Venturebeat has some numbers on friendster.
6 Billion pageviews a month
$700,000 a month in revenue in December
$410,000 loss in December.
16 million unique users a month.
Last time I saw the comscore numbers, all dating sites combined in the US only had 4 billion pageviews a month. But the paid dating sites in the USA will pull in $650 million this year.
With the number of free sites exploding, and operational costs of a dating site significantly higher then social networking sites it will be interesting to see which other free sites will be able become profitable. When I look at the 2 other dating sites my size I am disturbed to see that their tech budget per month is a multipul of my monthly revenue.
It is also great to see that most of the major dating sites have started running banner ads and advertising across their sites. It will be interesting to hear what they have to say at the conference on monday.
January 13, 2007 at 9:38 am |
Markus,
Just a nit… don’t you mean Friendster Numbers instead of “Facebook Numbers”? That venture beat article looks like it’s referring to Friendster.
Also, not sure if I’m doing the calculations right, but doesn’t an $0.11 eCPM seem really low to you ($700,000 on 6 billion pageviews)? Why can’t they monetize their pageviews more effectively?
Thanks,
Lucas
January 13, 2007 at 2:10 pm |
It is Friendster, not Facebook.
January 13, 2007 at 2:13 pm |
Besides, may be Facebook has 6B really, but not Friendster…
January 13, 2007 at 5:59 pm |
Ya sorry I just changed it to read friendster.
11 ECPM for the entire site isn’t that off, There are a lot of pages on a site where you simply can’t put ads. There are also a lot of sections like hotornot like pages where you simply really can’t put ads. You are lucky if you make $5.00 per 100,000 pageviews.
January 13, 2007 at 8:36 pm |
Markus,
What were your thoughts on the funding that OkCupid.com received? That site seems like your main competition: http://gigaom.com/2007/01/12/okcupid-raises-6m/
January 13, 2007 at 10:01 pm |
They are a minor competitor according to hitwise. The news is over a year old but just now “officially” released. I posted about it a few months ago.
January 14, 2007 at 9:26 pm |
Fascinating how difficult it is to make a profit.
January 15, 2007 at 3:23 am |
Friendster’s 11 cent eCPM is because 90%+ of their traffic is coming from the philippines!
January 16, 2007 at 1:41 pm |
What is your opinion on getting users active on a new website where it requires you to sign up??
January 18, 2007 at 2:16 pm |
“operational costs of a dating site significantly higher then social networking sites”. Really? How come?
January 20, 2007 at 2:14 am |
[...] dating site operational costs higher than social networks? Markus at PlentyOfFish says “operational costs of a dating site significantly higher then social [...]
January 20, 2007 at 6:02 pm |
[...] dating site operational costs higher than social networks? Markus at PlentyOfFish says “operational costs of a dating site significantly higher then social [...]
January 30, 2007 at 8:46 pm |
There’s a lot more trouble / work to deal with on a free dating site than on a social site in my opinion.
Back to Freindster – I have always found the site is incredibly slow at the best of times.
March 21, 2008 at 10:13 pm |
[...] considerable traffic, ranked the 17th most popular website globally. However, in December 2007, Friendster saw revenues of $700,000, with a loss of $400,000. Why, with so many users is Friendster still not being profitable? The answer is in Friendster’s [...]