Business 2.0 writer Joel Stein reports that Conru employs 450 staffers working on 27 dating sites, the biggest of which, AFF, accounts for more than 60 percent of Various’ revenue.
Stein noted that Various earns “well over $200 million in annual revenue, averaging 40 percent growth for the past nine years. With more than 35 million visitors in 2006 and 75,000 new users registering each day, AFF ranks among the 100 most popular sites in the U.S.”
In order to grow the company without the infusion of outside investment capital, Conru built his business through the affiliate program model, “in effect outsourcing his marketing to the public.” Various boasts more than 500,000 webmaster affiliates.
The article also delves into the long-standing relationship between Conru and Mapstead that began in 1994 when Conru hired the “37-year-old blond surfer dude with a big shock of chin hair” as an HTML coder for $11 an hour. Mapstead since has become the face of the company because Conru is notoriously press shy.
To bring the company to new heights and continue growth, Conru will have to buy more companies, according to Stein. Conru’s goal is to acquire six businesses this year, preferably mainstream ventures. Conru is halfway toward his goal, purchasing Bondage.com, GradFinder.com and personals site FastCupid.com.
“Most acquisitions lose money,” Conru told Business 2.0. “It’s kind of like playing poker. Poker is a dangerous game. If you’re doing well, you think it’s skill, and if you’re doing poorly, it’s the cards.”
Stein asserts that the time is ripe for Conru to segue out of the adult market and online dating because both those niches have matured and the gold rush is over.
“People used to go to bulletin boards, but now they go straight to the search engines, so there’s this tollbooth effect,” Conru told Stein. “All the money is going to the search engines.”
In the end, Stein said Conru established success because he “found he could build a community through exclusion. Most other social-networking sites, from Match.com and eHarmony to MySpace and YouTube, are based on the assumption that the site that amasses the most users wins. Conru, on the other hand, believed that people would pay more to be part of a small group of like-minded souls.”