WhiteLabelDating

WhiteLabelDating.com (WLD) is an online dating platform provider. The company currently has 3,243 partners worldwide in countries including the US, Canada, South Africa, Australia and all European regions.

Headquartered in Windsor, England, the company also has offices in Miami, US and Sydney, Australia. In 2009, it announced annual revenue in excess £25 million.

History

WhiteLabelDating.com (WLD) was started in 2004 by Ross Williams, founder and managing director of web design agency Rawnet. WLD was started as a means to maximise revenue from online dating by applying the ‘white label’ concept to dating platforms.

This enabled the company to provide dating software, membership database, payment processing, customer support, hosting infrastructure and tax processing to partners looking to set up dating sites.

The membership database is segmented according to personal details (age, [...], geographical location, etc) and interests ([...] preference, music tastes, religion, hobbies, etc.) and then shared amongst all the partner sites in the network. This means that a member who joins on a “general” dating site will appear in the search results of all sites in the same category. The same approach works for other facets such as Over 50s, Casual and Gay dating.

Early on, Williams was joined by Steve Pammenter, a recruitment consultancy owner who helped set up Global Personal Limited in order to fund and launch WhiteLabelDating.com. In 2009 WLD announced annual turnover of £25 million, hired Darren Damiano from Match.com as financial director and secured a further 2000 plus partners.

WhiteLabelDating.com Company Timeline

2003: Global Personals Limited launched Singles365.com, a flagship dating site to help populate the shared membership database, using the WhiteLabelDating.com platform.

2004: WLD began trading as its own entity in September 2004

2005: After 12 months of building up a membership database, WLD began attracting a number of partners who wanted to start building their own dating sites.

2007: WLD secured a number of exclusive relationships to provide the WLD platform to major publishers including Bauer (formerly EMAP), IPC, Dennis Publishing and a number of niche publishers in the UK.

2008: WLD was short-listed for the ‘One to Watch’ award and won the ‘Financial Director of the Year Award’ at the Fast Growth Business Awards. WLD currently runs 1,004 partner sites and generates an annual turnover of £5,303,000. WLD received an honourable mention in the ‘Tenon Entrepreneurial Spirit’ category of the National Business Awards.

2009: WLD continues to exceed partner expectations on revenue and conversion, and signs on a further 186 partners including CosmoDating, Men’s Health and Borders.

WhiteLabelDating.com Partners

WLD provides the online dating platform for numerous partners around the world including:

Savagehearts (owned by Dennis Publishing)
CosmoDating (owned by NatMags)
FHM Dates (owned by Bauer Media)

In 2009, the company announced partner payouts of over £20million. These included brands and individuals who created their own dating site as an alternative revenue stream.