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.

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.

Match Not Targeting a Smart Singles

I just got this email recently in my inbox:

They really need to target me better, or anyone else with a brain. Do I really expect that this young woman is falling for me already. I can't imagine how this kind of ad works. And what does "communicate freely" mean? I doubt that it means I can send and respond to other members for free. I'm sure that it's just a trick to get me to sign up and pay their membership fee.

If I only had a million dollars ...

the ads for my site - BrainiacDating.com would be all over the TV show "The Big Bang Theory". This is the 21st century version of "Friends" - it is a place for smart young single people to congregate.



There was one episode in which a Nobel prize winning physicist guest stars, and Sheldon is going to a conference. It is a show which really makes intelligence count, as opposed to friends in which dumb and pretty were fashionable, except for Ross - who was the brains of the group. Jokes played on their dumbness, now the jokes
mostly focus on social awkwardness of smart geeks - also not perfect. Being nerdy is funny. I know a very smart guy, well educated, but can't find his way walking around the New York without his GPS, and not just town, but even around the block.

Brainiac Dating Facebook Fan Page

Yippee, the Facebook fans page for BrainiacDating.com finally has 50 fans! Initially only a few of my friends had joined, and I could not get much momentum going especially since I am very careful who I call a friend. So in order to get the fan page going I created a Facebook ad campaign to direct Facebook members to the specific fan page, and viola they began coming in droves. The click through rate is 20% which is amazing and the cost per click is under $0.20 so this page should be able to grow fast.

Click here for the fans page.



There are only two problems with this fan page:
1) not everyone who becomes a fan also goes to brainiac dating and joins.
2) mostly men are becoming fans.

For the first problem, I have been able to customize the appearance of the page, and hopefully put some interesting links to keep the fans reading, and then occasionally remind them that there is a whole other site to check out.
For the second problem, I have been working on different ads for women, trying different keywords, images and bids.
Unfortunately the ads targeted to single women cost almost double than those directed at men, and the join rate is not
as high with women and men, but once women find out that the site is 62% men - hopefully the will be more eager to jump aboard.