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Winning in the online dating space
The online dating industry has grown significantly and as a result it has become harder for new services to standout.
Jeronimo Folgueira, CEO of premium online dating platform EliteSingles, discusses the current state of the dating industry and gives his views on going mobile and premium pricing in the digital economy.
The Current State of Online Dating
Online dating in the UK has steadily developed into a multi-million pound industry. And it’s showing no signs of slowing down. By our own approximations, the sector is estimated to be worth around £185 million and is expected to grow by around 6% this year.
The challenge is that the online dating industry is getting crowded. In the UK alone, there are more than one thousand different online dating services. As the industry continues its impressive growth, we need to see consolidation in the market.
Online dating has been around for more than 20 years - meeting a partner online is not a new concept. However, having thousands of dating platforms lacking scale or with similar propositions isn’t logical, nor is it healthy. We need mainstream as well as niche services attending to different market segments and user needs.
So, while the dating industry continues to flourish, I predict that we will start to see the number of dating platforms decrease over the next year.
Excelling in the Saturated Dating Market
The online dating industry is brutally competitive. To succeed, you have to be different; when it comes to product experience, monetisation and marketing, you have to be better. If you don’t excel at all three, you just can’t keep up.
This is why all dating sites and supporting apps must be able to scale; first, to give users the best possible experience by providing enough matches and second, to be sustainable as businesses – small players will never be able to keep up with competition. Consolidation benefits consumers, dating companies and investors.
Going ‘Mobile’
In recent years, we have already seen the online dating industry’s rapid shift to mobile. If a company hasn’t embraced mobile by now, it’s already too late. To be mobile-first is simply not enough. 2017 is the year of the multi-platform user experience.
More than 70% of our new users in the UK now come to the service via a mobile device. For this reason, it’s crucial to provide a smooth user experience between multiple devices. Customers expect flawless functionality from whichever device they are using to access their account. Not everyone wants to use an app all the time; in fact, many people still prefer the mobile web.
Despite the growth in mobile usage, the mobile dating experience is not for everyone. Companies need to make sure they have a strong product across all platforms and offer as many options as possible to cater to all types of users – ensuring the growth in mobile use continues to develop efficiently.
The key is to create a responsive, easy-to-use service, regardless of the device.
The App Economy
It is very easy to launch new dating apps. It’s extremely difficult, however, to grow these and turn them into sustainable businesses. As we move towards a consolidated industry, we will see a major shift in the free app economy – as, quite frankly, current models are not sustainable.
Last year, we saw a number of free online dating services rebrand to offer customers a paid-for service; I expect more will go in this direction. It is exceptionally hard to convert a customer who has enjoyed a free ride into a fare-paying premium user. Popularity doesn’t necessarily equal success – businesses need to be based on a viable model or commercial proposition if they are going to stick around.
Premium Price Models in Digital Business
People are ever more willing to make larger online purchases via their mobile phones. We have the travel, food delivery and online retail industries to thank for this positive shift in consumer mind sets. People are now very comfortable paying out larger sums through mobile channels for luxury goods and services, including dating.
There is an increased sense of credibility associated with brands that provide more expensive services. Established companies including The Economist and Netflix are successfully getting people to pay for premium value-added online services. Although there will always be free alternatives, these are no longer as appealing.
Finding the Niche
Online dating is not just a playground for mobile millennials looking for a casual fling. It’s so much more than that. It’s connecting like-minded people who may otherwise never have had the chance to meet.
The UK divorce rate is rising and the population is aging. As a result, the country is home to an older, single and increasingly tech-savvy population. This segment is breaking down the barriers of online dating.
Our research shows that an increasing number of people over the age of 40 are shifting their social habits and looking online to find love. Not only are they supporting user growth, they are challenging the acceptance of online dating.
After a certain point, people grow tired of casual dating. While free apps are often the mechanic that entices people into the digital dating arena in the first place, particularly when they are younger, they do not offer the same functionality, experience or quality as paid-for services.
How to Grow an Online Business
In my experience, smaller companies are often advised to focus on capital in order to grow. Frankly though, it’s impossible to depend on this approach alone to succeed. A ‘plan B’ for monetisation and to breakeven is imperative. Going through constant financing rounds and making a loss is very distracting for entrepreneurs.
Newer companies in the digital industry should focus on building a successful business for which customers are willing to pay, and not just on equity stories to sell to investors on an ongoing basis.
The crux of success is a solid proposition. The same principles of commerce apply to a digital business as they would for any other: know exactly who you are, what you offer and why people should (and will) pay for your product
Clash of Clans will be updated with the following changes
Clash of Clans is one of the biggest hits on the market, a game that follows the freemium model and came in 2012 to stay. In Clash of Clans, players can build their own cities and defend them from invading armies. At the same time, they will have to train their troops and send them into battle to steal resources from other players and invade their cities. Supercell, as it does with Clash Royale, works continuously on Clash of Clans to bring new updates full of news, which has given great benefits over the years. Now, new screenshots suggest that a new patch is being prepared to be added in the game called shipyard.
Clash of Clans could soon have a shipyard
According to reports, the shipyard in Clash of Clans will allow us to create ships and use them in our invasions. It is not yet known, but it would be interesting to see if the ships created in the shipyard could also serve to defend us from the attacks.
Supercell has confirmed the arrival of the ships to Clash of Clans, and now fans are wondering when will they finally arrive. Unfortunately, the developers have not revealed any official information on the date of the next update. Many Clash of Clans players believe that the shipyard will hit the game after the balance update recently arrived.
Through the Japanese Twitter account of Clash of Clans, we were able to see an image of the changes in the recent update. In that image a secret message appeared about the activation of the shipyard. This image is giving even more wings to rumors about the new Clash of Clans update, which will likely include the shipyard. In any case, we will inform you with all the news!
21 Legit Ways To Make Money Online
Technology's ever-pervading permeation into every last fiber and morsel of society has caused a dramatic upheaval in the way we live, work and entertain ourselves. Thanks to the disruptive nature of the internet, the rate of change has only increased exponentially in recent years.
Yet, with so much change in the world today, and a nearly-instantaneous access to the globe's population through mediums such as social media and online search, many people are still left perplexed by how they can utilize the powerful technology inherently available through the internet, to actually make money online.
The truth? It's not easy making money online today. With so much competition and so many people and headlines vying for our attention, sifting through and finding reputable sources to generate any respectable amount of income through the web has become an ever-increasing challenge.
Often, what happens is that we run into unscrupulous Internet Marketers (IMs) who have less-than altruistic intentions of extracting money from you rather than helping you to make it. However, this isn't something new. People have been falling for networking marketing, pyramid schemes, and affiliate marketing scams since before the start of the net.
So, where are we supposed to turn to make money the legitimate way online? This isn't just about generating passive income; this is also about finding ways and means to create an active income through the conveniences afforded to us by the internet that will not only help us with our debt obligations, but also empower us to save, invest and get really rich in the future.
It's not easy by any means. Anyone that tells you otherwise isn't being transparent with you. It takes an enormous amount of effort and authority-building before you can really start getting rich through your online income-producing activities. However, there are some basic methods for making a respectable amount of cash in the short term.
Pain Versus Pleasure
Before I talk about some of the methods for making money online, I wanted to address the role of pain versus pleasure. Every decision that we make in life is weighed on a pain-versus-pleasure scale. We will always do more to avoid pain than we will to gain pleasure, plain and simple. However, this is also what holds us back from succeeding in any endeavor.
Let me explain...
Now, making money online should seem like a pleasurable activity. Why wouldn't we do just about anything to see things through, since it would be a major source of pleasure, right? Wrong. In the beginning, like anything else, we might get really excited about it. We might also set our hopes very high. But that all comes crashing down when we begin to fail.
The problem? In order to make serious amounts of money online, you need to the most amount of work for the least initial return, not the least amount of work for the greatest return. Translation — major amounts of pain. That's also the problem with how affiliate marketers, network marketers, and IMs attempt to sell you the "dream," so to speak.
When people buy into the hype, they set their expectations extremely high. All they need to do is send a few emails out, and voila, instant millions overnight. Well, clearly it doesn't quite work like that. The issue at heart is that we will always do more to avoid pain than to gain pleasure in the short term, not in the long term.
That's why it's so hard to quit bad habits or do anything else that requires any semblance of struggle. The human mind is hardwired to avoid pain in the short term, not in the long term. It's part of our survival instinct. However, you can easily overcome this in the long term as long as you set your expectations the right way.
What Are The Best Ways To Make Money Online?
As someone who's been immersed in a number of online industries for quite some time, I know a thing or two about what it takes to succeed in this arena. However, just like you, I started at ground zero with little knowledge, but a great deal of passion. What I learned along the way were some invaluable lessons from failure that hurt at the time, but helped immensely in the grand scheme of things.
Today, if you're at all serious about succeeding in any endeavor, whether online or offline, you have to deliver enormous amounts of value. Yes, you have to do the most amount of work for the least initial return. This is especially true online. Why? Because it takes time to build authority and create an audience, two primary ingredients necessary to succeed in the wonderful world of commerce on the web.
Every successful business and person has delivered a tremendous amount of value at the outset. They did the most amount of work, and they inspected every detail meticulously, to ensure that they were doing right by their customers. As long as you keep that in mind, and you don't look for a quick buck, you'll succeed in the long term.
Find your niche — Figure out what you're good at or what you want to be good at. You don't need to be an expert right now, but you do need to decide where you're going to fit in if you're at all serious about making serious cash in the long term.
Build a blog on a custom domain — Your blog is your virtual home. Without it, you've no place to filter all that traffic and people interested in what you have to say. But don't build a blog on a subdomain like yoursite.wordpress.com, create a blog with a custom domain like www.yoursite.com.
Always add value — Adding value over time creates authority, and authority breeds trust, which in turn helps to grow your audience and readership. Without a significant following, you'll find it hard to gain any traction online. It simply takes time.
Create an email list and treat them right — One of the best ways to make money online is by marketing to an actively-interested group of email subscribers. While most people think that email marketing is dead, that's far from the truth. This is your greatest potential source of income online. Think of it as your money tree.
Don't sacrifice morals for a quick buck — At the outset, you'll want to do all sorts of things to make money online, but don't sacrifice your morals for a quick buck. Not only will you put people off, but you'll lose Google's trust. You also shouldn't concern yourself with things like Adsense or other ads on a blog before you have around 100,000 visitors per day. Yes, per day.
The point? Think about the long-term results of your activities. It will seem frustrating in the beginning. Then again, everything worthwhile is going to be difficult. It will take time. Stick it out and don't give up. In the meanwhile, here are some of the best and most legitimate ways you can make money online in the short and long term.
#1 — Write And Sell An Ebook
If you have a propensity for writing and you can slay with your prose, consider writing an ebook. While the market has certainly become saturated as of late, books that help teach people about a technical topic still sell extremely well. This is a great source of passive income but does require a large amount of effort at the outset before any money is generated.
You can sell your ebooks through Amazon's Kindle program or Apple's iTunes Connect, which gives you access to a large majority of the digital-book reading market and the barriers for entry are incredibly low. You don't need to invest lots of money to make this happen, but you do need to invest lots of time, not only in writing the ebooks, but in marketing them as well.
#2 — Sell Audiobooks With Audible
I've been in the audiobook-selling business for some time now and have over 3 dozen titles to my name. I know a thing or two about audiobooks. And, what I've noticed recently is that audiobooks are growing in popularity as their digital-ebook counterparts are becoming less and less popular.
People are turning to audio and visuals when it comes to technical subjects. However, you should consider doing an ebook first and turning it into an audiobook through a resource like Audible's ACX platform. You can hire a producer either through a royalty share program, so you don't have to shell out upfront cash, or you can do a pay-per-hour hire as well.
#3 — Create An App
Yes, this is far more technical. Unless you have the right app-development skills, doing this is going to be a significant undertaking. But, apps are also a great source of passive income when done the right way. You can reach a massive audience of smartphone users by building a great app.
However, like anything else truly worthwhile, apps require a significant investment of your time or money upfront. If you don't have the skills, then you have to hire someone who can assist you in creating a great app. But first you need to come up with an idea that will sell. Do the proper market research and analytics to come up with the right app.
#4 — Use Mechanical Turk
Mechanical Turk is Amazon's take on micro-jobs. These are small miniscule-jobs that you can do for other people, which they call HITs, or Human Intelligence Tasks. These are super simple tasks that anyone can do. Some examples are listing off some URLs with certain kinds of images for one cent, or recording a few phrases with a microphone for 6 cents.
Yes, they don't pay much, but if you string together hundreds of well-paying HITs, you can make a bit of money quickly online if you're in a crunch for cash. Also, it's important to note that you can also employ people with HITs to help you with whatever micro-tasks you might have.
#5 — Offer Gigs On Fiverr
If you have some professional experience in graphic design, accounting, social media marketing, web development or SEO, for example, you could offer gigs on Fiverr starting at $5 per job. You could perform a valuable service that you could also up-sell to make more money per gig.
Fiverr is one of the biggest providers in the gig economy on the web and you can sell a wide variety of services and products through this medium. Do the research and find out what you can offer. However, keep in mind that like any other money-making task, it takes time to succeed here. And stellar reviews will help you generate more and more income over time.
#6 — Sell Professional Services On Upwork or 99Designs
Upwork and 99Designs are two of the biggest resources for selling just about any professional service under the sun. If you have extensive experience in a field, you might want to consider selling your services through one of these sites. 99Designs only applies to graphic design while Upwork applies to nearly every other professional service.
However, like anything else, the beginning will be difficult. Before you have a significant track record and extensive reviews, sourcing work in one of these highly-competitive platforms will be difficult. Find the most successful people in your niche and try to model your approach and online profile after theirs.
#7 — Build A Blog
One of the most exhaustive endeavors when it comes to making money online is to build a blog. But we all know that building a blog with real readership is difficult. It takes a lot of work. And I'm speaking from experience. However, once you reach a certain point, the progress and momentum sways in your favor and it becomes far easier.
Blogs can easily generate tens of thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars per month when done right. Yes, that much. But it won't be easy to get there. However, looking back on it, a year from now you'll wish you started today. So why wait another moment?
#8 — Email Marketing
Email marketing is at the heart of every successful endeavor on the web. For those serious about making money online, email marketing is certainly where it's at. But it has to be done the right way. Before you even try to market anything to anyone via an email list, be sure that they're people that subscribed and opted in directly to you.
When you try to market to people via email out of the blue, you won't find as much success. But, if those email subscribers are actively and keenly interested in what you have to say, and they signed up directly through your blog or site, your success rates will be much higher.
16 Ways to Lose Weight Fast
Tweak your lifestyle
It's a familiar story: You pledge to honor a daily elliptical routine and count every last calorie. But soon, you're eating cupcakes at the office and grabbing happy hour mojitos, thinking, Oops, diet over.
There is a better way: Swap the all-or-nothing approach for one or two healthy switch-ups in your daily routine. "Doing this can lead to more weight loss than you ever imagined," says Marissa Lippert, RD, author of The Cheater's Diet.
In fact, we talked to readers who knocked off 10, 25, even 60 pounds with some easy tweaks. Borrow their slim-down secrets to transform your body the real-world way.
Swap your go-to order
"I used to eat out at restaurants up to nine times a week! By cutting back to just once a week and ordering a grilled chicken salad instead of a large bowl of pasta, I've lost 20 pounds in one month." —Kerri Butler, Joplin, MO
Skip the salty aisle
"I reached my goal weight after I stopped routinely buying snacks at the grocery store. If I wanted a bag of chips or a candy bar, I had to walk to the store to get it. That inconvenience usually made me ignore my cravings." —Heather Del Baso, Worcester, MA
Have a 300-calorie breakfast
"I used to skip breakfast, but now I never go without. I always eat about 300 calories of a healthy mix of protein and whole grains. My go-to meal: a sandwich with natural peanut butter and apple butter. It keeps my hunger down so I snack less throughout the day. In a little over a year, I've shed 65 pounds." —Bo Hale, Tulsa, OK
Get fit in five
"I try to fit in small bouts of exercise whenever possible, like doing jumping jacks or crunches during television commercials or dancing while washing dishes. This burns extra calories and keeps me from mindlessly munching in front of the TV. Now my clothes fit way better, and I’m more toned than ever." —Megan Tiscareno, Hammond, IN
Kick the habit
"I quit smoking, and right away joined a gym and started working out with a personal trainer. There was no way I could exercise and feel healthy if I kept lighting up. I've already dropped 37 pounds in three months!" —Leila Fathi, Memphis, TN
Do a purge
"I totally cleaned out my pantry. Once I replaced the foods I used to overindulge in, like ice cream, with lower-cal snacks, such as roasted sunflower seeds or Special K Chocolatey Delight cereal, I began making better choices automatically. Now, I'm slimmer than I was before I had my two kids!" —Lori Feldman, Coconut Creek, FL
Healthy up your happy hour
"After work, my colleagues and that i perpetually grabbed dinner—and it absolutely was sometimes fried. Then we have a tendency to modified things up. rather than nights out, we have a tendency to started walking and running around an area track. A year later, I’m down forty pounds."—Ellen Setzer, Cleveland, OH
Get fired up
"I loaded my iPod with jams that make me look forward to going to the gym. They energize me, allowing me to pick up speed on the elliptical—and because I want to hear my entire playlist, my workouts are longer now. Two months later, I'm down 13 pounds and have killer legs." —Kara Marshall, York, ME
Pile on the veggies
"By adding vegetables to the foods I love—like eating pizza topped with arugula and green peppers instead of pepperoni—I became so full so quickly that I no longer had room to eat things like chips or super-rich desserts. I said good-bye to four dress sizes!" —Janessa Mondestin, New York City, NY
Run your butt off
"When I wanted to fit into my skinny jeans again, I started running 20 minutes a day during my lunch hour. In two months, I've lost 20 pounds, have tons of energy, and just finished my first 5K. Those jeans? They're too big now!" —Lauren Castor, Anniston, AL
Downward dog it
"Yoga has become the best thing for my relationship with food and my body. From practicing it several times a week, I'm now more in touch with my hunger cues—so I eat intuitively and stop when I'm full. I've gone down a jeans size, and my cellulite has disappeared!" —Jessica Nicklos, Morgantown, WV
Don’t supersize it
"When going out for fast food, I used to get the large-size value meal. Now, I satisfy a craving by ordering just one item: a small order of fries or a six-piece box of chicken nuggets. So far, I've shaved off 16 pounds in seven weeks, and I'm on track to being thinner than my high school self for my 10-year reunion later this year." —Miranda Jarrell, Birmingham, AL
Save room for your dessert
"I budget for the treats I love. By eating healthy snacks like carrots and hummus, I have calories to splurge on a piece of chocolate and glass of wine each night. And I've still managed to lose 20 pounds in three months." —Elaine Higginbotham, Fort Worth, TX
Brave a new class
"Two months ago, I started going to Zumba twice a week. The crazy dance routines really tone your muscles—especially legs and abs—and give you a heart-pounding cardio workout. Eleven pounds later, I've almost reached my goal weight." —Morgan Howe, Rochester, NY
Nix nighttime eating
"Each time I needed to lose the baby weight, I stopped eating after 6:30 p.m. five nights a week. The other two evenings were reserved for nights out. Most of what I'd eat at night was junk food anyway, so it took only two months to get my pre-baby body back." —Deborah Gilboa, Pittsburgh, PA
Walk with Spot
"My dog and I go for a walk every day, even if it's for just 10 minutes around the block. When the weather is horrible, her enthusiasm gives me the incentive to get out when I wouldn't dare lace up my sneakers otherwise. All the walking adds up: I've lost more than 50 pounds this past year." —Jamie Altholz, Denver, CO
