Sunday, August 19, 2012

International Dating For Internet Nationals



Say sheesh in Chinese!

Hitting the web has never been easy and hitting the right date is easier than done. But with internet, any national can date any other national across the world and with the advent of emerging economies such as Brazil, China and India, dating industry has arrived internationally, says the market analysts. According to Online Personals Watch, dating industry’s leading business analysis website, china leads the pack with expected revenue of $315 million by 2014. Chinese market has been dominated by the Nasdaq listed Jiayuan.com, which claims to have over 60 million subscribers. This says the arrival of local online rivals for the American businesses, www.e-llure.com,  who are swimming in the foreign markets to have a bigger share in the pie. International dating scene has been picking up slowly for the past decade and has caught a gigantic ride for the last couple of years with multifold revenues and millions as subscribers. Markets such as Europe and China will become the mainstream revenue centers for many dating businesses that will capitalize on these newer geographies.

East Vs West

Internationally, specifically in the eastern part of the world, dating has been an off culture attitude compared to the west. Dating has never been considered as an off stigma in the west while the eastern philosophy gives dating a rather different perspective. This made the local players jump into fray making the western dating businesses a run for money. Knowledge about the local culture made the home grown entrepreneurs market their products well.

Considering the Indian market, one of the largest and fastest growing in terms of dating demographics, is showing a growth of over 20% year on year. According to an article in India’s leading newspaper, Times of India, dating industry is significantly different when compared to the western market.  India being a country which respects the culture and traditional heritage, has offered internet solutions respecting the sentiments of its people. Market leaders like Bharatmatrimony.com and shaadi.com have been a dating  site of the sort which caters to the marriage market. Conceptually, speed dating or round robin dating would be a taboo for a country which still places marriage at its center. This gives opportunity for sites such as e-llure.com to differentiate their products when entering into Indian or Chinese market. Business tie-ups with startups such as twomangoes.com or mymitra.com will make sense for the western dating businesses that are looking to foray into Indian dating industry.

Social network or International Dating

Facebook with over 500 million subscribers have challenged the way the world socializes itself. Social networking sites such as Facebook and twitter etc. are giving dating businesses a hard run as the reach of the social networking websites have penetrated well into the international scene. Many Facebook applications as well as other social networking websites have become the key for the dating businesses to get into the social media dating scene to gain international visibility. International dating as a market place has shrunk and many veterans in the online dating industry says that the business now should have to take the app route by introducing their applications catering to their customers who live across borders.                                              

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

Numbers beyond laughter and smiles


Rock ‘n’ rolling numbers

Online dating industry has grown leaps and bounds for the last 2 decades, especially the last decade after the advent of web 2.0. According to industry market research provider ibsiworld.com, social network aided tools and newer technologies such as mobile computing has led the dating industry to be the fastest growing business in United States of America. It has its tentacles flourishing all across the world such that more than 14000 websites employing over 16,000 people bringing over 2 billion US dollars as revenues in 2011. Industry experts estimate this to be 1/10th of the market that is available and the industry is poised to grow beyond $10 billion within 5 years. This estimation is possible with the advent of newer avenues of revenue streams such as Smartphone applications and web 3.0 based marketing techniques.

Small Vs Big

As there are umpteen number of dating websites, it has its own challenges in its growth considering the competition that is prevalent today. Big and established dating websites vie for the bigger share of the pie by growing both organically and inorganically,                 www.e-llure.com . Organic growing methods are such as offline marketing promotion and social marketing techniques have been the key. Inorganically, couple of acquisitions signals the consolidation in the internet dating industry to make the big players grow bigger in size.

Smaller websites are finding their feet with the help of theme based dating. According to a blog by businessinsider.com, smaller dating websites find a unique problem and try to solve it by offering solutions in a particular way. This is welcoming sign for the industry as it augurs well for the industry as well as the consumers. For an example, veggiedate.org tries to match singles practicing vegetarianism. This kind of market segmentation invokes good response from the online daters and creates higher barriers to entry for the competition to entry by giving first mover advantage to one who first pitches the idea.

End of Brick n Mortar world?

Web technologies have revolutionized the dating industry. According to a survey by WallStreet Journal, couples who meet online have been rising 20% year on year. As there are multiple niches in the dating industry, fastest growing one is the homosexual industry where the homosexual dating industry rises over 60% every year bringing in millions to the websites that cater to this category. There are multiple internet based personals websites such as e-llure.com and there are many new websites that comes cropping every day to this already competitive and a potential multi-bagger industry.  Flipside of the industry also needs to be noted as there are multiple showdowns happening every day due to low barriers to entry and strong competition by the big players who have been part of the industry from last decade. Surge in the online dating industry clearly signifies that the older methods of dating such as meeting the prospective date over a drink at a pub or at dinner for a restaurant are getting redundant and those with access to internet and newer technologies such as mobile and tablets have higher chances of finding their date.




Speed Dating Is Fast, But Is That Profitable?


New day, New Niche
Thanks to Rabbi Yaccov Deyo, man who seeded the concept of speed dating. Being a comfortable and fast dating mechanism, speed dating has been preferred by millions across the world. It gives the high flying and time starved people the required opportunity to meet and greet the prospective singles. Though speed dating was started way back in 1998, it has picked up fast in the last decade. According to marketresearch.com, dating industry has grown over $2.1 billion out of which online speed dating contributes to over 10%. This comes to a whopping 200 million dollar for a niche industry. It is quite significant for a niche dating to garner that much revenues making the industry leaders to look into this sector quite closely.


Is there a need for Speed?
Basically, speed dating has been preferred by many singles. This type of round robin dating allows singles to meet multiple personals at an amazing pace. It saves a lot of time, effort and money. Many singles who have been to speed date events and parties opine that speed dating will grow multifold to be the mainstream dating approach. With technology enabled speed dating sites, brings the curtains down for the fewer hassles that were present in speed dating industry.  iPhone and Android applications are growing in larger number favoring online dating and speed dating is also slowly catching up in online space. Speed dating also augurs well for the world that is looking for quick solutions to most of its problems. It gives the required bandwidth to the individuals who want to meet multiple prospective partners without the hassle of spending hours and days. Online speed dating is a milestone in speed dating enabling people to save their face along with time. This is a good sign for the dating industry which has been facing the slump like all other industries for the last couple of years.


Emerging winners
There are many established players such as speeddate.com who have been in the industry for long and making right moves. A few emerging winners such as e-llure.com who have made one stop shop for all kind of dating needs including speed dating will make the market interesting, says industry observers. Preferentially, businesses that offer multiple methods of dating have bigger opportunity and vision to capture the market than the exclusive niche ones. Though the niche businesses revolving around the speed dating do a brisk business, one stop shop like e-llure.com will be the site to look out for once the world outside USA catches the dating craze that was prevailing in the early years of the last decade. Numerically backing this by a WikiDot article, online dating websites like Match.com had grown phenomenally from $49.3 million in 2001 to $200 million in 2005, but this growth has been staggered for the last couple of years owing to multiple factors such as recession, market saturation, escalating subscription costs etc. This gives opportunity to newer players with unique and strategic value propositions to garner the market share both inside and outside USA.


Friday, April 13, 2012

International Online Dating Offers a World of Opportunity


Online dating has become a revolutionary way for single people that are interested in meeting other single people to do so. Through international online dating, singles can now meet potential love interests that are not even in the same country and have long distance relationships of a kind that would not have been possible even 20 years ago. Online dating is just another amazing example of how technology has advanced the way that we interact with other people--through phone calls, texting, and the Internet, the computer age has revolutionized human interaction.

What if your soul mate is out there in another country, but because of the distance and location, you never meet them?
Modern technology allows you to avoid this unhappy fate by providing you the opportunity to meet and communicate with people that are thousands of miles away, making the chances of meeting that special someone much greater.

Even if you do not happen to meet that person of your dreams, you will have the opportunity to react with somebody from another culture that is very different from the one that you are used to. Interaction with other people gives you an opportunity to gain knowledge and experience, even if things do not work out.

There are billions of people in the world, and rather than limit yourself to only meeting a few thousand local ones, you can extend your reach to any place in the world! Online dating can be a great learning experience for you, as well as a possible chance to find the person of your dreams. After all, everyone in online dating is available.

E-llure has higher standards

Unlike many other free networking and internet dating sites, E-llure has higher standards for the content and prospects provided in our network…both from our members and from our affiliate advertisers. Since we truly care about helping our members find meaningful relationships, it is our aim to avoid purely sexual profiles by both professional and personal advertisers without being judgmental about a person’s lifestyle. We hope that this will increase the chances of you contacting genuine, compatible individuals who are interested in making the same connections you're looking to make!