Our publisher Anne Holland responds to Nick Paumgarten’s piece in The New Yorker about online dating sites:”From a publishing business standpoint, one of the most fascinating angle on the online dating site industry is that it’s largely paid content. Most of the $1.4 billion in revenues per year come from subscription fees; this despite the fact that some of the highest traffic sites (including #1 PlentyofFish.com) are free. In fact, as our new research study reveals, 88% of the free sites are considering launching paid offerings within the next 12 months, while only a tiny sliver of currently paid sites are considering a switch to, or launches, in the free space.In an online publishing world where many publishers in other niches still say they fear to offer paid content in a largely free environment, I wonder if their fears are of ignorance or  laziness and not necessarily representative of reality. Our online dating site study does show that dating sites simply work a lot harder and smarter at marketing their content online than other paywalled sites do.For example, typically dating sites do more than twice the amount of A/B testing to improve their paywall sale results. Dating sites are also far more likely to spread their marketing budgets across far more tactics, ranging from affiliate marketing to PR to  social networking, than other online publishers are, who sadly rely far too much on search engine optimization and a bit of email.Online circulation and audience development departments at all of the world’s newspapers, magazines and most other paid content sites, could stand to learn a great deal from dating sites marketing departments.Anyone who says “You can’t sell content online” could do with a month’s internship at any of them and come out with a very changed perspective. You can sell online content, even in a highly competitive environment and even when competing with free content. You just have to work hard and be awfully good at your job.”