Interview: White Label Dating CEO and Co-Founder Talks 100% Net Revenue Share
White Label Dating (WLD) is one of the world’s leading online dating software providers. The platform helps media brands, affiliates and entrepreneurs to create their own branded dating services.
Last month, WLD announced that eligible new customers would receive 100% net revenue share for a minimum of 12 months; a move that was met with surprise and scepticism from many in the industry.
GDI spoke to CEO and co-founder Ross Williams about the initial success of the project, and about how the company plans to keep moving forward in the future.
Read the full interview below:
Offering top partners 100% Rev Share was a bold move from WLD. How did the idea come about?
RW: “We’re delighted to be offering new partners 100% net revenue share – across all networks and territories – for a minimum of 12 months. We’re also offering this to selected existing partners who have demonstrated a desire for growth and a long-term commitment to the WLD platform.
We made a lot of changes to our business behind the scenes in 2018 and we’re now in a strong, sustainable position where we can offer 100% net revenue share for a year to give our partners the confidence to invest for the long-term. Because our investment in AI for moderation, customer care and other areas in the business, we have a low, scalable cost-base as a business and are well prepared for rapid long-term expansion and we believe this industry-leading incentive will help give our partners the long-term confidence to invest and grow with us.
We also worked very hard last year on our payment processing strategy to give us long-term, sustainable revenues and an industry-leading low chargeback rate without having to use a complex structure of companies and MIDs (Merchant IDs) to circumnavigate the chargeback thresholds like many others in the dating industry do (including our competitors). This has allowed us to offer long-term revenue share agreements because we have confidence in our ability to process for the long-term. It’s also why others don’t offer this.”
What kind of success has the scheme seen so far?
RW: “We’ve signed up over 100 partners and launched hundreds of new sites as a result of this scheme and we’re still launching dozens of new sites a week. In March we increased month-on-month subscribers by 11% (a huge achievement) and we’ve sustained real momentum in April.
Other platforms have tried to keep up by offering higher revenue share for 6 months but this doesn’t really help partners as it usually takes at least 6 months to build up good revenues. We think offering our partners 100% net revenue share for at least 12 months gives them long-term peace of mind as they’re able to benefit from the stronger rebills and lifetime value (LTV) on the WhiteLabelDating.com platform.
We’re particularly excited about how this scheme will help us with our international strategy – more to come on that soon.”
Can you provide an update on the radio station partnerships WLD entered into late last year?
RW: “In late 2018 we signed a partnership with Wireless Radio Group who is owned by Newscorp and runs radio stations such as Virgin Radio, Talk Sport and Talk Radio as well as many local regional radio stations. In early 2019, Bauer Media Group (another of our partners) agreed on a deal to acquire the regional stations from Wireless Group and they’ve been focusing on that since the announcement.
We continue to run sites like talkradiosingles.co.uk, talksportsingles.com and towerfmdating.co.uk whilst working with both Wireless Group and Bauer Media to grow their portfolios.”
What else can we expect from WLD over the course of 2019?
RW: “In the next few months, we’ll be sharing more about our strategy for growing the USA market on the back of the work we’ve done on payment processing and we hope to have more to share on this subject next month.
In addition, perhaps the most exciting development is that we will soon be able to support multiple languages, territories and currencies which will allow us to offer our services in dozens of countries around the world and bring our industry-leading conversion and lifetime values to the territories we don’t currently support.
We will also be supporting mobile apps for both iPhone and Android on sites across all our networks.
We’ve started sharing this news with some key partners and will provide more information on this in due course. It is a huge investment for us and we’ll begin rolling this out to a select number of partners later on in 2019.”
What are some of the big industry trends you’re keeping an eye on at the minute?
RW: “I believe the industry is now in the post-Tinder age where online dating apps are completely mainstream, users are demonstrably willing to pay for a good online dating experience and especially one which authentically delivers on the kind that they’re looking for.
The continued roll out of Facebook Dating will be an interesting experiment and one that I think will only benefit high-quality dating platforms as users search for a non-Facebook alternative.”
Visit the White Label Dating content partners page here.
