Should I start a free dating site?

Post by **Winston** » December 11th, 2010, 6:21 pm

After noticing the success of the free dating site dateinasia.com, I was wondering, should I start a free ad sponsored dating site too? Everyone loves something free, and we have a regular visitor/traffic base for this site already, which could be a good launching point toward starting a new dating site. I'd have to invest in some advertising to get new visitors of course. There are people who sell software packages for creating a dating site, even on Ebay there are many. I could just get one of those.

What do you all think?

What would be a good domain name though? How about these?

datingworld.com
datingglobally.com
dateglobal.com
dateglobally.com
date4free.com
free-dating.com
date-international.com
dateacrossborders.com
dateinrussia.com

Any other ideas?

Jackal · Post by **Jackal** » December 12th, 2010, 1:24 pm

Another possibility is "globaldating.com."

rome86 · Post by **rome86** » December 12th, 2010, 5:36 pm

why not ? it should be fun is it gonna be profitable ? let me know when it is ready.

wuxi · Post by **wuxi** » December 12th, 2010, 5:42 pm

The guy that started "Plenty of Fish" makes $10,000 a day!

Post by **Winston** » December 12th, 2010, 8:14 pm

wuxi wrote:The guy that started "Plenty of Fish" makes $10,000 a day!

That's hard to believe. I don't see how running ads on a free site can make you $10,000. That's insane and way out of proportion. Plus dating ads don't pay that much anyway.

wuxi · Post by **wuxi** » December 14th, 2010, 6:59 am

His income isn't from dating ads its all from the google hyperlink he has on his website, big corporate sponsorship is where its at. It probably doesn't cost google anything to pay him, they just write it off as a business expense or a "charitable donation" since his website is free(non-profit).

walrusface · Post by **walrusface** » March 7th, 2011, 12:04 pm

I think it would be a great idea. This is exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for, I'm always a bit dubious about spending money on dating sites. Are there any other free sites other than the dateinasia one?

Post by **Winston** » March 7th, 2011, 12:17 pm

walrusface wrote:I think it would be a great idea. This is exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for, I'm always a bit dubious about spending money on dating sites. Are there any other free sites other than the dateinasia one?

Sure, there's:

http://www.plentyoffish.com
http://www.tagged.com

walrusface · Post by **walrusface** » March 24th, 2011, 11:12 pm

Yeah, Winston I've been on Plenty of Fish for years, not that it ever did much good lol.
But I was thinking about a more international based one. One like Date in Asia, but in Eastern Europe etc. But after searching around on google I can't really see much decent free stuff.

E_Irizarry · Post by **E_Irizarry** » March 24th, 2011, 11:27 pm

walrusface wrote:Yeah, Winston I've been on Plenty of Fish for years, not that it ever did much good lol.
But I was thinking about a more international based one. One like Date in Asia, but in Eastern Europe etc. But after searching around on google I can't really see much decent free stuff.

Per bold, yeah man, PlentyOfShit.com, OKStupid.com, Fagged.com, WackPlanet.com,MiGayne-tay.com, AsianAveOfFools.com are all free sites that harbor basura trash.
But now I'm even hearing that the same people on paid dating sites like eHarmony and Match are transcending their a_rses over to the aforementioned free sites.

DaRick · Post by **DaRick** » March 24th, 2011, 11:30 pm

Make sure it is scammer-free, of course.

Moreover, make sure the wrong sorts of people don't post profiles. We have enough free dating sites replete with dysfunctional single mothers.

Post by **Winston** » January 5th, 2012, 5:10 am

walrusface wrote:Yeah, Winston I've been on Plenty of Fish for years, not that it ever did much good lol.
But I was thinking about a more international based one. One like Date in Asia, but in Eastern Europe etc. But after searching around on google I can't really see much decent free stuff.

I was just thinking of that too. I was thinking that with DateinAsia's success, I could start something like DateinEurope and model it off the same concept and software template. DIA has so much traffic, that it must be making several thousand dollars a month at least, from Adsense. So I was thinking of starting a DateinEurope.

However, there doesn't seem to be many dating sites focused on Europe. Even Cupid Media, which has a long list of different dating sites, only has dating sites targeting Asia, Russia, and Latin America, but not Europe for some reason. There must be a reason why. Maybe there's no market there because the people there don't like to use dating sites, since they have no trouble finding dates in person?

What do you all think?

xiongmao · Post by **xiongmao** » January 5th, 2012, 5:26 am

Here's my .5 cents worth. I'm a programmer, so don't think I haven't considered this idea myself!

I talked to an owner of a well know foreign dating site, and they impressed on me the trouble involved in running such a site. Problems include getting people to pay for subscriptions, and keeping the scammers off.

While a free dating site won't have subscription woes, remember that bandwidth for storing profile photos can be quite significant. Yes PlentyOFish man makes a lot of money, but his hosting expenses will be pretty huge.

As to scammers, well if people want to send their life savings to people who they've never met, then that's their problem. But you might find that the quality of member you get is generally rubbish, and building critical mass is hard, hard work. I don't know who the free site would benefit either. Women can sign up to most sites free. And which woman wants to date a man who can't afford $30 a month for a dating site? Besides, men on free dating sites don't get so much interest, because they're swamped amongst the men seeking free webcam shows etc. etc..

DateInAsia gets gigantic traffic, and I wished I'd started it! However, you'll find that 80% of the users are probably Filipinas seeking husbands/men to send them money, and advertisers aren't so interested in this demographic.

Besides, the quality of contact I've had on DateInAsia has been pathetic compared to CLL/CLM.

As to Europe, Plenty of Fish is massive in the UK. I don't know about Eastern Europe, but there's no shortage of places like Elena's, Russian Cupid etc. They're not free but the Russian dating business isn't as large as you might think.

Post by **Winston** » January 5th, 2012, 5:33 am

Is that why DIA only lets you post one photo, because of bandwidth costs?

I heard that Bluehost gives you unlimited bandwidth space for $7 a month though? Did I misunderstand something?

Why is DIA so successful? There must be a reason. Yes the difficult part would be getting people to join at first, even if it's free. No one is going to join a free dating site with no members.

Don't you have to create a lot of fake profiles in the beginning? lol Is that the only way?

Then after that, you can use Adwords to promote it of course, which would require an investment. I'm sure all dating sites started out by promoting itself through Adwords.

Btw, why are you so cynical about DIA? I've talked to many Filipinas on there and only one asked me for money. So it's not that common. They have strict policies against that kind of stuff, and the scammers have long since been weeded out.

Dogboy86 · Post by **Dogboy86** » January 5th, 2012, 6:34 am

"Why is DIA so successful?"

Well night or day there are a ton of semi hot skinny little Asian girls that can't wait to talk with the next love of their young life, and its free...