IwantU
It’s been a little while since we have taken a look at IwantU. If you are unfamiliar with them, I’ll give a very brief description. IwantU is an online dating site that has been around since 1996. That’s a long time for a dating site! The comparative advantage is their dating community options. You are given 3 choices when signing up. You can join the
- Adult Club
- Dating Club
- Alternative Club.
If you have any web dating experience, then I’m sure you would know the difference between the three. You have clean, dirty( sex dating ), and experimental. The site as a whole, definitely has a lot to offer.
When looking strictly at their traffic, they seem to be dropping slightly when looking at 3 month statistics. According to Alexa, their Global traffic ranking is about 12,000 and their US traffic ranking is almost 7,000. And to take an even closer look at where their traffic comes from, affiliates make up 22% of overall hits. That’s a huge piece. So let’s take a look at why……
Several factors are most likely responsible for such a big piece of their traffic coming from their affiliate dating program. One is that you can run your own “Private Label Dating Site.” What does this mean? It means you can have a exact replica of IwantU with your own domain name basically. This is pretty good if you are not sure if you would like to startup a dating website, or become a regular affiliate. It’s kind of in between the 2 options. Another advantage of their affiliate program is their high payout options. Their options are….
- 70% rev share
- $100 per signup
- $10 per profile
- $1 per click
- 5% webmaster referral
Not too bad as far as dating affiliate payouts are concerned. I haven’t had the opportunity to speak with anyone who is an IwantU affiliate so I cannot say how well it converts. But if it is comparable to other top dating sites, then I would say it would be worth a shot with such high options.
I made a profile on the Adult side of IwantU to check things out and see what the site was like. The initial signup is not bad at all. If you pretty much know what you want to say, it shouldn’t take longer than 5 minutes. Once you make the profile you are immediately asked to up your membership with 2 options. Without upgrading you can hardly do anything.
- VIP Select Membership
- VIP Membership
The VIP Select Membership costs $35.95/month and the VIP Membership costs $24.95/month. You can save about 30% by paying for 90 days at once. I would be sure that you like the dating site before making that decision.
Benefits of signing up as a VIP Member include unlimited messages, unlimited profile views, unlimited instant messaging, higher search rank, chat room access, 60 video on demand minutes, and some others. VIP Select members get all of the VIP benefits and rank at the top of searches, rank at the top of chat rooms, customer service priority, and special promotions. The regular VIP sounds like a better value to me personally, but I haven’ paid for either. Just basing my decision off of the list of features. IwantU offers you 3 months free if you aren’t not satisfied with your initial 3 months as a paying member.
IwantU also likes to try and sell you its video on demand service. They offer you 15 free minutes to get you to signup. Their VOD service offers 8 channels. Looks like a pretty standar video on demand service if you are interested in that. I persoanlly would think the members would want to use the site as a dating service as opposed to a porn video site.
On the main page I notice and icon that said, “New Featured Porn Star.” I clicked the profile and it turned out to be Brea Bennett, who is not someone I am familiar with. She is obviously attractive. Her profile was minimal and for most of her responses said “ask me” instead of giving an answer. So I click on reply to and it takes you directly to her website. Evey contact icon takes you directly off of IwantU and to her paysite. Even on the bottom of the page, where the compose message field is, sends you to her website. Not a very good benefit for existing members of the site. All that is doing is promoting individual porn sites.
IwantU has a community page with tons of features for its online dating members. To name a few there live webcams, singles dating parties, aphrodite personal match system, postcards, games, and more. Normal features in this section include instant messaging and browsing other dating members profile pictures.
Your free profile pretty much doesn’t allow you to anything besides look at all the features you cannot access. As a male anyway. I was trying to gauge how many members were online and the site makes it very easy to watch. At the top they have a number posted and it represents the number of online daters who are using that particular niche of the site. By far, the most popular is the adult dating section. About 80% of the online members were in that category. The second most prominent category would have to be just the regular dating club section. That made up for about 15% of online members. The other 5% obvioulsy goes to the alternative club.
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