How to start a dating site?

[Johnny1975]

I would like to consider the possibility of starting a dating site.

I have very little money, no programming skills, but all the time in the world, and nothing to lose.

Suggestions please.

[xiongmao]

No money? No programming skills?

Don't bother.

[Johnny1975]

Well I've done it. For the first time in my life I've jumped in and done something, without planning the hell out of it. I bought a domain name and I have a very basic site, with lots of (probably fake) profiles that came with it.

[Maverick]

What's your plan? Do you have a niche?

A lot of people are making dating sites. How does your stand out?

[Johnny1975]

What's your plan? Do you have a niche?

A lot of people are making dating sites. How does your stand out?

No plan at the moment. I have a habit over overthinking things, so with this I just decided to buy the doman name and make a start.

Yes I suppose I do have a niche. I don't know if I should say what it is, in case someone steals my idea. Then again my idea might be a load of old rubbish. I think it's good though.

I'm just looking for any advice on how to make a dating site work. To be honest I'd be happy if it earns me even as little as £200 per month.

[Winston]

No money? No programming skills?

Don't bother.

Geez you sure are dismissive and narrow and party pooper. lol

If Thomas Edison thought like you, he wouldn't have succeeded in creating the light bulb.

Remember what he said: Success is 99 percent perspiration and 1 percent genius.

You must have no knowledge of history. Thus, you shouldn't be giving bad advice.

Where there's a will, there's a way.

He can use dating site template software. Go to Ebay and do a search for "dating site software" and you will get a number of hits. You can also Google it. Some you have to pay per month, others you pay a one time fee. It has everything you need to start a dating site.

That's not the problem. The problem is in getting TRAFFIC, and lots of it. That's the hard part.

[Johnny1975]

Winston, I'm with a white label called thedatingstudio.com. My site is up and running, complete with loads of ready made (what I presume to be) fake profiles.

[Winston]

Winston, I'm with a white label called thedatingstudio.com. My site is up and running, complete with loads of ready made (what I presume to be) fake profiles.

Well everyone has to start somewhere. Now you just have to market and promote it to get regular traffic. That's the tough part. Starting it is the easy part.

[Johnny1975]

Any suggestions on how to promote it?

[PeterAndrewNolan]

Any suggestions on how to promote it?

Johnny,
you are very unlikely to make any money out of a dating site. I mean look how many there are already? And by the way? The women on dating sites are beyond insane.

Really. Can't you think of something better to do with your life?

If you wanted to make a contribution to your fellow man you could be passing my books around. You say you have plenty of time on your hands. Why have you not offered to help John Rambo and I pass out The Truth Be Told to more young men and explain to them the situation in which they find themselves? Why not help us help other young men just like you?

http://www.mensbusinessassociation.com/Downloads.aspx

There are MANY things you could to to make the world a better place for you being in it. Why not do one of them?

Now...if you want to start a business the MBA is all about men doing business outside the current economy.

http://www.mensbusinessassociation.com

We are now accepting registrations for people who want to be buyers as well as men who want to be sellers of products and services.

Why not register? Why not get as many other lads as you can to register? Why not get a group together who want to start businesses and ask for a "nite-skool" on "how does a young man start a business?" Or even better....get 15 to 30 mates and decide to start some business together and use the "nite-skool" as a way of getting the education you need to run your business?

I would be VERY HAPPY to take on young lads who want to start businesses as clients and consult to them to start these businesses. I am just putting the finishing touches on my product SeETL 3.1.02 and I hope to have the next alpha out in a week or two. There are a LOT of changes coming.

One of the big changes is that it will support licensing for software as a service. The price for SeETL has been set at EUR20,000 to EUR50,000 and I have been selling it directly to consulting firms who do business intelligence. The idea being to get the consulting firms to take on SeETL and then have them use it widely in their clients.

I have not closed out a deal like that for more than a year so the answer is pretty simple. The consulting firms are not willing to part with the sort of money I want to use my software despite the fact that it is worth MUCH MORE to them than what I am asking. Such is life. This is despite the fact that the likes of Tata, InfoSys, Wipro have used my software and know damn well it cuts the cost of building a data warehouse in half. They won't use it because they don't want to cut the cost of building data warehouses.

I was looking for a small number of good clients to buy in at that price. Maybe 3 or 4, to take on my software and use it in their consulting business. I have two already from previous years. If I got 3 or 4 more then I could live on the maintenance revenue for the remainder of my life. If I had 10 in total I would be very well off. Hence I kept the price where it was and tried for a year to close a deal that way. Guys like Tata, InfoSys, Wipro could roll my software out globally and slash their costs of delivery by a long way. But they don't want to do that.

Since I am now very widely known in the man-o-sphere and I have founded the MBA I have decided to take a different approach with my software in the future. I have extended the functionality to make it useful to people who run small businesses.

Now I intend to sell it WIDELY to men who run there own businesses....usually small businesses. So the new pricing is intended to be directed at companies where the revenues are under 10 million. Indeed, my software will be affordable even by the likes of yourself and Winston. I propose to bill about EUR10 per month per user license and EUR100 per year. Support will be via our forums. There is a free support area and a fee support area.

http://www.instantbi.com/Support/AllForums.aspx

We will even sell it to large companies for this sort of low rate for a while and see if they buy in to it. If they do we can lift the new license prices later if we want to. But by making it available for EUR10 per month and then charging EUR50/hour for any support the person wants no one can complain about the price any more. That is essentially free.

The new functions enable a man to manage lists, do mailouts, prepare invoices, capture returns etc. All the things that need to be done in a small business. We are also able to provision web sites on dot net nuke. We can also integrate the DNN portal into a data warehouse at our reseller in Germany and provide analysis and reporting off that data warehouse. So guys who do not have the technical skills to actually run a data warehouse etc can avail of these services for modest fees.

In short....someone who runs a small business like Winston and has a few thousand email addresses can join up to the MBA and use our software to perform his outbound marketing. It then makes it very worth while to collect email addresses and demographic data about the people who own the email address. Everyone has an email address now.

So my advice to you would be this. You could try opening up a business by asking one question at a time. Sure. And some fools will try and help you out and it is very unlikely to be successful. Or you might decide to do it PROPERLY and SERIOUSLY and start REAL business that is worth while and will actually make you money for many years to come. A business that actually provides some sort of valuable service to the world like mine does.

Why not find 20-30 other similarly minded young men and CO-OPERATE in getting your business started?

By doing that you can pool your resources and leverage my experience more widely.

[Johnny1975]

Ok here's the link :

www.foreignwomenukdating.com

[Teal Lantern]

I would like to consider the possibility of starting a dating site.

I have very little money, no programming skills, but all the time in the world, and nothing to lose.

Suggestions please.

Most dating sites are custom-badged affiliates of the majors, so you're on the right track.
They give you the code to point back to their database and get credit for those who sign up through you.

[Mr.Darcy]

Johnny I like your persistence

[djfourmoney]

Google SEO and get as much information as you need.

[Johnny1975]

SEO, that's just making sure that when people google certain keywords, your website comes up earlier rather than later in the search, that's all it is, right? They make it sound so complicated.

I've made sure that the pages of my site all contain the right keywords in the meta tag. And I've looked at the source code for my pages and they contain the words. The keywords are pretty simple and obvious for my site : foreign women uk dating. That's it.

What else is there to do?

By the way I don't know if SEO is really that necessary. Not that I misunderstand the concept, but a few years ago I created a forum, and I never did anything in terms of SEO, and yet to this day, if I google certain keywords pertaining to what the forum is about, it appears as either the very 1st entry, or the 3rd, depending on the keywords. That's pretty impressive for no effort at all. And that's considering that there are other similar forums to mine.