Posts Tagged ‘dating software’

SkaDate Dating Software:
February 14th, Traffic, And Other Nice Things

Tuesday, February 14th, 2012

SkaDate Dating Software: February 14th, Traffic, And Other Nice ThingsGreetings SkaDate Dating Software followers! It is finally February 14th, so you know what that means, don’t you? A bunch of rough European men are about to start acting like drama queens every time they trip over other rough European men. Ah yes, the UEFA Championship League restarts today. The joy!

Well, we can certainly talk about that ball-game, or we can drop all pretense and accept that February 14th is all about St. Valentine’s, whether we like it or not. And just to make sure – we certainly do like the holiday, since the day drives a lot of traffic to online dating sites powered by SkaDate dating script.

This is understandable and happens every year around this time, because, let’s face it – who wants to be alone on St. Valentine’s? Not even UEFA Championship League players, I’m sure. Even they will indulge in some type of male bonding once done with sliding on the grass on their knees, or whatever they do for 90 minutes.

Unfortunately, a natural member-magnet of a celebration like St. Valentine’s isn’t going to last long, so you have to be prepared to drive traffic to your dating site on your own, during other, lesser holidays.

Good thing that half the work is cut out for you, since SkaDate (recently voted Runner-up in the Best Dating Software category at the 2012 iDate Awards) already includes a number of nifty SEO features. The question is – can you get really creative with your site to the point of increasing the incoming traffic? I’m happy to give you a very positive answer – yes. Yes, you can!

As a dating solution, SkaDate 9 gives users both, power and freedom to be unique – any site can be transformed in a number of ways to convey the desired spirit and suit the purpose of the coming holiday. Play dress up with design by changing numerous free dating themes and templates, give party bonuses to you members with user credits, create new virtual gifts appropriate for the season, send greetings to your users, etc.

Don’t forget the power of words either. Especially when those words are free marketing. I’ll teach you – wait till the holiday approaches and then quickly grab your keyboard and start typing away guest posts for blogs targeting potential customers. For instance, a week before February 14th is best spent promoting your dating site on European forums discussing UEFA Championships. See, that wasn’t that hard.

Being a dating software vendor, SkaDate team congratulates all of our active and potential customers with the most important holiday on the planet, the St.Valentine’s Day. We love you all, and hope your members feel the same. Love never gets old, and that means there’ll be always a job for you, little cupids! Now go out there and make that goal happen.

SkaDate Dating Software Niches 101: Pet Dating

Friday, February 10th, 2012

Here at SkaDate Dating Software Blog I mention the importance of the proper niche selection on a regular basis. That’s because I’m kinda like the unseen presence in Groundhog Day – I repeat stuff to make sure the point gets across. On the other hand, let’s forget about that comparison, since, you know, some people say it took Bill Murray one thousand years of iterative suffering to get his point.

I’d like to think, that type of unfair karmic punishment is unnecessary in our case. Because the point I want to make is that understanding niches and picking the right one will get you ahead of the competition. (That and using SkaDate dating script, of course). And just to make sure the Groundhog reference is not completely wasted, let’s talk about the niche that’s been growing in popularity in recent years. Pet Dating. What? You think you can’t have groundhogs as pets? Here’s a picture to make all your points moot:

 

And before moving any further let’s quickly fend off any unfortunate souls who wondered here thinking we are talking about dating actual pets. Uh, maybe next time fellas.

Singles with pets, who bond over their common passion for specific animals, or animals in general – that’s what I’m talking about. Because dating based on regular passion is too mainstream these days.

But seriously, meeting someone who shares your love for the same animal tells you quite a lot about the person. Also, it removes a bunch of initial guesswork so prevalent in online dating. In addition you’ll have a whole bank of ready-to-use conversation topics, and your pet will become an easy way out any time your match shows the signs of losing interest in… well, you.

Now that we’ve covered basic advantages for members of pet dating sites, let’s see what benefits of starting online dating business in this niche brings.

First of all, you’ll have a clearly defined area of interest, and that’s always a plus. The better defined your niche, the easier it is to find for potential members. But unlike sites based on those rare fetishes known only to Deviant Art fanatics, pet dating sites have a much wider appeal and target audience.

Look around, generic sites for singles with pets are popping up all over the place like mushrooms. Do you know why? Because they are in demand. But those portals that truly succeed, go into an even more specific territory in pursuit of a customer.

Purrsonals.com for cat lovers anyone? What about The Puppy Dog Place? Or the ever popular EquestrianSingles, a site for those who want to ride their horses together. And no, I have no idea if horses are pets, but they sure as hell are animals, so let’s not discriminate against them. Finally, who can forget the granddaddy of them all, a website for pet-fish-singles, PlentyOfFish.com. No wait, that isn’t right… Anyway…

The commercial potential for pet dating sites is quite strong, both in terms of member fees and other indirect opportunities. Think specific affiliate programs, banner advertising from local pet stores, or giving your members miscellaneous eCommerce options (readily available at your fingertips in the new SkaDate 9).

You know what? I think I’ve said too much. In fact I’ve just re-read what I’ve said so far, and now I’m ready to disappear for a while. If anyone asks, I’m building my own dating site for pet groundhog singles in my area, before anyone else gets the idea. Oh, c’mon, there are plenty of other animals! Choose any.

 

 

 

 

 

SkaDate Dating Software Runner-Up at 2012 iDate Awards

Tuesday, February 7th, 2012

SkaDate Dating Software Runner-Up at 2012 iDate AwardsLadies and Gentlemen!

We would like to express our deepest gratitude to you for staying loyal to us, and voting for SkaDate Dating Software at the 2012 iDate Awards.

For the last several years your overwhelming support made us a triple finalist in the Best Dating Software category. Then, on January 24th, for the first time ever, SkaDate dating script won the Runner-Up spot among seven other candidates, accumulating almost 20% of all final votes.

Inside SkaDate we consider this result a true victory, since it is virtually impossible for standalone software to compete against the army of white label voters.

Our second place tells everyone in the industry that SkaDate has indeed come a long way to be considered truly best among genuine (not white label) dating software vendors.

Once again, thank you all for choosing SkaDate Dating Software, and bringing it to the top. This result gives us an enormous inspiration boost to continue providing the best possible service, as well as improving our existing script and coming up with new innovative solutions.

SkaDate Dating Software vs White Label Dating Solutions

Tuesday, January 17th, 2012

by Zima

SkaDate Dating Software is one of the most popular and acclaimed dating scripts on the market, and there is a good reason why it is chosen again and again over various white label solutions for the past seven years. Nevertheless, many new clients who want to start online dating business often compare the two options at hand, and we are here to help them.

‘White label’ refers to a product or service produced by one company and than re-branded and sold by other companies as their own. The term comes from the world of vinyl records, where prior-to public release promo copies were sent to DJs, bearing no official artwork but a simple white label instead.

In general, white label is seen as something mass-produced and generic. Think low-end electronics or supermarkets with store brand goods – these are usually just re-brands made by someone else.  And there’s nothing wrong with that – sometimes white labels can reduce costs and save time. The same works for white label online dating, but not quite.

You see, the demand for online dating is still huge. There are close to 100 million singles in the US alone who are ready to be virtually matched right this moment. The business is striving and the industry is frequently referred to as recession-proof.  Nevertheless, the honeymoon might be over soon thanks to quickly growing competition.

Why am I telling you this? Because the only way to succeed in online dating nowadays is to be unique and original. No one needs mass-produced and generic products if those are readily available from big brands only a click away. Online dating startups have to rely on a lot of creative freedom, target niches, and be innovative, something white labels just cannot offer.

Only stand-alone platforms, especially the ones based on something like SkaDate dating script with its unencrypted source code, give users full control over their websites. They will be in charge of every aspect of the development, from design – to database expansion – to niche-specific modification, etc. Basically, anything can be done with the original script given enough effort.

With white labels new clients get a ready, generic dating solution and a member database used by all other numerous customers. That’s a problem right there, since all the new members brought to a white label website by admins will dissolve in the common pool. Needless to say, this also works against any niche concepts, since new members will be part of the same database used for, say, adult and christian sites at the same time. Do you think your members will like this idea?

But maybe the money’s good here? Ross Williams, the founder of WhiteLabelDating himself said that some of his company’s partners managed to reach a pretty decent monthly profit, but only after spending in the north of $60.000 per month on marketing.  And now look around – notice how virtually all of the dating websites that are actually making millions of dollars and setting trends run on stand-alone dating software like SkaDate? Yeah, it’s not a coincidence.

See, that’s all relative, of course, but there’s one thing to know about money in relation to white label dating solutions. No matter how hard admins work on their sites, market them, grow databases, etc., 50% of the profit will always go to the original white label.

So, not only users don’t have full control over their sites, cannot make them truly unique and target narrow niches, the profit is also split 50/50. This is a trade-off for having less overhead and not worrying about building a loyal member base.

Perhaps, white label dating solutions were a very viable option just a few years ago, when the market was still exploding. Unfortunately, that time is gone now, and more effort has to go into launching dating sites these days to make them really stand out and be successful. Hopefully you’ll find this information useful, because the final choice is up to you.

SkaDate Dating Software Update: Word from Developer

Friday, January 13th, 2012
SkaDate Dating Software Update: Word from DeveloperSkaDate 9, the new version of the acclaimed SkaDate Dating Software was released less than a month ago, which means that once again we are getting a lot of requests to simplify the updating procedures. (Read this post for more general information about software upgrades).

Rather than repeating the same answer over and over in blog comments and private support correspondence, we decided to get one definite explanation about the issue, right from developers of the SkaDate dating script. Here’s what they had to say:

Frequent requests for simplification of the update procedure mean only one thing – not everyone fully understand what PHP software is, and how it works.

SkaDate software is written in PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor scripting language, which is open source, so anyone can modify it in any way. Most SkaDate customers do just that by hiring outsourced developers or introducing various modifications themselves. Consequently, numerous modified SkaDate versions on hands all differ from our original default version.

The release of a new software version (like SkaDate 9) means that we modified the original code of existing files and also added new ones.  This is necessary for the implementation of new features and functions.

If a client never introduced custom changes to files modified in the new SkaDate version, the update of these files will be as easy as it gets – said files can be simply replaced. It is, however, a different story, if some changes have been made after all.

If that happened, custom code changes should be merged with alterations done by our programmers in the new SkaDate build. This is absolutely vital for not losing modifications introduced before the release of the new version.

(Just to be clear – file merging is the manual transformation of previously made modifications, with the goal of making them conflict-free compatible with modified files and features of the new build).

That’s how it works in any real open source PHP software, and that is why it is impossible to create some sort of automatic update system for similar PHP applications. Simply put – it is virtually impossible to automatically update everyone’s software, retaining all of the custom modifications introduced by hundreds of customers.

For instance, take Word Press – the popular blogging software. Indeed, it does has an automatic update feature. However, said update overrides all custom code changes made by users, so any modifications will be lost if it is used.

We knew about this issue even while working on our first ever update script, and we tried to find a solution. It seems that the only way to make the process easier for customers is to introduce a semi-automatic update script.

This means that our script can compare files of a customer’s SkaDate version, with files of the same default version (without custom modification), and also with files in the new SkaDate build. Let’s see how it works, using the file index.php as an example:

  • If the file was not custom-modified by the client, but was revised by us in the new build, the script will automatically overwrite it;
  • If the file did not exist at all in client’s current and our default versions, but appeared in the new build, the script will automatically add it to the current version;
  • If the file was custom-modified by the client, while we have also introduced some changes to it in the new build, the file will end up on the Merge List. This tells the client that the file must be merged with both – custom changes and changes introduced by us in the new build;
  • If the file exists in client’s current and our default versions, but is not present in the new build, it will end up on the list of files to be removed. The script does not do it automatically to avoid the risk of deleting files by mistake, thus losing some of custom changes.

SkaDate Dating Software Update: Word from DeveloperHopefully, this shows that we indeed tried our best to simplify and semi-automate the update process as much as possible, while retaining all of the custom code modifications. Any other way of automatic update will result in the loss of all custom modifications.

Note, that the person performing an update should have at least a basic knowledge of PHP programming, since updating any PHP software is the same as working on a custom modification – PHP code will be accessed directly.

We have a number of clients who have necessary PHP skills and perform all of the updates on their own. At the same time we also allow our customers to work on updates without our input, by hiring third-party specialists. However, we also have a paid service in house just in case clients are not qualified enough to work with PHP, or simply prefer to not be bothered with updates at all. In the end it’s the customer’s choice.