This January saw representatives of the White Label Dating® services team hit Las Vegas for a very productive show season. Here’s how they got on:
This year’s Affiliate Summit West was the biggest show yet! With over 5000 delegates in attendance, we spent an action-packed six hours in the busy Meet Market where we met a fantastic number of leads.
Surprisingly, this event brought more affiliates to the show floor than the previous Affiliate Summit East event, which we attended in August. The networking opportunities were second to none and we formed some great relationships with affiliates, service providers, networks and prospective new partners.
One of our key learnings from the productive conference reinforced what we already knew; that the volume of international dating offers is growing rapidly. 2014 really is a great time to be part of the dating industry. This also means that the importance of member monetisation is greater than ever.
In all, Affiliate Summit West was a fantastic conference which enhanced both our relationships with affiliates and partners, as well as giving a great boost to our reputation.
Another year, another iDate! This time four members of the White Label Dating® services team took to Las Vegas to debate the latest trends to sweep the dating industry. It was jam-packed with insightful seminars, panel sessions, presentations and interviews.
The conference started with a cracking session on how best to work with affiliates, led by Media Corp’s Ophir Lazerovich. Ophir, who worked as an affiliate himself before co-founding Media Corp, walked us through best practice and what it is that affiliates find attractive. Perhaps the most useful part of the session was Ophir’s detailed overview of how to spot fraudulent affiliates; those who charge $4 a lead for non-converting traffic, acquired by suspect means.
Ophir gave to-the-point advice on how to manage these affiliates. He argued that you should be able to assess the quality of traffic from a particular affiliate after 3-4 days. If you haven’t seen conversions to upgrades, end the partnership there – it clearly isn’t working. In addition, consider the quality of profiles that acquisitions from this source upload. Are the members uploading photos or writing profile text? Do they login after their initial registration session? If not, it could be a sign that these rogue affiliates are using bots to fill in your registration form or driving low quality traffic. There is a lot to be learnt from affiliate networks, and at the end of this useful session, everyone left the room with a nugget of advice they could put to use to support their business.
Another highlight was Mark Brooks interviewing Markus Frind, CEO of Plenty Of Fish, which was entertaining and informative. The interview saw Markus share his predictions on what the dating industry is set to look like in two, five, and ten years. The answer was seemingly simple – not a huge amount will change.
He argued that a number of new technologies have entered the dating market in recent years, but failed to take off for one reason or another. Dating sites can be highly advanced technically, but the end product reaching consumers is the important part. Markus went on to discuss the pros and cons of free, freemium and paid models. After many years of debate about which is the most profitable, this session told us there is a place for all three models.
The general consensus from the entire conference was that mobile is the future; if you don’t already have a mobile first strategy, act quickly. Mobile now accounts for almost 40% of traffic to sites on the network offered by White Label Dating® services and this is a typical figure across the board. Of course, exclusive mobile apps like Tinder and Grindr have also had a real impact on the online dating landscape over the last twelve months.
We’d like to take this opportunity to say thank you to the organisers of both events for putting on great shows. See you again soon!
If you’d like to discuss how White Label Dating® services can give your business a boost, get in touch!