First and foremost, I'd like to thank DatingRev and their splendid co-branding system. You've done a fantastic job and opened a lot of opportunities for me and other webmasters like myself.

I have been asked by Mr. Jason Allan from DatingRev to write a short testimonial on how I promoted my site during the month of July. Please feel free to use the following ideas and pointers to your own advantage.

Trial and error

A couple of months ago, a friend of mine told me about DatingRev. The confident recommendation combined with the easy-to-use free DatingRev membership convinced me to start an account. Being a somewhat experienced webmaster (I run a couple of other medium size websites) I realized making a move into the online dating market would turn out to be a profitable venture. After all, online dating was, and still is, a multi-million dollar market. In no time I launched a customized a site.

In a matter of days, I had my own dating service up and running through their database. At this point, my total costs rested at $8.95 for the domain name I had to register. Now came the hard part: how was I going to attract users, get sign-ups and ultimately make a profit. Initially I started small with a few links from my existing sites. The response was not bad but a bit slow. I was receiving roughly 50 visitors per day and approximately 10 people signed up to my service. However, I got a thorough idea of how things worked and I familiarized myself with how the numbers converted. Within 10 days of having the site I made my first sale. My initial investment of $8.95 was covered.

I was content with the results but never considered taking it to the next level. All this changed the minute I got an e-mail from DatingRev, announcing their July top affiliate contest. This whole incident was sort of ironic because a couple of days prior to the announcement, I was attending a small business startup seminar. The main speaker repeatedly emphasized the fact that "You need to spend money, to make money” and that “Marketing is key.” With this in mind, I decided to invest in my dating site. I already knew from my small experiments, that so far the numbers worked out in my favor. If I were going to lose, it would only be a miniscule amount.

Winning the July contest by the numbers

I was asked to go into as much detail as possible so please hang on tight. There will be many numbers coming your way. However, by breaking it down I hope to illustrate just how easy it is to make a profit.

I gave myself a generous $2500 advertising budget and expected to make it back in 2 months. It is a good idea to jot down your financial goals and a business plan. For example, how much money do you want to make? And more importantly how are you going to make it? This is helpful in terms of keeping focused and determined.

Here is what I did: I started by opened an Overture account (www.overture.com) and put in $500. After which, I deposited the same amount into an Adsense account from Google. With the remaining $1500 I contacted a firm that specializes in e-mail marketing (www.elink-media.com) and did a mailing with them (4 million people). Here's how the numbers converted.

Throughout the month of July I received

The total revenue for the month of July was $977.73 (from regular subscribers) + $269.73 (from 6 month plans) + $143.91 (from 3 1-year plans) = $1391.37

Now, after spending $2500 I only made back $1391 but here's the catch: I knew that the minute August came around, rebills would start coming in­--and they did. By middle of August, I had 45 of those 109 people rebill and I expect another 45 to do so by the end of the month. That's another 90 times $8.97 = $807 which puts me around $2200, pretty much the same number that I started with.

When I invested the initial $2500, I did not expect to make the money back so fast. Judging by the way that things are going right now, I will exceed my target financial goal. From September on, every penny I make will count as profit. In addition, I will also be receiving $3000 from DatingRev for being the top affiliate.

I was determined to give this a shot. I did and things worked out for me in the end. I hope this will help all you aspiring web marketers and your DatingRev sites. I wish you all the best of luck.

Philippe Senechal
philsene@gmail.com