Are Online Dating Statistics Useful?

If you've been dating online you may be wondering about actual online dating statistics and what they mean to the future of the industry or if they are useful.

First some facts, as far back as 2003 nearly 40 million of us were using online dating services with half that logging on at least one site every month. What does this mean in terms of revenue? Approximately $239 was spent per year per consumer, which leads to revenue in 2003 of 214 million dollars spent on online dating services.

Additional online dating statistics showed that at least 40% of us were using some form of dating service, with a surprising 72% of women find long-term relationships, compared with 52% of men. The interesting thing to note here is that of those numbers 33% converted those online encounters into a real life date and around half of those turning into long term romance, marriage or friendship.

However in 2005, the industry as a whole experienced somewhat of a decline with online dating statistics showing less users visiting these sites and even less signing up or staying as long term members. This can be correlated to the increase in the costs of running online dating sites as both bandwidth, customer service costs and hardware upgrade became more expensive. Faced with rising costs, many services had no choice but to raise their rates.

However, they did try to offset these by offering incentives such as the option to pay monthly or at a reduced rate for quarterly, six month, or full year memberships. Other online dating statistics show that there was also an increase in the number of trial memberships offered, whereby users could have full access to the site for a period of seven to thirty days.

However this did not last and as hardware and high speed bandwidth became cheaper, so did membership prices. This helped get the online dating industry to be vibrant again and online dating statistics show that as many as 120,000 marriages per year were the result of this resurgence.

And now? It is estimated that between 2008 and 2011, online dating statistics will jump significantly, with annual revenue projected between 642 and 900 million. Of course competition is fierce, with sites such as match.com and eHarmony constantly touting how many couple have found each other through their respective services.

So, are online dating statistics useful to the average person looking for love? Yes, as the figures show that the industry will continue to grow and as such for someone just venturing into the world of online dating, they will have and continue to have more and more choice for online dating services, thus making finding the perfect person for them that much quicker, precise and satisfying. You may never need to go to the club or bar every again and can have online dating statistics to thank for that.

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