…

We haven’t even noticed the arrival of a new season – welcome Spring or welcome Autumn – depending on where you are of course.:) A new season also means new developments for Dating Factory and our partners, so we are sharing them with you in our regular newsletter.

more…

When running your AdWords campaigns, it’s important to have your landing pages as closely related to the search term and the ad text as possible. Firstly, this will serve to improve your quality scores and bring down your CPCs. Not bad. And from your visitor’s point of view, they’re more likely to sign up.

So through doing some work to create specific landing pages for your campaigns or adgroups, your costs go down, Google loves you, and your sales go up. Can’t be bad for a couple of hours’ work?

more…

Dating Factory team carries on working on improving your partner experience with us and at the end of January we were concentrating on giving you more opportunities to promote your sites and expand your marketing campaigns.

more…

How you start out with Google AdWords can set the scene for plain sailing or digging yourself out of a hole later on down the line. If you’re dipping your toe into the waters of Google AdWords, here are a few tips to – hopefully – help you avoid some of the common pitfalls and escape picking up those dreaded poor Quality Scores.
more…

These were a busy two weeks for the Dating Factory team as many new projects were started with our partners and affiliates coming back from holidays. We have been working together with you on improving our reporting and registration attempts to registrations conversion rate as well as adding partner forum to our site, to help you exchange web-site building and marketing experiences with each other.

more…

Introduction

This is the first of many articles Tim’ll be writing over the coming months about how you can improve your online marketing and drive more, qualified leads to your dating site. The key areas he’ll cover are PPC, SEO and Conversion Maximisation (how to get the most out of every click). These are the areas you simply have to get right to create a successful dating business online. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask, and he’ll try and answer them either directly or through this blog.

more…

Reports can be fun as well as informative

At dating factory we can run reports on just about anything to give you a detailed insight into the profile of the paying customer. Some of the most interesting ones are based on criteria coming from the questionnaire that people fill out when registering.

Today I just couldn’t resist running a report on some of our casual sites comparing payments to size (or claimed size) of the male members “member”.

more…

An amusing footnote to my previous posting.

It seems in Germany at least there is a great need for people to spice up their love lives. more…

With the entire North Hemisphere in the grip of the worst winter in 30 years (that’s what Sky News says anyway), the online Dating Industry is hoping for a winter boom. more…

Simple editing mode for your web-sites is now available. Even if you don’t have any HTML knowledge we have made it easy for you to edit your web-sites on Dating Factory platform. Simply login to your Dating Factory account and go to: more…

Or alternatively “I have 2861 friends on Facebook and I still can’t find anyone to Shag”

17th Nov 09 – I was having lunch with an old friend of mine who works at a Venture fund in London the other day. I was telling him about what we are up to at Dating Factory and how well things are moving along for us. more…

24th Nov 09 – In these days of Twitter, Facebook, Delicious etal it’s easy to fall into the trap that all you have to do, is attract the web savvy 18 – 24 year old. The problem with this group is the age old one, they have no money and they are brilliant and finding ways of getting things for free. more…