At a business conference, AOL-owned Userplane announced that an early adopter of its recently launched revenue-sharing ad program now generates "significant" enough revenue from Userplane ads to absorb the cost of licensing the company's instant messaging software-- and is expected to start to exceed it.

PlentyofFish, a free dating site, has more than one million daily visitors and is ranked by Hitwise as a top five dating service in the United States. Since 2004, its members have used Userplane Webmessenger to initiate, on average, more than 100,000 IM sessions and exchange millions of text and audio/video messages per day.

Two months after PlentyofFish joined the ad-revenue sharing program, the site received a Userplane ad check that nearly equaled Userplane's monthly invoice. Within the next six months, both companies estimate that PlentyofFish will make about 10 percent more from Userplane ads than it spends on licensing-- especially significant because Userplane licensing used to be PlentyofFish's second-largest monthly operating expenditure.

"The Userplane ad program created a significant and unexpected revenue stream that brings the cost of Userplane's IM tools down to free," say Markus Frind, PlentyofFish founder and CEO. "Any time you can eliminate a bill -- and get free money at the same time -- it's a good time."

Says Michael Jones, CEO of Userplane and vice president of AOL: "Userplane recognized that many of our larger communities are in the process of changing revenue streams, transitioning from subscription-based businesses to ad-supported models. We specifically created this program as an easy, painless way for larger sites to deliver substantial advertising revenue with zero effort."