Considering it’s been awhile since I updated my blog here, I thought I would provide a little update on the progress of Black Book Singles, which launched on July 10th.

So far, Black Book Singles has not acquired as many members as would I have liked thus far. As of the end of day yesterday, the site had 343 members with 200 total profiles created. 47% of the users who have created profiles are from the U.S., 11% are from the U.K., 9.5% are from Canada, 8.5% are from India, 3% are from Australia, and the remaining 21% are from various countries abroad. Of the U.S. members with profiles, most are from California and New York.

Early on when the site was launched, new users would be taken to a member dashboard page, where they could basically stray through various areas of the site. I ended up changing this a little over a month ago, such that new members are immediately taken to the profile creation page. This boosted the profile-to-member ratio over time, with it slowly creeping from about 49% to 58% over time.

In order to help increase conversion rates for new members to create profiles, I also spent much time creating a script that will send member emails daily. The script won’t email every member daily; instead, it will see what types of emails are set up for each member, sending it when appropriate. For example, I could create an email specific to new members that is sent 3 days after joining only if they haven’t created a profile. This email would encourage them to create a profile by highlighting what they’re missing. The script isn’t 100% complete yet, but it is almost there. (This will also be useful in the future for sending relevant marketing offers, such as 1-800-FLOWERS opportunities near Valentine’s Day.)

The site’s homepage currently appears on page 8 of a Google search for 100% free online dating. This isn’t that good, though it’s not completely awful considering that PlentyofFish.com appears on page 4 and has been around for many years. Granted, Markus Frind (the site’s creator) may not be specifically targeting this phrase, as he has the #1 spot for several variations of free online personals, a more popular search phrase (over 3 times more popular) according to WordTracker. Hopefully as I have more time to work on SEO related to the site, Black Book Singles will move up the list for this phrase as well as other related — and more popular — phrases.

The dating forums have unfortunately been relatively unused. Hopefully as more new members join the site, this will change. Additionally, I will likely add a “recent forum posts” section to the member dashboard, similar to how I have a “recent articles” section that is populated by dating articles from the blog.

Lastly, and ultimately the goal, I have been making an okay bit of pocket change since launching the site. In all, I’ve made a little over $85 since July 10th, with a 2.27% CTR and eCPM of $5.64 between BlackBookSingles.com and the related Facebook application. One thing that’s important to note is that I added a new Adsense link unit on August 19th, which greatly improved these stats. Prior to that date, ads on BlackBookSingles.com had a 2.35% CTR and $6.23 eCPM; afterward, these numbers respectively jumped to 3.09% and $7.27.

In addition to sending various email reminders to members (that they can opt out of, of course) and pushing forum involvement, one other change I would like to make is to write more articles in the blog. I have not been on top of this, and right now, it is one of the primary sources of organic traffic. The more articles that are available to the public, the more users will be able to find my website.

Hopefully the next update will include some significant improvements on this stats!