Affiliate System

I have created an affiliate system to bring new traffic to my site: Brainiac Dating

I hope this will improve promotional costs and search rankings.

Here is a test link:

Possible errors in Facebook ad targeting?

I've noticed wild fluctuations in my Facebook ad conversion rates, which is surprising since my ads are highly targeted for BrainiacDating.com. I only target about 10% of the singles on Facebook. The day to day conversion fluctuation can be 200%. It's very spiky and while I have not done any mathematical analysis, it seems like my impression volume, 500k per day should be high enough to smooth out the data.

I see some discussion in the FB developer forums of possible bugs, and am wondering if anyone else has seen this, and what magnitude?

FB forum: read more here.

Iphone dating

I came across a new kind of dating service by meetMoi. It is map - GPS based and I came across it through Time Out NY which is an events site for New York that is one of the entry portals for the MeetMoi database.
So you can search based on your location through your phone.


Seems like a cool concept, and one that would work well in a crowded city like New York. I am not sure how well it would work on my phone since the internet speed is a bit slow for normal browsing. They have about 3000 new profiles per day, so they are growing fast!

Dating sites for twitterers

I did a search for dating sites catering to the Twitter niche and found just three:

I did a google search and found these sites:

Site	Alexa.com rank
http://plentyoftweeps.com	1121827
http://flirt140.com	2100858
http://www.datetwit.com	3116521

Based on the poor Alexa rankings there is not much fire in these sites just yet. Advertising might still be ramped up, but in the mean time compare for example, my purely academic tree genus site which has an Alexa ranking of 1605781, and it is not advertised anywhere.
Any reasonably active site should have a rank lower than 100,000.
I guess love just doesn't fit into 140 characters!

Breakdown of Facebook Insights

Surprise, the city with the most fans of Brainiac Dating is Dublin, Ireland!
See the latest breakdown of the fan demographic from Facebook insights in the image below. The demographics are somewhat skewed by the relative efficiency of the advertising campaign we ran to get fans, because the actual BrainiacDating.com demographics are definitely more
biased towards US cities like New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. We also have 60% male members and the age distribution is much less skewed towards to 18-24 year old end.


We could increase the number of Facebook "likes" - as it is now called, but my attention is instead focused on building a following on Twitter, and we just passed the 1000 follower mark without spending a dime. On the other hand, it cost a thousand dollars to get the 383 Facebook fans! You know where my attention is going...

New Twitter Scam

There are all sorts of Twitter scams, but I just noticed a new one. They pretend to be something interesting to get you to follow, and a while later they show a different identity. Otherwise I can't explain why I would have followed anything like this.



Twitter probably isn't the first place one would expect to find porn, but I suppose now it is also trying to figure out how to find itself using the new media. So I have to keep watching on who I am following to weed out the non-brainiac activity.
http://twitter.com/BrainiacDating

How to define "Brainiac"

I submitted a query on the HARO reporter to try and get a better handle on the term "brainiac", and how it may be better relate to my website BrainiacDating.com

Do you-think of a brainiac as someone like Bill Gates, or those characters on the TV show "The Big Bang Theory"? What about the painter Van Gogh, or the self-taught and well-read cab driver? Most intelligence theories involve many different kinds of intelligence, and still the term "brainiac" is relatively new, and it's not even in my spell checker. Best I can tell it originated from a monster in the superman comics, but has lately become a term associated smart geeks. Do you have other examples of brainiacs, or different ideas on how it can be defined?

There were four responses:

1. At first glance, was not "Brainiac" the name given to one of the first super computers quite a long time ago?
I may be mistaken but I have some kind of vague memory of such a thing.

2. I think the term "brainiac" should refer not just to the scientifically knowledgeable, but to the worldly curious. I think we all should try to be as curious about almost everything, as much as we can.

One of the best experiences you can give a child, a growing Brainiac, or brain, is to ask; "Do you have any questions?"
Their response is often, "Questions about what?" to which you reply; "Questions about anything..." Then when they show their curiousity or concern about something, you help them find the answer, so much easier now, more than ever, using the Internet. Then watch as their enthusiasm grows, they becom enlightened in front of you, and so, do you. We grow better by wonder and curiousity, and trying to find the answer. If you encourage it in others, or even yourslef, you become wiser and smarter, often happier.

Brainiac for me, seems to represent someone who holds a lot of knowledge. It seems rather cold and distant, like one of the first large computers.

However, the best stories of The Big Bang Theory involve not just the intelligence of the characters, the Brainiacs that they are, but even more importantly, their kindness and love for each other, encompassing their geekiness for what it is, and being glorious there.

Hawk

.......................................................................................................

Definitely the guys on "Big Bang Theory", Temperance Brennan from Bones, the math guys on NUMB3RS (Charlie and buddies). They are folks who are very analytical and consider even everyday decisions on the basis of numbers and science. Example 1: deciding what to order in a restaurant, they might consider the nutritional value (maybe calorie count) versus price of the item to get the optimal value. Or they might consider preparation time to select the item that will be ready the fastest (while including the time it will take to eat the item). Or they might do a probability table to decide which item has the least risk of contamination. How it tastes and what they like wont even come into the picture. Example 2: attempting some physical feat (jumping a ditch, shooting a basketball), the person will first consider distance, trajectory, wind, etc.

.......................................................................................................

I consider myself a brainiac for the following reasons.

1. I study brains! I'm a doctoral candidate at MIT, studying the neural correlates of reading.
2. I use the other side of my brain too :-) I write young adult fiction in my spare time.
3. And I bring the two sides together in a brainy package on my blog "A Brain Scientists Take on the Art of Writing." (http://blog.liviablackburne.com)

--
Livia (Liwei) King Blackburne
Graduate Student
Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT

.......................................................................................................

Brainiacs are people whose minds cannot shut off, no matter how much they try. In fact, their minds go at such at rate that its actually detrimental to the person's health. They are smart, in spite of themselves. Most brainiacs are attracted to hard subjects b/c they serve as types of distractions for their brain.

--
Sandra Ordonez
OurBlook.com

What do you think?

Zoosk is the fastest growing dating site!

In the past few months I've noticed that Zoosk has the most increase in traffic rank according to Alexa.com.
It is now in third place in the worldwide dating site traffic, and at the current pace it will become number one by the end of the year. Watch out match.com, you're next on their radar! However, I have a free zoosk account and though I do like the site layout it does have a huge problem with spam and fake profiles. I've had about twenty email contacts in the past six months, and every single one of them is likely spam. These are easy to identify by the cute pictures and fact that they are twenty years younger than me. That's just not real people, just someone trying to get me to send them cash via Western Union.

However, even with a large amount of spam on zoosk that I encounter, I am sure that they are actively trying to clean it up, and it probably does not affect their traffic rank significantly It can't be more than a few percent effect.


You can see my daily tracking of the top 25 sites here...
You can click on the site name and get a graph that tracks the daily activity. Note how Zoosk has a very linear gain
where the others seem to be more cyclic as would be expected when they run advertising campaigns.

Top Online Dating Sites on Twitter

I recently started tweeting about Brainiac Dating on Twitter, and wanted to see what the major online dating sites were doing... and the answer is not much! Seems like an excellent opportunity for a dating application... who's going to be first?

Site	Tweets	Followers
Match.com	1562	2470
Zoosk	1030	3506
OKCupid	998	2452
LavaLife	394	388
BrainiacDating	301	364
JDate	268	2535
Chemistry.com	265	1201
EHarmony	83	821
PlentyOfFish	48	548
DateHookup	12	1077
Mingle2	3	264

The big question is how to provide high quality tweets so that you get more followers? I have been giving the profiles of the day and interesting contributions from the members, and articles like this!

Making Contact in a Museum

This was sent to me by coach Tracey who organized a wonderful coaching event for my Brainiac singles group.

If you see someone you would like to meet, catch their eye and smile at them. The worst that will happen is they won't smile back and the best that will happen is that they will! If they smile back, approach them and say something positive about something uncontroversial in the environment. For example, you can talk to them about how delicious the food is, how beautiful the painting is, or how interesting the book is. Continue speaking about that subject until completion and then pick something else that is neutral that you can speak about in a positive way.

When it is time to leave, tell your exciting stranger that you very much enjoyed speaking with them and that you would love to continue talking about whatever it was that you were talking about. At this point the men can ask for the contact information. Give a big smile and walk away. That's it, master that and you've mastered the art of the introduction. Good luck!

Top dating related keywords

I did some analysis on keywordspy.com to figure out how much cost per click (CPC) advertising related to online dating was going for these days. These are the top dating related queries.

phrase	Click Cost	Volume/month	Top position in Google *
dating services	$9.36	832,000	eharmony
dating websites	$4.54	823,000	eharmony
free dating service	$3.07	135,000	SinglesNet
dating service	$2.92	1,000,000	ModelQualityIntroduction
dating sites	$2.51	1,830,000	eharmony
dating	$2.39	45,000,000	SelectiveSearch-Inc
singles dating	$2.38	450,000	Zoosk
internet dating	$2.44	450,000	eharmony

and for the Brainiac Dating keywords:

phrase	Click Cost	Volume/month	Top position in Google *
educated singles	$3.59	880	match.com
intelligent singles	$2.27	590	RightStuffDating.com
smart dating	$2.11	6,600	RightStuffDating.com
smart singles	$1.93	1,600	SeniorPeopleMeet.com
college dating	$1.82	33,000	eharmony.com
smart date	$1.76	6,600	match.com
intelligent date	$1.60	480	match.com
smart single	$1.52	18,400	match.com
college date	$1.00	49,500	meetlocals.com
university date	$0.66	165,000	match.com

* The top position in Google is just a snapshot, since it will change through the day.

Given that typical conversion rates are only about 10%, it means that for example, eharmony is paying over $50 to get each new member. I remember when a year ago, click prices were way lower, some have increased 1000%. That was when the economy was really on the rocks, but now advertisers are rolling along again.

Well, just how accurate is this? I'm not sure but it has given me some ideas to try ...

Find a date in a house of books

I would have thought that a library or bookstore would be an excellent place to find an intelligent date. Although I was way too shy for this in college, I definitely observed people hooking up in the library.

Check out the book related ads that I have used on Brainiac Dating:

There were some interesting comments about this in the BrainiacDating forums.
In general, it was not as positive as I would have thought, but I tried to find more data by posting the following query for news sources on a reporter website:

Have you ever found a date in a library or bookstore? Perhaps you met in the stacks looking for similar books, and ended up exchanging phone numbers. This seems like a good way to meet someone who is intelligent and shares similar interests, but are most bibliophiles too shy for this approach? Are some locations better than others, do you have a good strategy, pickup lines or experiences to share? Interesting responses will be posted to the blog on my website: Thanks.

Supposedly this query is read by up to 100,000 prospective sources, yet I only got one reply and that was from a woman who's parents met while they were working at a research library. Golly, surely there is more to library dating than this! Just the other day I was standing in my local Barnes and Nobles waiting for my girl friend, and a couple of different guys gave me the eye. Not that I wanted their attention, but at least I know that some people do try to hook up in these place of learning.

Upcoming feature on InspireMeToday.com

This is the suggested email for announcing my appearance:

Please join me on April 10th, 2010 on InspireMeToday.com!


I'll be sharing insights from my experiences in an exclusive 500-word article on the best things I've learned in life - full of beneficial nuggets for you! While you're visiting InspireMeToday.com, sign up for the free daily inspiration email and free 44 page eBook Secrets to Soaring. I encourage you to use these gifts to help you on your life's journey. On behalf of the InspireMeToday.com family, thank you for your support. We greatly appreciate you!

My inspiration has to do with the combination of art and science, I hope you read more when my article appears ...

Making a purpose of Twittering

Twitter is all the rage yet, like most I can't figure out how to make it work for Brainiac Dating.
At first I asked members on the site if they wanted to sign up, but only a few took me up on it.
There are chat rooms on the site, and perhaps people preferred to stay in there.
Today there are about 35 followers, which is tiny compared to the Facebook fan page which has 350 fans.
The site has over 17,000 members, so this still represents a tiny fraction, but it would be nice to get more
followers who help spread the word.

So today, I did something rather unique and created a member collage for the Twitter page background:


Click here for the Twitter page.
Maybe I'll start advertising in the Brainiac Dating chat room to see if at least those folks will move over...

Find a Smart Date on Facebook

I just came across this new site called smart date which uses your facebook friends to scan through their friends and find dates for you. I would not normally have come across such a site except that it was in the news because of a recent venture capital investment of $2.5 million! Wow, again showing how hot the Facebook economy is.


I think this is a good idea, but wonder how well people tag their information in Facebook. Most people fill out their profile once, so I'd bet that half the information is out of date, so it's not like members on a site like match.com who would be keeping their profiles active and specifically designed for the purpose of dating. They also need to compete with Zoosk - who is the dominant dating site on Facebook. Another worry I have is about the privacy of one's friends network.
Somewhere it should be required to ask permission to trace a friends network, but your friends and their friends may not
want to be bothered, or even annoyed to have their friends traced. Unless this is done secretly, and under the hood, but
then that's even a worse problem.

Darn, I wish my smart date - Brainiac Dating - which really is smart dating could get $2.5 million in funding, or even just a quarter of that would probably be enough to splurge on advertising and grow the membership five fold. That would be investor money more well spent!

Millionaire Matchmaker TV show

Have you seen the show yet? It's in it's third season and just became a big fan. Since Patti is also a producer of the show she picks the content to really entertain, and her way of highlighting people's flaws is right on. My favorite quote is "well, that's why he/she is still single". She's almost always hits the nail on the head.

This gay guy from this weeks show is definitely full of himself - a narcissist to fit the definition.

The crystal point of his date was when he told his companion not to eat red meat because it was bad for the environment,
but then could not say why. Not a brainiac. What about for the poor dead cow! I think it's pretty bad for the animal who died to provide food on his plate, but then again I suppose cows also produce a lot of methane, chew up a lot of grass and it costs a lot of money to ship their frozen dead flesh across the country to our supermarkets. But then again, I am no expert, and no vegetarian either, though I would certainly not tell a date what to eat, unless she asked for my advice.

I also think that Patti could have found better dates for Doug and Nicole - see here....

Good looking ads

Most of the members and visitors on my site (BrainiacDating.com) see to avoid clicking on the embedded AdSense ads - so they don't seem very effective at all. At best the ads generate $10-$20 per day which is low. The eCPM is $1.50 seems high.

It is likely that only a small percentage of internet users are responsible for most of the clicks, and so these are probably not the sames ones as those on my site. Every once in a while I see a ridiculous ad, like this one for EliteMeeting which probably gets a lot of clicks, but I wonder how they can make any money? Does this wealthy and young woman need to walk around in underwear to get your attention? Maybe they know something I don't.
The wasted clicks must be a big problem for ads like this. All the sugar daddy types of sites have a similar problem. It's better to show ads that represent regular people like those on your site, such as these that I use on my site:
although this stock photo of the woman in the library stacks is rather popular.

Other ones that I like are these, but these two models are all over the internet now.
This cute woman is also used in ads for various colleges.

So the ad that works best is my cruddy drawing of two hearts. It may be time to hire a professional to draw something better.

Smart Niche Dating Sites

There are a few other cool intelligent themed online dating sites, but I think mine - BrainiacDating.com is the best of the free ones. Let me know if I am missing any. This data is from Alexa.com

Site	Reach*	Free/Paid
gk2gk.com	0.00207	Paid
BrainiacDating.com	0.00037	Free
IvoryTowers.com	0.00017	Paid
IntellectConnect.com	0.00012	Free
SweetOnGeeks.com	0.00008	Paid
NerdPassions.com	0.00007	Paid
RightStuffDating.com	0.00004	Paid
IntellectualPassions.com	0.00001	Paid

* Reach is the Percent of global Internet users who visit the site in the past month according to Alexa.com

Darn, it's really a pretty small niche!

Where the Brainiac Singles Are

I did a tally of the numbers per state (and province) as a percentage of the population based on the 16,000 members on my website BrainiacDating.com.

State	Members	brainiacs per 100,000 population
British Columbia	511	11.4
New York	1095	5.6
New Hampshire	64	4.8
Maryland	260	4.5
Maine	59	4.4
Virginia	352	4.4
Florida	794	4.2
Massachusetts	280	4.2
New Jersey	374	4.2
California	1543	4.1
Connecticut	141	4
Washington	269	4
Ohio	451	3.9
Colorado	191	3.8
Delaware	34	3.8
Georgia	383	3.8
New Mexico	77	3.8
Pennsylvania	481	3.8
Nevada	100	3.7
Oregon	144	3.7
West Virginia	69	3.7
Arizona	241	3.6
Kentucky	156	3.6
Michigan	365	3.6
North Carolina	326	3.4
Rhode Island	36	3.4
Indiana	216	3.3
Texas	810	3.2
Minnesota	167	3.1
Illinois	398	3
Kansas	87	3
Tennessee	194	3
Oklahoma	109	2.9
Iowa	87	2.8
Utah	79	2.8
Wisconsin	162	2.8
Alabama	129	2.7
Idaho	43	2.7
Missouri	164	2.7
Vermont	17	2.7
South Carolina	123	2.6
Arkansas	73	2.5
Nebraska	46	2.5
Montana	24	2.4
Alaska	16	2.2
Louisiana	98	2.1
North Dakota	14	2.1
Hawaii	27	2
South Dakota	17	2
Mississippi	57	1.9
Wyoming	10	1.8

So British Columbia has the highest percentage of brainiacs! But alas it's too good to be true. This is result is biased by the location of advertising, and while it was not specifically aimed at one region or another, I have no control over where Google or Facebook displayed the ads. The majority of the members on the site came through Google Ads on PlentyofFish.com which is
a website that originated from Vancouver, BC, so it is likely that there were more members there, more ads, and a
hence a higher percentage of members.

We have a great geeky set of winks on BrainiacDating.com.
While I generally recommend a custom email to initiate a serious contact, these winks are fun to play with.

Call me if you know math?

Hey you caught my eye:


Hi, wow, you made me smile.

Wow, truly amazing!

Hold that smile:

Pardon me:

What do you think of this?

I see stars in your eyes:

I see nature's infinite beauty:

Non Brainiac Support

Keeping up with all the support requests on BrainiacDating.com is hard work. Unfortunately, some people do not read instructions, and these are some of the examples from non-brainiacs!

Common problems are:
1) asking for their password even though there is a link right under the login form that says "forgot password".
2) can't log in, but it turns out that they never registered in the first place
3) put in their wrong gender, and not sure how to change it. Those are always funny to read.
4) why their photos do not show up in their profile, even though after they are submitted, a message
shows that says their photos are submitted for review.
5) Is your site completely free - yes, I suppose they do not trust other sites.
6) many people have trouble uploading photos

Then there are these outliers:

Someone replied back to the support email address about a wink. He should have clicked on the link to reply to the person who sent it:

I fully accept! Do not wake me, I rather like this dream!

Someone else flagged another member without a reason:

Flagged: joep3
Nothing to report...sorry

Then there is the accidental flagging:

i accidentally flagged a person named ..... by mistake.
i thought i was adding him to my favorites. please check this out for me and take him off the flagged list
for me PLEASE! thanks much.
Merry Christmas

And another one:

Sorry I made a mistake I was chatting and I didn't know what
flag meant so this was a Mistake the guy is great sorry I push the button

Yup, there is a reason that the flag is colored red.

Chemistry is Like Chocolate

I love this clever new ad from Chemistry.com:


The single chocolate in the middle of the heart is really cool.

I used to be a member of match.com, and now I get regular emails like this from match and chemistry. I have no need to re-join, but I do enjoy looking at their ads, and this is one of the cleverest.
I also note that Chemistry.com seems to be growing according to the Alexa.com rankings, so they
are one of the few major online dating sites that have been growing.
See my tracking here.

Jokes In Time For Valentine's Day

Here are some of the jokes I made up in the spirit of Valentine's day on Sunday.

Good Things About Valentine's Day
1. McDonald's including ice cream flavored condom in all happy meals
2. Philips releases all new laser eyebrow and pubic hair trimmer formerly used in the space program
3. Area man gets to increase his frequency of sex with his girl friend from 0.75 to 0.83 times per week.
4. Costco running a special sale on the 10,000 pack magnum condoms.
5. Match.com offering a free day with annual subscription
6. Walgreens special promotion: V-day pack including massage oil, viagra and rogaine.
7. Uncle Joe's crab shack installing mood lighting for valentines day brunch
8. Local Hooters waitresses giving out cool mints to well behaved patrons
9. Dick Clark still dropping "the ball" in Times Square
10. Even considering the tough economy, the cities professional gigalo's usually get extra tips.

Most effective ways to kill your chance for a second date

1. After about fifteen minutes into the date give a complete rundown on your medications
2. When he/she walks in say Bouya, Bouya
3. Tell her about your dissertation
4. read your poetry
5. ask her to loan you five bucks so you can pay for your big mac
6. winking over at the blonde at the next table
7. talking to the demons in your head while waiting for the appetizers
8. tell her that you have to leave by nine pm to avoid waking up grandma
9. tell her that you used to work in the "adult entertainment" business
10. invite your parole officer over to the table for a drink

Bookish Personal Ads

The London Review of Books has perhaps the most witty and unusual personal ads.
For example:

Tall, handsome, well-built, articulate, intelligent, sensitive,
yet often grossly inaccurate man, 21. Cynics (and some
cheap Brentwood psychiatrists) may say ‘pathological
liar’, but I like to use ‘creative with reality’. Join me in my
36-bedroomed mansion on my Gloucestershire estate, set
in 400 acres of wild-stag populated woodland. East Ham.12
Box no. 0620.

Looking for a partner, I’m placing an ad in this column. Things are significantly worse than I originally thought. Though clearly not as bad as they are for you, F to 40, who is reading this and thinking of replying. M, 34.
box no: 0101

Write and enjoy a date with me at the delicious Cedar’s Lodge Inn, Barnstaple. I have a ‘two-eat-for-the-price-of-one’ voucher that’s good through April. M, 46.
box no: 03/03

Meet the new face of indoor bowling! More or less the
same as the old face, but less facial hair and better teeth. M,
28. Box no. 3377.

I cannot guarantee you’ll fall in love with me, but I can
promise you the best home-brewed beetroot wine you’ll
have ever tasted. Now if that doesn’t sound like a fermented
bucket of yummy siphoned lustiness I just don’t
know what does. Man, 41. Stupid like wow! Box no. 9851.

Drooling, toothless sociopath (M, 57) seeks F any age to
help make this abandoned gas station kiosk feel more like
home. Must bring shoes (size 10). Box no. 5310.

A bigger list can be found here.
These are from David Rose's book: "Sexually, I'm More of a Switzerland: More Personal Ads from the London Review of Books".

In comparison, the New York equivalent personals site is dry and like reading a resume. (see Salon.com)

Humorous Introductions

Here are some interesting comments from the introdutions in my brainiac meetup groups in NY, LA and SF.

San Francisco Meetup:

Mark Breimhorst : “Who doesn’t want to meet smart people? Even my dumb friends do!”

Claire: ” Looking for fun, interesting people to do interesting, fun stuff with. And then talk about it. In a smart way. Or at least a fun, interesting way. ”

RPSF: ” Would like to engage in meaningful discussions, debates -even mild arguments- about …anything! Like solving the current fiscal mess and growing unemployment, e.g. ”

Gregory: ” Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former ”

Ari: ” Hopefully just by being in this group some intelligence will rub off on me … :) ”

Stacy: ” my head may look small, i really have a big brain. and i’m modest. and have excellent social skills… ;-) ”

Alice: ” 01001000 01101001 00001101 00001010 ” ( very appropriate for the Bay area )

From the LA group:
Benbo: “I can find my way home 8 times out of 10”

Carlyn: “I get bored having to make small talk at bars :-) ”

Joan: ” I’m interested in meeting people who want to talk about something other than sports or the weather. “

New York City:
Allan: "I get these nerdy itches I need to scratch."

Jason: "The New York Airheads group wasn't doing for me anymore." Jason

Lisa: "I have more then 2 functioning braincells. Wait..lemme check. Yeah there's 3. Always gotta have a back up." -

Top Geek Dating Site

The leading site for geek dating is geek to geek (gk2gk.com). I found them advertised all over the internet on various geek related sites like wise geek and nerd passions. Membership runs at $20 per month, so it's not exactly cheap, especially in comparison to my site - BrainiacDating.com which is completely free. However, geek to geek probably makes money, so maybe I also need to start considering a small fee, at least to cover the cost of advertising which will allow my site to grow and ultimately offer a better service.

I found one of their ads as shown in its full size: The orange color is really horrible in my opinion - it looks like pumpkin pie, and I can't even discern the small images. In fact, I don't
like the orange - yellow - brownish color scheme on their site, and think that brainiac dating looks much nicer. I know that not everyone likes the black background on the site, but there is a way to completely change the color scheme by clicking on a color selector at the bottom left of all pages. My website may be the only online dating site that offers such a feature.



Another difference in philosophy is that a brainiac is not necessarily a geek and vice versa.
According to the definition on wiki:

The word geek is a slang term, noting individuals as "a peculiar or otherwise odd person, especially one who is perceived to be overly obsessed with one or more things including those of intellectuality, electronics, etc.

Compare with

Brainiac is a common modern term used to describe someone exceedingly knowledgeable in a certain field. Also a slang term, indicating a highly intelligent person. It can be used in a complimentary manner, or it can be used pejoratively depending on the context.

Well I am not sure I exactly would agree with the way these are defined on wiki, but it does illustrate the common notion of the two terms. I liked to think of a brainiac as someone who is out of the box, who thinks differently, is creative, and values intelligence and learning. I also think of a geek as a misfit, and not necessarily intelligent.

Smart Online Dating Graveyard

Niche online dating sites come and go. I sure hope that my site - BrainiacDating.com does not just become a historical footnote. It will take a bit of a marketing breakthrough to get to the next level so the site can at least break even financially. Otherwise, it will remain as an expensive hobby.

Anyway, I have uncovered several interesting former smart singles themed sites and followed the links to try reach their websites. Here it is - a list of sites that no longer exist. Let us pause for a moment of silence to remember them.

Degreedate.com "started with one goal in mind: to be the best meeting place for educated singles online. At degreedate.com, we believe education is one of the key ingredients of compatibility, and for some, the most important."

Medical Love connection: "Online dating with medial professionals. Find your ideal dating partner on medical love connection"


Carmun - Academic Social Network Community
Carmun connects students who share academic passions.

Date-A-Doc - Medical Personals
A dating service for Doctors, Dentists, Scientists and other healthcare professionals. Date-A-Doc has received positive press from the Canadian Medical Post, Forbes.com "Best of The Web", California Physician Journal and mentioned in CNN.com and ENET magazine..

Medical Love Connection - Online Healthcare Dating
Online dating with medial professionals: doctors, nurses, medical students, interns, residents, technologists, pharmacists, dentists, other allied healthcare caregivers or professional singles from a variety of different backgrounds.

These are ones on life-support, someone is still paying their web hosting and domain name fees probably without realizing it:

datemymind.com
degreedate.com
docdates.com
esmartsingles.com
goodgenes.com
intellectualdating.com
intelligentdating.net
intellectualsingles.com
intelligentpeople.com
iqcuties.com
ivorytowers.net
meetsmart.com
teachersdatingnetwork.com

Cost of a Brainy Single

Since my online dating website BrainiacDating.com just passed the 15,000 member mark, this is a good point to reflect on the cost of acquiring all of these members. Firstly I should point out that this is the net number of active members on the site, not the total number that have ever joined - which is closer to 17,000.
According to my exit survey - about half of those who have left have done so because they have met someone, the rest of the departures were split by "did not find enough matches or activity on the site", "did not like using the site", or did not answer.

So the net number of members on the site - which is close to 15,200 as of today has been reached in about sixteen months since I started.

The following table shows the paid advertising sources of the new members:

Source	Number	Average cost per acquisition
PlentyofFish.com (via AdWords)	10,000	$3
Facebook advertising	3000	$3
Google Search( via AdWords)	200	$5
Ad in the MENSA bulletin	120	$4
Slashdot.com (via AdWords	100	$4
Yahoo Search Marketing	30	$5

Currently conversions on AdWords cost over $10, so I do not target it anymore. Cost of acquisition, usually called "conversion cost" is how much it costs in terms of clicks multiplied by cost per click to get each new member.
Not every click results in a new member joining the site, on average my ads have been running at about 5-10% joins/click.

Initially I exclusively focussed solely on Google, but the price of clicks kept rising through the end of 2009 so I switched to Facebook advertising almost exclusively starting in November of 2009. It has taken a few months to improve the use of the Facebook ads, and currently it is running at $2.50 per new member.

My AdWords costs were at a minimum from March to June 2009, as I suspect this was the period when the economy was at its lowest level and the large advertisers had pulled back. Also in the middle of last year many of the newest scams started to appear such as the acai berry weight loss, and they pushed the price up.

Brainiac Dating Passes 15,000 Member Mark

Yay, my online dating site - Brainiac Dating finally passed the 15,000 member mark! All this, and in just over 16 months since opening up the site. The new membership rate has been picking up now that we have gotten a better handle on the Facebook advertising.
The ad image that we use most is the ugly looking hearts with glasses picture shown here. I drew it myself, and a little embarrassed by it, but it avoids wasted clicks - which is the biggest problem with pay per click advertising. New members are joining from Facebook at a conversion cost of about $2.50 per profile.
This is not as low as our best with AdWords which was about half this, but right now, the same kinds of ads and targeting on AdWords would run over $10, so Facebook is about a quarter of the cost.
The other problem with AdWords is that most of the conversions came from a few sites and people on these sites had already searched for each other.
New faces are important, and helped because Facebook draws members from across their huge membership spectrum.

Dating Site Awards For 2010

Since I am a member of the Internet Executive Dating Alliance, I thought I would post the award winners from the recent Idea Conference in Miami in January. I did not actually vote, so don't blame me for the choices.

I pretty much agree with all the winning choices, and there is no doubt that E-harmony wins the marketing category by a slam dunk. One has to question most of what they claim, but they do get a lot of people on their site. Personally I think OKCupid is a bit over-rated as I never had any success on that site. Zoosk seems to have quite a bit of spam profiles, though I love the visual design of their site. My best dating results were on Plenty Of Fish, except of course for my site BrainiacDating.com - which will hopefully one day win an award for the best niche site.

Romancing the Mind

Today I came up with a great new slogan for my website (BrainiacDating.com) "Romancing the Mind"! This is a much better way to describe dating for intelligent singles than: "It's sexy to be smart", which was my previous best slogan.

So I did a quick Google search on this phrase and was directed to a Canadian site: http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2009/02/02/03096.html
With a very sexy image:
On the dating page it read:

Rebel Life is a free online meeting network for liberated and culturally diverse singles who have active lifestyles. Yup. I suppose, but that was not what first came to mind. I am not sure if that's what was intended?

So I looked back down the Google search list, and there really was not much more serious use of this slogan, so I hope that I can make it stick to my site!

Science Cafe Social Event in New York City

Last night over twenty members of my meetup group - NY Brainiac Singles attended a mixer and lecture at the Museum of Natural History in New York. This was a really cool venue for an event, and over four hundred people turned up, so many in fact that a lot of people did not get in. They had free appetizers and a cash bar. The guests huddled between igneous and sedimentary rocks, meteorites and globes, all set with cozy night lighting, and warm ambiance for mingling and meeting other geeks.
I noticed that there were definitely a lot of very cute women, some with boyfriends, some alone. There were people of all ages from the 20's to 70's.

What else would you need to bring out the cities geek's? But there was also a rather interesting lecture given by Dr David Buss of the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of

"Why Women Have Sex"
The lecture was themed: "Learn about mating strategies and discuss why sex is used for more than just reproduction and pleasure."


I am not sure that I got a answer to this question in the lecture, but maybe I still will have to read the book.
He talked a lot about "Mate Guarding", and made reference to observations in the animal kingdom. The most often one that I have heard is about the elephant seals on the coast of California. The males can weight up to 4000 pounds and fight for ownership of harems of up to twenty females who are usually only up to 1000 pounds. Some other males still try to poach around the edges, but typically the successful males only
last in this position for a couple of years, and then retire to the beach alone with the other spent males.





Buss also gave examples of spider and chimp mate guarding. There were some examples of some isolated human tribes in Africa. Now the big extrapolation is how this applies to modern humans living in the big city. Why do men commit most of the murders, and 90% of the time it is their spouse. Is this about control, or reckless aggression, and or is it programmed into the DNA? Not sure I got all the answers, but these things are never clear, except maybe now that I think about it, I think it would be quite interesting to pick up a copy of the Buss's book...

Not really FREE!

I found this great looking email in my inbox this morning. Alas, this is just a hook to get you in.

I saw exactly the same ad from match.com, and almost tried it out. My sister did, and was so upset.
They get you to sign up first, pull out that credit card, then there is something free, but it's not clear what - if anything.
They've got you hook-line-and-sinker!