The end of cupid.com and cupid.com

According to a recent announcement - Cupic PLC will finally give up the dating business...which is an unexpected piece of news - however understable. The big question is: why not earlier?

Cupic PLC will become a pure investment company and change its name to Castle Street Investments plc

Hopefully they won't invest in dating sites ;-)

Maybe they try to copy Rocket Internet who recenty went on the stock market in Germany - they own a big portfolio of well known websites worldwide - all of them making a loss.

The difference between those 2 companies is probably: one makes revenue, goes to the stock market and then makes losses - the other company makes losses in the first place and then goes to the stock market to collect more money....

Cupid plc

Proposed Disposal of Dating Business

Cupid plc (AIM:CUP), the online dating operator, announces that following a strategic review of the Company's dating business, the Group has conditionally agreed to sell its Traditional Dating Assets to Tradax IP Licensing Limited; Together Networks Holdings Limited; and Together Networks Limited, for a total consideration of £3m.

The Disposal constitutes a fundamental change of business under Rule 15 of the AIM Rules. Accordingly, the Disposal is conditional upon approval of Shareholders at a general meeting to be held on 23 December 2015.

Headlines

·     Disposal of Traditional Dating Assets for a cash consideration of £3m

·     Payment of a reduced deferred consideration for casual assets has been accelerated with £12.5m to be paid by 15 December 2015

·     Substantial return expected to be available to Shareholders in 2015

·     Company will be reclassified as an Investing Company under the AIM Rules

·     Cash at the end of December 2014 (prior to receipt of Disposal proceeds) expected to be ahead of forecast at £10m

·     Proposed name change to Castle Street Investments plc

·     Irrevocable undertakings to vote in favour of the resolutions granted by 40.53% of the shareholders

·     Cancellation of treasury shares

A circular, explaining the background to and reasons for the Disposal and providing notice of a general meeting (the "Circular"), was posted to Shareholders on 6 December 2014.  Copies of the Circular will also be available on the Company's website (www.cupidplc.com).

George Elliott, Chairman of Cupid plc, commented:

"After a number of fundamental changes in the dating market, we instigated a rapid strategic review of the dating business. The Board believe that today's announcement represents the solution which protects the best interests of shareholders, by providing much greater certainty over the Group's cash balances and deferred consideration and removing substantially all costs from the Group.

The Company will effectively become a well capitalised cash shell with approximately £18 million that can be utilised for new opportunities in line with our proposed investing policy or returned to shareholders."

Update from December 28th: Cupid PLC's homepage is not accessible anymore.

In general, a lot of other dating sites profit from this. First, Cupid PLC bought a great part of the dating market - then decided to discontinue some sites they bought - and now finally they stop all dating sites....a few will be sold - but in generall the number of competitors on the dating market has decreased a lot. Dating webmasters now expect a decrease in advertising costs in the online dating field due to less competition and lower prices per click.

Whitelabel Dating business is blooming....

The harder it gets to make money with a pay-site, the more interesting it becomes to offer white label dating sites: you just provide the technical infrastructure and don't have to think about advertising costs and conversions - it is not your business, it is the customers problem. You do not need to care whether they even make money, as long as you have enough webmasters who pump traffic to your central database.

The following companies currently offer white label dating sites:


 - datingfactory.com
-  cupidplc.com with www.thedatingstudio.com
- whitelabeldating.com
- globalpersonals.co.uk

And in Germany:

- crossdating.com (former: whitelabeldating.de)
- datingnetzwerk.de/ (from the people who run singletreffen.de, once a popular dating site)

And the French have:

http://www.easyflirt-partners.biz/?locale=en (also for English speaking countries)

The big question is:

- who offers the best conversions / earnings per visitor ?

Also a decisive factor is: how much time & money (or nerves) does it cost to reach a professional looking dating site? Is it a professional design by default or is the default theme a piece of crap?

Other things that should be considered:

- does it advertise other dating sites when mails are sent to "your" users?
- is the usability and design already optimized for maximum signups and user retention?
- is it also usable from a mobile phone?