The site gets a couple of hundred hits a day, Hackler says. But the company doesn't know how many matches have been made yet, and one of its goals is to eventually develop a metric to gauge its success rate.
For now, InvestorClarity seems to be following the proverbial "build it and they will come" philosophy. It's not making money yet because the site is free for all users and the site is not doing any advertising. Hackler believes it will take at least a year to build a premier site with name recognition, and after that's achieved the company might charge a fee for posting a premium profile or welcome advertising--ideal candidates would be financial services firms that aren't in the advisory business.
But the online advisor search business is a tough place to make a buck, says Mike Alfred, CEO of BrightScope, a San Diego-based investment research firm and provider of retirement plan ratings. BrightScope rolled out its own online advisor search service in April 2011. "The key thing with all of these [advisor search] firms is that nobody has been able to get consumer mind share because more than 90% of all advisor selections happen through referrals," he says.
BrightScope aggregates publicly available information about advisors and makes it searchable, but doesn't provide matchmaking services. Alfred says his firm's advisor search service isn't profitable and won't be in the near future. But he views it as a long-term opportunity, and BrightScope recently raised $3 million to improve its product.
"We think in five to 10 years the average consumer will know to search the Web first, but the majority aren't doing it now," he says.