Posts filed under 'Affiliate Marketing'
Penthouse Magazine Acquires Internet Social Network Giant Adult FriendFinder for $500 Million
While I was busy boasting about the massive earnings I was making from my own adult dating site, fuck-buddies.com, Andrew Conru was busy making a much bigger deal…..
AdultFriendFinder.com is the biggest adult personals site on the internet, and after much speculation Its owner and founder Andrew Conru accepted $500M CASH!
Dec. 12 PRNewswire
Penthouse Media Group Inc.,
parent to Penthouse Magazine, one of the world’s leading men’s lifestyle
publications and producers of online, licensed and broadcast content and
materials, announced today that it has acquired internet social networking
giant Various, Inc. and its subsidiaries for $500 million in cash and
securities. With $340 million in projected combined 2007 revenues, this
acquisition makes Penthouse the largest adult entertainment company in the
world.Various has an extensive affiliate network, as well as a rapidly
growing member base of more than 260 million consumers and a total paid
subscriber list in excess of 1.2 million. Various operates more than 25
online communities including adultfriendfinder.com, which is a top 50 Web
site nationwide. Adultfriendfinder.com is one of the most highly trafficked
Web sites in the world with more than 18 million members.
For me there are a few very interesting points about this story:
1) Though $500M sounds like a massive amount, I estimate it is only approx 3 - 4 times the EBITDA, very low for an internet company which normally see multiples from 15+. This has got to be because of the adult nature of the business hugely reducing the number of potential buyers. Also another factor must have been that only a day before the sale the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) restricted AdultFriendFinder’s promotional activities.
2) Andrew Conru never wanted to own the largest adult site in the world! It came about by accident after launching FriendFinder… This highlights my reasoning for being involved in adults dating, there is simply huge demand for it!
3) What will happen to all of Various Inc’s other properties, not only main stream sites, but sitse such as BigChurch… I cannot imagine that its members will be delighted about financing the porn giants Penthouse!
All very interesting news, especially for anyone interested in online dating or aspiring to be a porn mogul!
£100,000 from Adult Dating
Adult Dating Sites hit £100,000 profit!
Though I am not anything like as successful as I hope to be one day, I have built up a simple but solid business with zero investment.
I’ve not really gone into much detail as to how and where I make much of my money. I should have really because these experiences have given me the confidence to know, that even if I lost everything tomorrow I could pick myself up, start over, and be back in business and supporting myself and family in a few a short months… I think it is this sort of financial freedom that many people are in search of, more so than huge riches.
I am sure lots of people wouldn’t quantify anything I have done to date as a success. But in the last
few weeks I hit one milestone: Over £100,000 profit from my adult dating properties - in not much more than 2 1/2 years.
Which sites?
www.fuck-buddies.com Currently being re branded (my.fuck-buddies.com).
sexfinder-uk.com + others.
Not everyones cup of tea, but the obvious names certainly get them noticed and it brings in good traffic. For the members they also get a good “service”!
£100,000 I admit is not a massive figure, but considering it had a slow and static start its not too bad, even more so when I’ve not actually worked on them this year.
Adult Dating has certainly been good to me, my company also makes income form other streams. Regular dating, casinos, e-commerce and affiliate ad income. But the best margins remain within the adult dating - I certainly won’t be stopping soon.
Time to decide how I am going to spend the £100,000?
Sadly for me it has already been invested, in other less profitable ventures, gambles, property, the other business areas described above.. oh, and funding my lavish lifestyle!
The best thing about this business is as it is fully managed I do not have to run it on a day to day basis yet the sales do come through every single day.
Smashing
Just as well, because all my days are fully occupied as a Director of Datech - a multi million pound company. The World Dating Partners platform powers over 10,000 dating and adult personal sites…… yup, including those owned by my company!
The internet is full of opportunities. In fact the opportunities are expanding every single day. Don’t be scared to risk it all, the rewards are worth it! So be like me and start up your own adult dating business, I’ve even written a tutorial on how to do it -> here
White Label Dating stunts
Wednesday and Thursday at Ad:Tech were BUSY BUSY BUSY. Friday at the affiliate summit was a bit of a let down. However I did manage to make a few contacts towards the end of the day which should have salvaged it!
So all-in-all an incredible success and have so much work to do now going through all the business cards from individuals we met. However, the event was soured by White Label Dating (Global Personals Ltd)….
I was going to bite my tongue, but to be honest I have never seen such a pathetic and desperate display by a company.
whitelabeldating.com is a direct competitor to our site worlddatingpartners.com. I won’t go into detail as to why WDP (World Dating Partners) are superior here - just trust me! And we have been in business many more years.
At first glance White Label Dating do seem like a professional organisation, they also had very good marketing material while ours perhaps is more in need of updating. What let them down was not their cheap tarts hanging around our stand… but their behavior when we and the even the event organisers asked them to move on. Shouting and swearing, and strange practice of flashing wads of cash about. I assume that they have some issue with their personal banks restricting them to only being able to use cash.
Up to now we had not employed any aggressive marketing against them, targeted any of their business or even made comparisons of their system to ours. Obviously they want us to do otherwise. So I began on some very brief research. They are spending a fortune on marketing so it wasn’t difficult to find information:
In the last couple of days I’ve seen some pretty interesting articles about them. Some published by Industry “Experts” such as Mark Brooks from onlinepersonalswatch.com which are hugely inaccurate!
On his site White Label Dating make claims such as:
- “Last month, our top earning partner earned 175,000 pounds”
This at the time was in fact closer to 8,000. How do I know this? I know that partner!!! - “Global Personals currently has more than 3 mln members and this is growing at more than 50,000 new members per month”
Again this is grossly exaggerated - 300,000 is closer to the mark - Join one of their sites, you will be given a member ID!!!
It would seem Mark Brooks is either not as impartial as he claims or not as knowledgeable as he claims - it doesn’t take a huge leap of imagination to believe Mark is in fact part of the White Label Dating PR machine.
I think thats enough on this topic for now, we won’t be declaring war on White Label Dating or on Mark Brooks. Facts will speak for themselves, and as we have already seen, affiliates who join White Label soon get fed up and come to World Dating Partners of their own accord.
Networking
Its been a long day at ad:tech exhibition in London - rarely does it get to this time and I am ready for bed…. not that I am actually ready for bed right now, but I would like to be!
Succesfull day: Met with many existing partners I have spoen with many times, lots of contacts for future B2B and new partner sites. Hopefully there might be a couple of contacts that although will not bring direct benefit to us, could be useful personal contacts for future devlopments. In fact was so busy I didn’t even get the opportunity to take break, eat or drink, let alone go around an check out some fellow exhibitors.
White Label Dating, an opposition of ours were very aggressive and confrotational, and in the end very ammusingly almost got thrown out. We have never used them as a target from which to poach partners so it was suprising to see a “professional” company stoop to such levels. Desperation is not good in business!
Another day of the same tomorrow, which if anything could be more intense, if a little shorter.
On a seperate note I cashed in the last of my shares a couple of weeks ago, I decided that holding the cash made more sense at this moment in time, especially all things considered - my inabilty to find time for due diligance, but much more significantly my past performance!
