Business model or how to calculate your unit economics for your dating project
A virtual community should and can generate a real profit. Think over the methods you are going to use to earn money with your website. It can be:
membership payments
paid services
advertisements
Membership payments imply that the site users pay a certain amount to get
access to a dating website or its sections. What‟s important is putting as few obstacles in their way as possible. Have popular payment gateways integrated into your site. Use SMS billing. Offer free trial periods or give free access to certain site pages as an extra incentive.
Paid services may include moving users‟ profiles up in search results, access to the
multimedia content, mailbox, messengers or video chats, sending virtual presents and e-cards, and many other features. The list of the paid services is only limited by your fantasy and flexibility of the dating site builder that you select.
Advertisement earnings may come from many sources: contextual advertising,
banners, partaking in affiliate programs, and so on.
You can also sell merchandise in an online gift store, by organizing offline dating
events, running a blog, launching a matchmaking/consulting service, partnering with
flower delivery services and so forth.
Unit Economics Metrics explained
The Unit Economics was born during the Dot-com bubble in the early 2000s.
Many entrepreneurs understood nothing about business models and monetization. Therefore, business communities offered a simple way to assess the viability of a future project - to calculate the profit per client.
We've created a demo Unit Economics for you to see how much you can earn with your dating project and what you need to do to reach those numbers.
Let's first talk about what everything means and then how you can use it:
Unit Economics Metrics
Period - we specify any period to calculate your goal: months, weeks, days, etc.
Overall users - we indicate how many users you have overall on your site and/or apps.
New users - how many users you need to attract within this month, week, day, etc.
С1 - your site/app first order conversion.
You can calculate it by simply dividing all of your users by paying members. E.g. you have 1000 overall users and 250 paying members this month, so your C1 would be 25%.Buyers - how much paying members you have based on your site/app C1 and overall users.
Orders - how many orders you'll get based on the number of your paying members and their Average Payment Count.
AMPPU - Average Margin Per Paying User or how much you get from every paying member, including the expanses, COGS.
AvPrice - what's the average check on your site/app.
You can calculate it by summing all of your revenue for this month/week/day and then dividing it by the number of paying users. E.g. you've earned $3750, and you had 250 paying users. It doesn't matter how much every one of them payed, we simply divide 3750 by 250 and get $15 as your average check.COGS or margin - your Cost Of Goods Sold or how much you get out of every dollar spent.
I.e. for every payment your users make, you pay a commission for payment gateway. Let's say you need to pay 35 cents from each dollar you get, leaving you with $0.65 and your margin will be 65%.APC - Average Payment Count or the average number of purchases made by 1 paying member.
E.g. you have 100 paying users and 150 purchases within 1 month, so your APC would be 1.5.CAC - your Customer Acquisition Cost or how much you spend to attract a new customer to your platform.
ARPU - Average Revenue Per User or how much ever user, and not not only paid ones, pay you on average.
E.g. you have 100 users and 50 paid ones, your total revenue is $500 and ARPU would be $5 while your average revenue per paying user would be $10 because we don't count it the free users here.Revenue - everything you'll get without the expenses.
Gross Profit - how much money you'll get to your account, including the costs you've indicated in COGS part.
Acquisition Costs - how much you need to spend to get required number of new users with their specified acquisition cost.
Profit - how much money you'll earn excluding the acquisition costs.
How to use the Unit Economics
First, to get a reliable prediction for your business, you'll need to understand metrics and what they mean. Check the list above if you haven't browsed it yet.
To get your Unit Economics straight, you need to understand the metrics. You can either use the numbers we've put in the demo project or input your own metrics data if you have any.
When you input your data, you'll get your revenue numbers.
From here you can tweak the numbers for every metrics to see how would your profit change if you increase this or that metrics.
View our screencast to learn more about how to use it:
How much can I earn with my online dating site?
PG Dating Pro script is a perfect solution that will not only make it possible for you to create a place where singles can communicate, meet, find love but will actually let you profit from it – that is if you decide to offer fee-based services on your dating website.
We have made a research and found out average fees that dating site owners charge their site members. Based on that and the amount of paying site users, we have calculated possible revenue for the site services and membership payments (the functionality that is available in Dating Pro script). Please take a look at the tables below.
Table 1 shows you how much you can earn with some of the most popular paid services:
Table 2 shows you how much you can earn with just the one premium membership and three membership periods. As a matter of fact, Dating Pro will let you create several premium memberships, for example, Silver, Gold, Platinum user groups, and so on.
Disclaimer:
While we acknowledge the importance of having paid services and premium memberships on your site, they alone cannot guarantee a steady income. Be sure to continuously attract new members to your site and keep them engaged and returning to your site for more interesting content and activities.
There are other ways to earn with your dating site besides paid memberships, for example by displaying third-party banners on your website, or by selling merchandise with the gift store, etc. For more details please feel free to contact us.
Help wanted? Apply within for a free quote—contact sales today!
What NSMs (North Star Metrics) can there be in a dating platform?
- Percentage of upgrades to paid services,
- Percentage of users who transition to continuous communication (for example, the Communication stage in the dating sales funnel).
For a dating platform, several North Star Metrics (NSM) could be highly effective in measuring the core value that your product delivers to customers. Here are some potential NSMs for a dating platform:
Conversion Rate to Paid Services: This metric tracks the percentage of users who upgrade from free to paid memberships or services. It helps in understanding how well the platform is monetizing its user base.
Engagement Rate in Continuous Communication: This measures the percentage of users who move to continuous communication stages, like regular messaging or interactions beyond initial contact. This is crucial for a dating site as it reflects successful matchmaking.
Number of First Dates: Tracking the number of first dates or in-person meetings arranged through the platform can be a powerful NSM. It directly correlates to the platform's effectiveness at creating meaningful connections.
User Retention Rate: This metric measures how many users continue to use the platform over a given period. High retention rates might indicate that users find the platform useful and engaging.
Match Satisfaction Score: By collecting feedback on the quality of matches or the satisfaction with the connections formed, the platform can gauge how well it meets user expectations.
Daily Active Users (DAU)/Monthly Active Users (MAU): These metrics provide insights into the active user base of the platform, indicating overall engagement and the platform’s health.