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Why do we have (annoying) adverts?

Ahh, those annoying adverts!
Bloody adverts!
Why don't you get rid of the adverts?

We hear comments like this quite often either via feedback or chatting to people within our live chat rooms. So let me explain why we have adverts.

Everything costs money

Nothing is ever free. If a website consumes somebodies time to develop, manage and maintain there is always a cost. The cost is either paying a wage or coding it for free and eating up time that you could have been doing paid work. The quote, 'Time is money' holds true. Here are some of the costs and expenses for running Saucydates.com. Most companies never share this type of information but we like to be different!

Item	Cost per year
Web server #1 (12 CPUs / RAID 10)	$5,929
Web server #2 (VPS)	$381
Web server #3 (VPS)	$1,948
Domain names	$882
Newsletter mailer	$3,529
Marketing	$5,367
Hardware + software	$2,560
Internet + phone	$529
Accountancy + legal	$2,205
TOTAL	$23,330

You will also notice that the table above doesn't contain any staff or development costs. The way Saucydates.com is structured means that the profit over and above the total outgoings becomes potential income for the owners.

Business models: Free VS paid

The are two basic business models that dating sites operate under, they are, free and paid. There are models that are a combination of these but for simplicity we will just discuss two. Paid models allow you to join the site for free and then you are required to pay to see or send messages to other members. Free sites, such as Saucydates.com have no such restriction but need to generate income via other methods to cover costs and return a profit. A free site with no adverts for example, would loose the operator $23,330 per year and provide them with a salary of $0! Hardly a good deal and the operator would soon give up and the site would go offline. Some flow of money has to be involved. Even a charity has operating costs which a percentage of donation go towards the day to day running.

Adverts = income

Our income is from adverts displayed within our site. Adverts generally have one of three methods of payment.

Payment each time they are clicked
Payment each time they are viewed
Payment when the visitor performs an action (pay or signup)

Earnings from these types of adverts varies significantly depending on the provider and the country of the visitor. For example, earnings from the US, UK, CA and AU are generally the highest. Some regions are near impossible to generate any income whatsoever. We try our best to match adverts to our members based on their location and interests. Australia is the region with the most profitability for us. India is the lowest profit from a region that generates a lot of traffic and interest. There are many other countries that we have members that generate us nothing at all. In the zero income regions we advertise our social media channels so that these members can share our stories and help us expand.

We earn less

Sites running with adverts make lower profits than paid sites. We can confidently say that as we advertise pay sites ourselves. They will pay on average $5.00 per sign up for a member from the US and we generate about $0.50 profit for an equivalent signup. Assuming the pay site runs at a 0% margin (worst case senario) makes them 10x more profitable. The advantage of the free business model is that people are happy to tell others about it, which makes our marketing overheads much lower. But in general a paid site is more profitable for it's operators.

Summary

Next time you login and see one of our annoying adverts please remember that without them the site would simply not exist. Also remember that our choice of business model is also less profitable than charging a subscription. So please engage with our advert partners and show your support. 100% free adult dating is rare so enjoy yourself and may be now you will find our adverts that little bit less annoying! :)

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