Many bloggers and indeed Journalist use a famous quote to start their post. Not liking to seem too pretentious I thought I’d use a few really obscure ones in this.

“What is it? – It’s a pie machine, you idiot. Chickens go in, pies come out.” Mr and Mrs Tweedy – Chicken Run – 2000

Marketing on the internet is a game of metrics. If you put so much capital in the top of the machine and if you’ve done your marketing correctly and managed it tightly your money will start coming out of the other end with a very good profit.
This is a very simplistic view of a very complex procedure. Making money on the internet, like in all walks of life is far from easy and you only get out of it what you put into it. Indeed the only thing that is really easy on the internet is losing money. Patience is very much required as is a strong nerve not to over react to the downs as well as the ups.

Marketing Online

This brings me to my second quote as I couldn’t find a suitable one online before I lost this train of thought here’s one I thought of myself.

“In the Internet you can move from despair to euphoria in a couple of clicks”

This is something I have to fight myself every day since I’ve started marketing online. The massive mood swings. One minute I look at my stats and I think I’ve found the secret of making money while sitting on a beach, I’m picking out my next set of golf clubs that I’m going to have time to use this time and pondering where to go on holiday. Four hours later when the payments stop rolling in and my advertising costs are spiralling out of control; I’m struggling to contain my impending sense of panic and certainty that I’m going to end up living under a bridge with some other low profile failures.
It’s important at these times to look at the bigger picture. You can draw no rational conclusions from a good or a bad day; you have to look at performance over a greater length of time.
On dating sites in particular the real revenue opportunity is on the recurring revenue. As many people sign up for 3 months or even 6 months the real value of your marketing efforts won’t be realised for that time. If you look at your monthly revenue you should be looking to break even fairly quickly but you need to keep putting new members into the top of the machine to make it truly valuable.

Summary

If you reach a level you are prepared to spend and that produces, for example 100 members a day, there is no real reason to grow on that until the real profits start pouring in after 3 to 6 months. You will make reasonable return over the first 3 months but it’s the people who stick at it and don’t allow themselves to be shaken by a few bad days or to over spend because of a few good ones who make the most money on these sites. When those recurring payments start to kick in you can start reinvesting some of your profit to build from 100 to 150 members a day and beyond. When you are at that level you can start looking at those golf clubs again.
Mark Harrison