Recently I moved my email from one Gmail account to another. It was fascinating and a royal PITA to move 55,000 messages, but when all was said and done I learned a lot about what I’ve been paying attention to the last few years and amazed at how many dating sites have come and gone.
Over 200 dating site startups contacted me for consulting and advisory services. At least 100 of them never launched or have entered the deadpool. Some of them I’m sad to see go, others never should have seen the light of a search engine.
For example, where did Wannago.com go? Just last year they were mentioned on TechCrunch and now the site is poof, gone.
I can’t tell you how many url’s no longer point to dating sites, even from two years ago.
This is part of the problem with the dating industry. It’s easy to start a site, but most site owners are not aware of the amount of time, money and resources they are going to need to become successful.
I tell people these days that they are not starting an online dating site, they are becoming an online marketing expert. Most dating site owners have little understanding of their member’s mindset, and the rest could care less, as long as the money is flowing in.
Getting people to care about your groundbreaking new dating site concept is almost impossible. Most of the time I can show you a business plan for a company that tried the same thing three years ago, and failed.
It’s strange that I start most calls with prospective clients with the statement, “The last thing the world needs is another dating or social networking site.” That usually throws them off-guard and their response is a key indicator as to whether or not we’re going to work together.
Want to try running an online dating or social networking site? Go to Ning. I can advise you on an appropriate plan of action and you’re off to the races just like that. Ning and a banner exchange is a good way to get started with your dating/social site. Same goes for World Singles and World Dating Partners, which are a bit more involved, but you get some marketing support as well.
The truth is that there are few dating startups with enough resources to make it these days. The power is in the small niche sites based on hosted platforms. Small startups can’t afford to customize most dating software. Dating software like SkaDate (blog sponsor) and Boonex is fine if you have a solid technical team in place for several months, but unless that is the case, forget it, go with a hosted solution. Before people start yelling, I realize there are always exceptions, I’m talking in generalities here and I love to be proved wrong.
I’m need to write the next chapter to my How to Start a Dating Site series, it’s been ages since I updated it and there are so many new options and lessons learned to share.
The next few posts are going to be me doing quick riffs on things that pop into my mind as I continue to go through my email box.
