Let’s talk Stockton.
Stockton, California, that is.
Located in San Joaquin County — 40 miles from Sacramento, 80 miles from San Francisco — it’s the 13th largest city in the Golden State, with a population of approximately 290,500.
Stockton is, of course, well known for being a bustling, extensive seaport (one of California’s only inland seaports, in fact), and a solid, plentiful agricultural community (surrounded by the wealth of farm territory making up California’s Central Valley). It also harbors thousands of miles of rivers and waterways, which compose the California Delta, and is a picturesque backdrop for many (some now-classic) movies, including All The King’s Men, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Cool Hand Luke, and John Huston’s Fat City. Stockton is also the home of the well-respected University of the Pacific.
But the city also has a flipside.
As examples, Forbes Magazine reported in 2009 that Stockton was No. 5 in their list of America’s most dangerous cities due to the high crime rate reported in 2008. From 2005 to 2006 the city was rated — by Central Connecticut State University surveys — as one of the most illiterate of the nation’s cities. And it was also named one of “America’s Most Miserable of Cities” (ranking at No. 2) in February of 2009, due to violent crime statistics, grueling commuting patterns, and high unemployment.
Wow! Hard to get happy after THAT.
However … These various dark clouds hanging over Stockton do have a silver lining — and it’s in the form of AmateurMatch.com, one of many dating websites headed by CEO/owner Allan Henning, whose headquarters is located smack-dab in the center of (you got it!) Stockton, California, spreading the happiness of sex, companionship, and marriage all over the globe.
Alongside AmateurMatch.com (the most popular of all of his dating sites), Henning’s other hook-up websites include AsianAmateurMatch.com, EbonyAmateurMatch.com, GayAmateurMatch.com, LesbianAmateurMatch.com, and MatureAmateurMatch.com. He’s also the brains behind such sites (for those men and women looking for long-term relationships) as DateMatch.com, BeeMatch.com, and Romancer.com. Henning also runs WebCamClub.com, which puts subscribers in communication with hundreds of attractive girls offering live sex entertainment. And, finally, there’s Henning’s highly successful business-to-business site for affiliates, DatingGold.com.
“Surprisingly, even though many of our websites are adult in nature,” Henning stated from his headquarters in Stockton, “a lot of marriages and/or long-term relationships have developed from people meeting one another on those various sites.
“In fact, we have a marketing team that collects the success stories from our subscribers who’ve gotten married or maybe hooked-up with someone else, so they’re very appreciative — even if it’s just for one night. We really didn’t do anything,” he added sincerely, with a dash of self-effacing humor, “but they still thank us for getting them laid.”
The breakdown in numbers? According to Henning, 80 percent of the traffic to his dating sites comes from the U.S. and Canada, with the remaining 20 percent generated anywhere from Germany to China. The age groups of subscribers vary, the largest being in the 25-to-35 age range, followed by 35-to-45, which is even in numbers with the18-to-25 group.
The process is simple. A man, woman, couple, or group fill out the online application form, stating whom they’re looking for: man, woman, couple, group. In turn, the applicant further checks off what sort of meeting they’re interested in: erotic e-mail or cyber sex, group sex (three or more), erotic photo exchange, voyeurism, discreet relationship, casual sex, one-on-one sex, other sexual activities, or “just naughty fun.”
The price for membership is $24.95 per month, per site, and according to Henning, business is booming — even in these tough economic times. This is understandable when people, more than any other time, really want some fun and companionship in the face of dark financial straits.
“Definitely,” Henning admitted. “Every month is either our best month or close to it. So it’s been going well.”
You’d typically think, however, of a dating headquarters in California being located in, say, Los Angeles or San Francisco. But Stockton? Then again, the 33-year-old Henning was born and raised in Stockton, and he obviously feels most at home there.
“I don’t know … it’s a strange town,” Henning stated of his native city, with no little degree of amusement. “But it’s nice. It’s on the Delta, which is cool. A lot of people who live in Stockton can’t afford to live in the Bay Area, yet they work in San Francisco. I don’t know if Stockton is a poor city, but I suppose it is, compared to the Bay Area. Rents are cheaper here, yes, but it’s kind of hard to find the technical people whom we need. But we’re managing.”
But found the right technical people he has, indeed. And he’s been successfully running the ever-growing, now 30-plus-employee-strong company since 2001.
A low-key guy, always having been a technical kind of person, Henning is one of a new generation who, since he graduated high school in the ’90s (1994 to be exact), has also always been professionally linked to the Internet
“I really never went to college or university — I went to junior college, so I’m kind of a college dropout,” he joked. “My career started on the Internet, though, and I think that I’ll probably finish it on the Internet,” he laughed. “Actually, when I came out of high school, I really didn’t know what I wanted to do. I knew I had the entrepreneurial spirit, and I was pretty much always trying to come up with something to do on my own. I knew it would definitely be something computer- or Internet-related and, luckily, the Internet came around at the right time for me.”
Always interested in computers, even whilst in junior high, Henning, once having graduated, was soon involved in getting, according to him, one of the first daily newspapers online in 1996, namely, Stockton’s The Record. In fact, he was The Record’s media manager in charge of information technology and making sure the website was running properly.
Afterwards he was doing some consulting work before, following his self-professed entrepreneurial spirit, he began his own mainstream dating website in 2000.
“I knew there were some other companies doing it, and I thought we could do it … I don’t want to say better, but I thought we could do one just as well.
“But, see, what was happening with our mainstream dating site was, people were uploading their nude photos. But we were a mainstream site, so we would continually have to block the nude photos. So we eventually said, ‘Wait a minute. Let’s do a site where they can leave these nude photos up.’ So that’s where AmateurMatch.com came into being in 2001, and it’s still our largest adult dating site.”
Henning’s various and sundry other dating sites soon followed — most of them adult-oriented, with several being more mainstream. Their affiliate program, DatingGold.com, followed in early 2003, proclaiming itself “The World’s Only Three-Tier Dating Affiliate Program.”
“Basically,” said Henning, “what happens is affiliates can promote our product for a commission, and if an affiliate wants to refer another affiliate, they get a percentage of the latter’s commission. So it’s basically an extra tier that they can get paid on. So it’s kind of like a pyramid of sorts.”
Even though he has program managers now helping him run his numerous websites, Henning still sees the job of overseeing the dating sites, his live-cam site, and DatingGold.com as a 24/7 venture, putting him very much in a similar position as a doctor on call.
“A lot of people think that adult is easy money, but it most definitely is not. You have to work hard, not take shortcuts, not go for the quick buck. We want quality and we’re not afraid to put the hours in. I have a great team in place now, so that I don’t have to handle the smaller things that I used to. It definitely took a good amount of time to build the great team that we have now.”
Yet while Henning is the first to admit that he’s been busting his hump for the last eight years to get his sites to a technically and financially respectable position, he’s also the first to admit that he’s finally enjoying the fruits of his labor.
“I like golfing, fishing on the weekends, going to the movies. I also have some cars, which I enjoy. Before, however, it was just work, work, work. I still have to work hard; I’m just not killing myself now. But the business is, of course, still in the back of my mind day and night.”
As proof of this constant devotion to his dating empire, Henning — always cultivating his entrepreneurial streak — is also frequently surfing the Web to see what the competition is up to. And he’s doing his research the old-fashioned way: by himself, rather than hiring a consultant.
“Competitors are always good to check out because you can see what they’re doing. And I can usually see what they’re doing and know if it’s a good idea or not such a good idea. I don’t mind competition, because you can learn a lot from it. And, no, I don’t have any consultants helping me out. I wish!” he added with characteristic warm laughter.
Speaking of competition, Henning is also promoting white labeling for his dating and live-cam sites. This cyber business venture basically means another dating company is using his dating sites’ software. As an example, AmateurMatch.com hosts another company’s site, but that same other company has its own brand on that site, somewhat similar to a franchise relationship.
“It’s true. They have their dating sites, but nobody knows that it’s all of our stuff in the background. We manage it all for them. We work with about 40 or 50 other companies that way, by using our white labeling solution. They’re competition, yes, but we get a piece of the action.”
And while his dating sites are all doing quite well, and the subscribers seem to be able to find their dream girls or guys — be it for a night, month, year, or lifetime — Henning doesn’t try to mislead anyone about the supposed perfection behind the services his company offers.
“We can’t guarantee that the customers are going to meet somebody, but we do basically think all of our customers can meet somebody if they put in the right amount of effort. Some of our customers say, ‘Well, I joined and I haven’t met anyone.’ But we see in our chat room that other customers react to that kind of feedback by saying, ‘Well, I met somebody. You just need to look around. You’re not going to meet someone on the first day that you join.’ It’s dating. There are a lot fish out there. But there are only so many. So you do have to put in some effort.”
And what about Henning himself? Or rather, what of his own love life? Has he found his own personal happiness via a dream mate through his own websites?
“I do have a girlfriend, but I didn’t meet her through any of our websites,” Henning stated in a diplomatic yet, nonetheless, fun manner. “As a matter of fact, I’ve never used the websites for my own use — but some of my friends have. And they’ve met girls on our site, which is kind of weird — but cool.”
This article originally appeared in the August 2009 issue of AVN Online. To subscribe, visit AVNMediaNetwork.com/subscribe.
