VentureBeat

hi, matt. conru doesn't need vc, though he met with vcs in the long ago past, who reportedly said, ''we'll invest only if you shed the adult sites.'' my point was that most investors can't touch a company like this, at any stage. even today, despite adultfriendfinder's brand and whatever it's pulling in (conru won't exactly say), selling a stake in the company, or the entire thing, is going to be challenging. in his words even buyout firms, several of which he has met with in the last year, "shy away from adult stuff."
as for alexa, i'm in agreement but you're right, no one else tracks adult sites.

Thanks, Connie, for the insight.

Btw, I don't think I would have pointed out the Alexa thing had it not been in the article's headline area. Tis is an ax that's worth grinding because alexa is really being abused. It was in the top of Newsweek's piece about Digg, saying Digg was nipping on the NYT traffic. I'm hearing from people that some folks are gaming Alexa, downloading the software and hitting a site's page a few hundred times to falsely magnify their traffic.

Matt,
You're right that Alexa is unreliable. Relying on (mostly tech-savvy) people who download its software does open it up to abuse, but it also leads to self-selection bias (more than a few bloggers have suspected that it over-represents early adopter services like Digg). Abuse notwithstanding, I would guess that it seriously under-represents sex sites and other services whose users might not want to be counted. Ripping Alexa is justified, but don't presume that it's always off in one direction.

There are many reasons many investors shy away from these adult companies. The top three off the top of my head are: (1) VC's are often forbidden by our agreements from doing so; (2) We prefer to invest in horizontal plays; and(3)The public markets haven't recognized the value in most cases of these companies, which makes it inconsistent with a venture model.

Having said that, there certainly are some profitable companies in the space and ones that individual investors should be salivating to fund (www.heatseek.com).

David, is there any reliable data on Heetseek's traction?

Matt, he's not raking in 'hundreds of millions'. That's not what the article says. Balance Sheet, Income Statment. Big difference.

Chris, I know, this is getting confusing. The Merc today had a chart in the paper version that said "hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue," so I'm not making this up. Perhaps Connie can help clear this up. I'm pinging her to see.

hi, again, chris is right. the hundreds of millions refers to revenue, not profit. like most private company owners, conru wasn't open to discussing how much the company is making. he said only that it's profitable and has been for 10 years...

Only saw the on line version, no the chart there. Reminds me of the sex.com story....

AFF pulls in some serious money - I used to be a partner at an adult payment processing company back in 2001 and we processed transactions for one of AFF's lagging competitors who was consistently processing $200K - $250K /day in sales. Back then 15 - 20% of sales went to payment processors, even with that type of sales volume - not sure what it is today.

There is now an interesting alternative to Alexa - called Complete Snapshot - it can be used to compare pageviews and visit length.


It is affiliated with Bill Gross - and uses various methods to garner data....


Here are the comparison results for Adultfinder and FAcebook ;-)

http://snapshot.compete.com/adultfriendfinder.c...

I think its time for an Adult VC ;)

AdultFriendFinder and Passion.com are maybe the most apparent scam sites online today. Anybody tried them? Even for research you really should.

The whole thing is based on fake profiles - and they don't even bother to do it thoroughly by paying people to lure the users - no, the messages you get are actually plain and simple standardized messages.

Ok, there might be some real women out there and maybe even somebody has got lucky. But most profiles of decent looking women are fake. And it just takes a bunch (or millions) of horny geeks to sign up for the premium subscription. You always get messages before you sign up, but no replies afterwards.

For online scammers, this is a nice industry sector to operate in, simply because nobody dares to raise their voice, complain and sue. They don't want people know, that they've tried these sites. It would really need a lot of courage, and some smart tactics to prove the deceptive marketing tactics with fake profiles. For example Yahoo! has been accused about the same thing, but I don't know what happened to the cases.

The only cure I can see is the rising power of social browsing tools like Shadows and StumpleUpon - until then they will make loads of cash, and maybe find a way to do their business legitimately.

JP,

I agree. It's like a perfect storm for scamming. i was 'researching' af and a couple others and was curious as to why so many smoking hot chicks were trying to get ahold of me so i sent a note to the support email alias and asked for a free trial because it was too good to be true and was told that a, they don't offer free trials, and b, while it is known that some people scam the system, they have put restrictions in place to stop the gaming. of course i asked what type of restrictions and if it was a third party managing 'it'. Needless to say, i never heard back. seriously, if it is too good to be true it probably isn't true. what goes around comes around and this guy is no better than spamford wallace or ken lay.

AFF is not a complete fraud--it is merely another company peddling sex and, like all of them in that racket, using a mix of real moxie with the usual shady business practices. As the study of the site shows ( http://www.velocitypress.com/sexpartners.shtml) the site is rife with fake bios and fake ads--many of them used to entice non-paying members to convert to paid-in memberships. However, many of the people who advertise their bodies are real people looking for real sex. Especially the men, who outnumber women by at least 10 to 1. The Velocity study showed found that paying male members were successfully able to hook up with amateur females looking for a good time. Of course there are hookers mixed in with the amateurs, there are lookers (who get their thrill by teasing men), and some real sex maniacs. Many of the women are there because they are unable to find men by conventional means--often they were short or very fat, or homely. Or all three.
A continuaol complaint was that once they have yiur credit card number, it took heroic measures to get them to stop charging it.

What time is now? http://www.blogas.lt/laminateflooring/

I currently started www.placetoscore.com and take pride in the fact that I didn't load fake profiles into my database, I do not spam and that my site is signifcantly cheaper then the rest ($7.95). Not a SV guy just a guy from the midwest trying to take care of my kids.

i can't log on to adultfriendfinder. help anyone?

We offer a affordable serveice that blocks porn sites only, including adultfriendfinder, placetoscore, and many others.

http://www.safefromsites.com

The service is designed for adults, so it will not interfere with the rest of your browsing .

I ran three hedge fund, did investment banking, traded and have little time for the social life I should enjoy with the money made in WS, most when considering I currently live n a beach with plenty of world class beautiful women.

I pay for a gold subscription and been there for almost 4 years.

There are many fake profiles (I report them and most are taken out fast), some I bet from AFF, many from rings of cam sites and prostitutes, others by women that do not want their identities disclosed but want to attract company.

In terms of honesty, if I have to chose between Match.com and AFF I would chose AFF. Match.com send me lots of mutual matches-with the same picture and different profiles on different locations and is know among the Wall Street masturbees for paying models to entice the sucker to get a pay subscription,the same fot True.com, American Singes is still sending me my new matches- just the same photos of 3 years ago, mail after mail, Yahoo lost of russian and phillipino marriage scammers.

In AFF I met real gorgeous women, and instead of paying lots of money in dates, well, the ladies know what is all about and everyone cut the BS.

By the way, I met, several Phds, MDs, engineers, actresses, journalist, a couple of former State Senators and my 2400+ friend list have a median age of 24.

Interact first via cam with prospective dates.

The site is becoming better, at least i theory, their problem, imho, is that their are understaffed and most of the good things are half backed and buggy.

This is not the classic porn site, is a date and friendship site where human sexuality is freely explored.

Most of the women I interact with, will welcome marriage with the right person and are not as easy as at first sight it may seem.

I'm one of the guys who fight most with them, I am a pest there, as I am very demanding, trading and using the very sophisticated zero tolerance software we are used to, leave me with lots of frustration with AFF bugs.

Because of my experience I will not hesitate to invest in them. There is a plan running...

Hi David / Matt / Connie,

We were just written up in Venture Capital Journal (April 07 issue). Feel free to contact us regarding traction, investments, etc. Our email is: corporate AT heatseek DOT com

Great work,webmaster, nice design!

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