Tim Rees

Went down to Cornwall for the weekend. I am just preparing to pack and make the 4 hour journey home. But before I did I wanted to have a quick look to see how February was continuing after such a good initial week.

I am pleased to say the numbers still look promising, in fact the after 2 weeks our revenues are up form 35% to 38% better than the same period in January.

Fingers crossed we don’t have a major catastrophe and end we do February strongly. I’ve the more boring task now of working out exact budgets for marketing and development over the next few months, it would be nice to have as much available for marketing as possible.

I intend to be as aggressive as is sensible to pump some growth in over next few months now. We’ve been cruising for a little while, playing it safe, building a solid foundation and investing a lot in to development. The time has come to start taking a few more calculated risks in promoting what we have, and launching what is almost ready.

After a couple of flat months we’re back on our steep upward trend again. We’ve had a 35% sales growth this month compared to the same period last month. This is rather good timing as it’s the shortest month and we are just days away from substantially increasing our marketing spend.

Next month I intend to roll out new features which should work well with any increase in traffic to fuel growth further. Additional mailing will be targeting both new members conversion rates, and paying members retention. We will be promoting several new sites, which by being completely in-house we can do in a way which provides extra value to our members, and hopefully in the long run a better bottom line for us.

It is definitely onwards and upwards with February set to be another record month.

These last few days have all been very hectic. I am trying to manage a number of things and as a result I am all over the place. Late nights, baggy eyes and unshaven!

Reviewing some design and development on a couple of new sites, trying to build up some interest on one of these simultaneously, without actually having the site ready! Oh, and finally I am looking to launch some marketing any day, so need to review and get some member acquisition estimates, and targets in place, launch the campaign and begin optimising it!

These are things which I can pass on to others to manage. But it’s all very important and I feel much more comfortable getting started myself, then employing someone else who’ll be able to see how I’ve been doing it, and how I might like to see it continued. Or more likely put me in my place, and fix all my errors. Either way something I have to do for a short period.

I was hoping to have a couple of extras live by now which would be alleviating the pain in my wallet, but sadly I’ve had to push them back while I do all this.

The good news is once all of this is done. I will be able to get back in to a slightly more routine schedule, and start seeing more growth.

It’s 2009! Obviously nothing is different from a few days ago but I’ll still use it as an opportunity to reflect on 2008 and look to the future.

Last month sales stabilised a little – December was 5% down on November. Still a healthy figure despite new subscriptions being much lower in December.

2008 vs. 2007
Revenues were up 54%. Sounds reasonable, but in reality this is a small figure. I was not actually growing my business through most of 2008, I simply had slightly higher income. Much of this growth came in the last few months when I relaunched my own ventures. Had I done this in January 2008, and not grown beyond current revenues. 2008 would have been 124% better than 2007.

So 2008 was a mixed bag. I started the year determined to grow World Dating Partners and reap some of the rewards for it’s success. As it turns out for whatever reasons I wasn’t able to do that and as no more than an employee/worker I left with nothing! But I’ve ended the year very positively.

2009 starts with various projects on the go. Some about to go live. Revenues are higher than I’ve ever had, and I am setting myself some ambitious targets for the years end:

• Launch 3-4 unique sites
• Daily revenues to exceed £20,000
• Decide on which Aston/Ferrari/TVR or even Lotus I shall buy!
• Build an extension to the house
• Have a lot more fun than in 2008
• Last but most importantly, with another addition to the family due I should do my best to do all my fatherly duties

I know through 2009 things are going to worsen for many individuals and businesses but I hope most of you can have an optimistic outlook for 2009. Personally I see this as an opportunity to get a larger % of market share as bigger players struggle.

I’ve been meaning to post this for some time, but I wanted to find the right software on my mac for editing images – I’ve finally managed to figure something out!

The gist of this post is that I started years ago playing around with internet businesses and in 2006 launched a few online personals sites. These had a nice steady growth for the first 8 or 9 months. Then the opportunity came along for me to work personally with another company, on a full time basis. I did this, but in doing so my own business stopped growing, until very recently. The past 5 months I’ve been dedicated 100% to my own ventures once more……

This graph shows the history.
Red line is my sites income, blue is other personal income from employment/consultancy. Comments below show the key areas.

1. Steady growth from launch
2. From Feb 2007 – Jul 2008 while I had a slowly increasing personal income, as I was not working on my own business the sites instantly stopped growing, though obviously I did have some other slowly increasing income
3. From Jul 2008 onwards I stopped working elsewhere, and very quickly turned around the static state of my business.
4. Had I not done other work and the trend continued from as it did in the early days then I would, in theory, revenues would be at exactly the same point I am now. In reality I think they would be easily higher due to faster growth I am currently seeing and I know will come again.

Moral of the story!?
This is somewhat stating the obvious – but if you are an entrepreneur and have a business or idea and faith it will succeed then stick to it!! Thankfully, I never abandoned what I was doing all together and have been able to pick it up again very quickly. Originally I hoped I would have been able to spend more time still driving my own business and less “working for da man”, but in reality it went very much in the opposite direction. Still I have no regrets especially with the future outlook looking good on all my current sites and ever nearing the launch of other sites which have excellent prospects – even worst case scenario!

Finally – I’ve not been paying close attention to December’s running totals. From seeing a few days figures I had thought that there would be a dip this month. Not surprising with people spending money elsewhere on gifts on the lead up to Christmas. But having just reviewed it I see that though it was a slow start to the month, and initial sales are down, the last few days have started to pick up and we again up a few % on last month.

Continuing my analysis on Dating white labels…..

I’ve used a few systems to run my own brands on, but most recently whitelabeldating.com and worlddatingpartners.com.
If you are looking to launch a site on a 3rd parties platform, especially where they provide the support and billing infrastructure you should also consider things like their client/partner support as this can make a big difference in getting you off the ground and running in the first place. But for the basis of this exercise I am purely looking at a few statistics and nothing else.

I have to stress that it is impossible to do exact comparisons without me being allowed to look in to each companies own traffic logs and financial summaries. I think that is asking a little much, and I’m not even all that interested!
I have also NOT conducted these comparisons under any sort of scientific conditions. I have simply run enough volumes, over long enough periods to produce what I consider reasonable data sets. Others might disagree, and of course may have seen different results…….

OK – Disclaimer over!

I’ve opted to use indicators most people don’t consider to highlight some differences which will make a big impact in long term bottom line. And it’s all common sense anyway so I am sure I am not telling you anything new.

Here are the KPI’s I am looking at:
Rollover commission. The % of previous months commission from sales that has rolled over in to recurring commission this month.
3mth Recurring. The % of commission from sales 3 months ago, that has rolled over in to recurring commission this month.

White Label Dating First 4 Months
Rollover Commission = 72.3%
3mth Recurring = 29.3%

Notes: Expect both to climb as sites are only less than 4 months old and these figures only include members who at most have paid 4 consecutive months.

World Dating Partners First 4 months, Best, Last 4 months
Rollover Commission = 27.2%, 55.7%, 44.1%
3mth Recurring = 1.21%, 15.5%, 13.2%

Notes: The “Best” and “Last 4 months” figures were taken on sites which had been running for over 12 months, so DO also include members that could have been paying for well over 12 months.

Conclusions
Take a look at the following two cases. Assume both have the same fee structure, initial commission and have the same conversion free members in to to paid.

1) with 50% rollover commission, £1000 earned commission in month 1, 6 months later this will have earned a total of £1985.
2) with 75% rollover commission, £1000 earned commission in month 1, 6 months later this will have earned a total of £3466.

This means over 6 months you’ll earn 75% MORE with a rollover conversion of 75% instead of 50%. Over 12 months that’s 95% more you’ll earn.

So your lesson to learn: The rollover % is MASSIVELY important on any residual income you generate, forget conversion rates!
I am obviously happy that right now, with same traffic and forgetting any improvement in initial conversions rates, I am set to at least double my sales from the same traffic. If you pump that back in to marketing, as we are, you get much MUCH faster growth….