Dating site startups should read the WSJ article Small Firms Tap Amazon’s Juice, which chronicles how companies are leveraging Amazon Web Services (AWS). The AWS page at Amazon contains information about building Facebook applications on AWS, the DevPay billing system and SimpleDB, which I’ve mentioned in the past.
The beginning of an options matrix starts to look like this.
- White label (easiest, give up most revenue)
- Hosted by dating script provider (medium-difficulty, some loss of control over site management)
- Self-hosted (Full control of environment, high degree of effort to launch)
- Write by scratch (all the pain and enjoyment of software development, with complete control over features and functionality)
- AWS (set it and forget it, cheaper hosting, robust scalable hosting environment and endless bandwidth)
Today’s $100k dating site will cost much less next year using these services, but developers are still the largest expense after marketing costs are factored into the buildout plan.
I’d love to see examples of sites built on Amazon’s platform, leave url’s in the comments.
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi, you can find lots of examples of such sites on the AWS blog at http://aws.typepad.com .
Dave,
We are planning on using AWS after the initial launch of the new site. At some point, when we launch the new blog to go along with the new site, we will go into the specifics…
“AWS – set it and forget it”
How? Does AWS offer a ready made community site software? I don’t understand how it helps to get rid of the technical background development.
To clarify, I was referring to the setup of the hosting environment, in that it’s effectively managed hosting.
Check out the Amazon Web Services Blog for more information, http://aws.typepad.com/
WhiteLabel = give up most revenue?
David we really do need to talk, I think your views of a white label solution are probably a bit out of date.
Partners can earn up to 75% of ALL income (initial AND recurring) with some (well, one) white label provider. If you can manage to set up web software, develop a membership database, hosting, customer supporting, payment processing and regularly develop new features for less than 25% of your turnover then you’d be working miracles.
Amazon’s platform is very interesting and we’ve trialled aspects of it for image hosting and scalability, things like that, but it doesn’t provide you with a ready-made membership database, customer support or any of the other things that make white label such an attractive option.
Anyhoo, my tuppence worth,
Ross
Not seeing any exampls at the aws blog. Anyone have any?