Nationwide Domain Name/Yard Sign Conspiracy

robertjmoore writes "Everywhere I go lately, I see these lawn signs that say "Single?" and then give a URL with my town's name in it. Being a huge business intelligence geek with too much time on my hands, I decided to track down who was behind them and wound up uncovering ten thousand domain names, a massively coordinated and well-funded guerilla marketing machine, and the $45 Million revenue business hiding behind it all. Hot off the presses, these are my findings."

signs

[Anonymous Coward]

Those are all over SE PA. West Chester in particular.

Re:Conspiracy?

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, yes, and YES!

Re:Guerrilla Marketing

[MrSparkle]

Guerrilla Marketing indeed. The article itself is a slashvert for the author's company. Nice.

Re:It's an interesting story...

[gnick]

High churn rates mean new customers have low, volatile expected lifetime values. This has a negative impact on the equity value of each customer, making it difficult to justify the valuation multiples seen by membership-driven websites in other verticals.

...but an English translation might be more accessible.

People don't keep their memberships for very long. Because of that, the difference between your recruiting cost and your subscription price has to be wider than other membership sites.

Better?

Re:but do they work ?

[0100010001010011]

If you're looking, I'm a big fan of plentyoffish.com. I'm a bit biased since I met my current girlfriend there. It's 100% free. Minimal (very very minimal) ads and ... I like it is all.

Re:Together

[doconnor]

It seems to be that cost of printing planting these signs are much higher then the cost of a domain name, so it's no big deal to them.

Re:Together

[Marxist Hacker 42]

$3600 actually, and that's where the somewhat comes in. It came to prepaying $100 for each introduction, used or unused, in blocks of 36. I only needed 5- so you could look at it that I was taken for $3100.

Women were charged significantly less- my wife bought in blocks of 6 instead of 36, and I was her 12th introduction.

The cost included at that time "therapy sessions" which allowed you to discover and refine what you wanted in a mate. Given the gals I was introduced to- I was either confused or they weren't using that part correctly.

Re:but do they work ?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Ok, here's a negative- they took me for $3100 for introductions contracted for that I never used because they required guys to buy in blocks of 36 introductions where they only required women to buy in blocks of 6.

Of course, I haven't had contact since they closed their Oregon office a year after I got married....

Re:Together

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Nope. In fact, if they still operate the same way, you get a phone # and a first name and a hint for what to talk about. And that's it. Meeting in person is up to you.

However, I'm not sure they still operate the same way- this was ~11 years ago. And they closed their office in Oregon soon afterward.

Re:Together

[asylumx]

RTFA, it explains this (in my own words): The localized domains give the impression that this is a local shop so the perceived likelyhood of finding a match are higher.

Re:Slow News Day?

[Anonymous Coward]

Regarding number 4, don't waste money. netcraft.com and the manual pages for nmap and whois are all you need to do what he did.

Re:but do they work ?

[lysergic.acid]

well, if that's the attitude you take regarding your clientèle then maybe people should be warned about your business.

generally, every business will have a few dissatisfied customers since it's hard to make everyone happy. but if there are dozens of customer complaints regarding the same company, then that's a pretty good indicator that they're either unscrupulous or just incompetent. so it doesn't have to be by a "disgruntled employee" for a complaint to have any merit.

besides, another poster who met his wife through that agency already said that he had to pay $3600 for the minimum of 36 introductions (of which he only used 5) to use the service.

They recruit sign posters via craigslist

[Anonymous Coward]

I see the ads up every so often. They pay $1 per sign

Friend got scammed

[db10]

.. I didn't believe him when he told me he paid ~$2500 for this.. He tried to get his money back after he realized that he wasn't getting any dates, with no luck. A fool and his money are soon parted my friends.

Re:Well done

[ShaunC]

I'm more concerned about the "send us your old and worn out gold jewelry ads".

Rob Cockerham recently tested out their scam by sending them a bunch of junk spray-painted gold [cockeyed.com]. They sent him back a check! It was only $1 or so, I guess it's a consolation prize they send to anyone who bothers to mail in an envelope.

Someone else tried it with actual gold [cockeyed.com] and found that the prices they're willing to quote you (at least initially) are way below the true value, but if you complain about their offer, they'll make a reasonable one.

Re:Together

[hlopez]

That is for middle of the line places. If you go out in Miami, LA or NYC. That might only be about 12 good nights at a bar or club. 400 dollar bottles are the norm at the happening places in these cities.

Re:Together

[plover]

Well, I RTFA. The guy addresses this point directly:

In talking to a few colleagues about this fascinating business, I learned that most private equity shops shy away from dating sites for a number of reasons:

• Dating sites are known for tremendously high churn rates (if your product works, your customers never have to come back; if it doesn't they see no reason to come back). This means dating sites have to keep a steady flow of new customers coming into the top of the funnel in order to survive, let alone grow revenue and profit.
• High churn rates mean new customers have low, volatile expected lifetime values. This has a negative impact on the equity value of each customer, making it difficult to justify the valuation multiples seen by membership-driven websites in other verticals.
• The need to keep more and more new customers coming in creates a necessity for massive marketing budgets that often involve aggressive affiliate marketing (i.e. paying third parties to bring you new customers). This further damages the perceived value of the user base to a potential investor or acquirer.
• Like social networking, "online dating" is a natural monopoly (or, at best, a natural oligopoly). A dating site's quality is determined by the number and quality of matches it can provide a new user, which is directly tied to the size of its membership base. This makes it extremely difficult to enter the market.

However, just because something isn't a great investment prospect doesn't mean it's a bad business. Many, many people have become obscenely wealthy in this industry (both online and offline). The technology required to connect two people is trivial, meaning your only real expense is the cost of customer acquisition. If you are part of the natural oligopoly, your product quality will be high and people will seek you out. This cycle lowers your costs and sends your margins skyrocketing.

Furthermore, the online dating industry has made a lot of secondary players wealthy thanks to affiliate marketing. At times, online dating sites have paid as much as $100 per head for new paying customers, and routinely pay out at least a few dollars for new "free trial" users or other prospects. This means anyone with the power to herd single internet users can potentially tap into a strong monetization engine.

Re:Together

[Anonymous Coward]

As you mention, these are used for election signs. Remember any good elections lately?

Prices may drop as early as this week...