On the profit model of dating websites

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The Chinese dating website has been greatly concerned by venture capital companies since its inception. September 2005 and March 2006, the Lily Net won the United States VC Mayfield and Jinsha Venture investment of 2 million U.S. dollars and NEA to join forces with the Northern Lights venture investment of 9 million U.S. dollars. At the end of 2005, Shenzhen Hao Tian Company's touch nets and married my net to obtain soft silver Asia 12.5 million U.S. dollars investment. From the end of April 2007 to the beginning of June, Century Jiayuan since the Angel investment in 2005, and has access to the new Oriental three founder 40 million Yuan Angel investment and qiming Venture investment of 10 million U.S. dollars. Plus one of Europe's largest dating sites, meetic 20 million dollars and join hands to create a love dating site "Honey Net", the Chinese Dating Center 2005 renamed Cherish Network to provide marriage and dating services to obtain venture capital investment. There is already a sizeable amount of money in the Chinese dating market.

Industry insiders, in the online dating market development more mature in the United States, the 2004 online dating web site consumption reached 447 million U.S. dollars, compared to the previous year, an increase of 19%. The data forecast: By 2008 China's online dating market will reach 653 million, and China's online dating market is growing at an annual rate of 60%. "China's love and marriage market is a huge market, and marriage products and services meet the needs of people, and the willingness to pay is relatively high," said Gan Jianping, managing director of the investment Party of the century Jiayuan. ”

But the question of whether there is a bubble in the investment of dating sites is also in the making. Will the 653 million be an optimistic figure or will it become real money? The profit model of dating sites has become a matter of concern.

Membership fee Model acclimatized?

Nowadays, the income model of the international Love and Marriage website is to collect the membership fee. Take the world's largest dating network Match.com as an example. Each member of its membership pays a fee of 99.9 dollars a month. It was this simple profit model that created a staggering 2 billion dollars in annual turnover. At the end of 2004, eharmony, the American Marriage and Love website, successfully financed $110 million from the venture capital, earning as much as $70 million in the same year, with a share of 20% paid subscribers and a monthly membership fee of $49.95.

But the model has met with great challenges in China. Once tried membership fee pattern of Lily Net CEO Fanjiang has experienced free-charge-ordinary users free +VIP user fees of the transformation process. "We are at the beginning of the time to push is the European and American membership fee model, in Europe and the United States it's cost-benefit ratio can do 1:3, spend 50 dollars to earn 150 dollars." But the key to promoting this model in China is the conversion rate from free users to fee-based users, and you can achieve the same conversion rate as in Europe and America. Assuming that the United States is 1:3 of the return, if your pay user ratio of 50% less than others, this is 1:1, if less than 80% of others, it will never make money. We find it difficult to achieve the conversion rate required to meet the break-even. ”

On the one hand, there are problems in payment methods. The main way to pay in the United States is by credit cards. In China, the credit card is not popular, that only uses the wireless generation to pay the fee. But the changes in wireless policy made it very difficult to do this because wireless generation charges are not in line with the mobile rules. And there is a pay ceiling, the company also with the SP, Mobile to divide the money, as well as bad debts, and finally to the company's hands may be only 50%. Coupled with the subsequent two confirmation, the company's operations become very cumbersome. And the user is also more sensitive to provide mobile phone number.

On the other hand, Chinese internet users have a habit of free consumption. They will come up with a variety of ways to circumvent the charges and publish these methods. "You will find that you have a high cost of paying your customers." You have to build this checkout and push customers to pay. To fill a wide range of loopholes, there are more ways to pay. For this reason you pay the background of the research and development costs is very large, but you received the amount of money is not enough. In particular, the overall reputation of the industry is not enough, the brand has not been set up, the customer's trust in your site is not enough time, the use of membership fee model, your traffic will drop, users will be lost. "Tianvan and the problems encountered at that time.

"This model, we go to achieve its results, the advantage is that we can receive money, and over time, income will increase." The disadvantage is that we calculate to find that we do not receive enough money to balance the costs of high prices. "Because of the increase in user access costs (as brand awareness increases, this cost may decline, but as the user base increases, access to new users is also increasing the difficulty), and as the competition intensifies, the cost of marketing is increasing." As a whole, the cost of acquiring users in the dating market is increasing. "If the conversion rate does not come, it means that the business model in a few years will not let you see the possibility of obtaining 100% of profits." ”

Century Jia Margin CEO gong that the current stage is still to brand building, market promotion, a lot of customers in the market survey when the intention and the ultimate real payment behavior still a big gap, "we give members of a survey of 60% customers have paid the intention of the product in the final launch of the actual payment only 6%", She believes that in China's marriage dating market, only a more solid and meticulous user habits to grasp, in order to allow the site to launch products to meet the needs of users and realize the benefits. "For example, we launched the bright list, each person charged 30 yuan a day, the actual effect is very good, in the light of the user received a letter far higher than the average user." Users of the bright list are generally ordered for seven consecutive days, and the willingness to continue ordering will be strong, usually until he finds a partner on our website. ”

Billion friends in charge of the relevant aspects of the media recently said: "Billion friends have entered the exploration of profit model of the intermediate stage, traffic will give way to the user experience, has sacrificed the user experience and improve the flow of the practice will be eliminated." The user experience is the best lubricant to solve the embarrassing dilemma of charging and traffic. ”

New exploration: Between Mouse and cement

In the membership fee model acclimatized, some dating sites, starting a new exploration, from the traditional internet companies to the mouse + cement service-oriented enterprises.

SP background of the marriage of my network announced that its monthly income reached 3.2 million yuan, the main revenue component has three channels: Internet services, wireless services and offline activities. Under these three main lines, married my net developed the price from 2 yuan to 268 yuan range of 14 products, known as "one-stop supermarket." 6 of them are free, including intelligent search, email and membership blog, and so on, the remaining 8 is charged, such as true love test, Wireless pass, member Booth and song teaser and so on. and married My network also began to promote its 99 yuan/month VIP charge items. Married to My network general manager Xu Xinyue will be the marriage website positioning into a traditional industry and the Internet, wireless overlay business model.

Since the end of 2006, the Lily Net officially launched its VIP service "Golden Lily Project". Golden Lily for such a kind of customer: Want to communicate with the object of reliable, identity guaranteed. But also very busy at the same time, do not have too much time to discriminate on the internet authenticity. Focus on privacy protection and only want to communicate with certain objects that have been screened and selected. Others, who are not good at pursuing the other side, have contact methods but don't know how to start a relationship. This client group is not traditionally a matchmaking client because he doesn't trust a matchmaking agency and he's not a purely online customer because they think it's too messy to waste time, but they have nowhere else to go. Lily entered, gave him to configure a love counselor, in the database for him to select carefully, recommend some people to him. The person who communicates with him and identifies the final contact, contacts and briefings with the parties. This ensures that both parties have an intention and that identity is assured. and privacy is protected. This revenue model is characterized by a linear increase in revenue, which can be achieved by increasing the number of servers used by traditional Internet companies to achieve a 10 times-fold increase in the quarter. But online +VIP service mode with the increase in income, the company to increase the number of love advisers, to carry out training, assessment, elimination, to achieve standardization of services. Compared with the traditional matchmaking companies, the Internet companies in this mode have avoided the risk of users ' lack of choice because of the huge database. On the other hand, the consulting company's large-scale operation model has been introduced into the industry, in the customer registration of psychological testing in the process of the production of standardized reports in the information system flow, provided to love consultants. Ensure that the company's training, information systems support, team management, all customers can enjoy a unified standard of service. Standardized and scalable in customer profile and enterprise management.

The exploration of the century Jiayuan is distinctive, may be in the expansion of the industry chain more action, Gong introduced, "This year will build a wedding site, wedding market is a real market, our users have this demand, many businesses are also in contact with us, we hope to play an intermediary role." "Will be brought by love and marriage Web site users sticky and wedding, jewelry and other merchants of high attention to combine to achieve user life cycle expansion and user resources of the deep