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!

How to get the word out - Chapter 7

In the ongoing battle on how to spread the word to my site Brainiac Dating , I have recently started to find opportunity on LinkedIn. This is the #1 site for professional networking, and not obviously set up to handle anything to do with personal relationships, such as on a site like Facebook. I call this chapter seven because the story is on-going - hopefully one of these days there will be a breakthrough in virally spreading the good word about brainiac dating.



I looked for singles features on the site, but didn't find any. They don't even store that kind of information.
However, given the professional demographic segment that uses the site, it would be an ideal target for
finding smart singles --- if I could only find an easy way...

At first I asked one of my friends to help, and he politely said "no" because he'd like to keep his personal life separate from his private life. But I proceeded on my own, and found several singles related groups.
The groups feature on the site is relatively new, but it looks like it has many cool aspects, and is perhaps even better than the groups feature on Facebook. The only problem is how to bring people to these groups!

So I created my own called Intellectual Singles. So far it has four members, which is not bad for a few days, but hopefully more will start to join. I also joined a few others which are mostly for the business side of online dating, but I think there could be some useful information exchange. I have been reposting some of my blogs here to that site, just like using this site to promote that one. It's all a full circle, but hopefully an expanding one.

I am keen to see how this experiment works.

How to reach out to Smart Singles

Yippee! Today my query in HARO was released to 100,000 readers as follows:

Lifestyle and Fitness
26. Stories about dating a brainiac (Brainiac Dating)

Media Outlet: Brainiac Dating
Deadline: 07:00 PM EST - 3 February

Query:

I am looking for stories to include in my blog about singles who
have funny or unusual experiences on a date with someone smart.
They don't necessarily need to be geeky or nerdy people that you
dated, but just to be considered relatively intelligent - and
note that there are many different ways to measure intelligence.
What did you learn from these dates, and would you do it again?

This is excellent free publicity, and exactly what I was hoping to get, but unfortunately they removed the link to my website - Brainiac Dating for the query. So now the reader needs to figure it out. Last time I released a HARO query, they provided a link to my blog - which is a separate site - and it had 200 visits! This time my website is given directly, but no link. Dammit!