Lately I’ve been reading Markus Frind’s blog, The Paradigm Shift. Markus is the Founder of PlentyOfFish, the largest free dating site in Canada. Most of the people who read Markus’ blog are from the IT and search engine advertising crowd, which hold him in high regard for taking most of the dating industry by storm from his apartment in Canada and actually doing something cool with .NET.
Some things that become apparent after reading him for a few days:
Markus knows a heck of lot more than most about Adsense, website hosting and dating site databases than you ever will. Accept the fact and move on.
PlentyOfFish is a one-time deal. You cannot replicate his success, at least not for the time being.
Markus better enjoy his time in the spotlight, it won’t last forever. Kind of like a star quarterback.
Like a surgeon, you often need a big ego to be successful. Markus has this, which can be awe-inspiring or comical, depending on the context. He loves to talk outside of his knowledgebase.
An Iranian Cyber-Terrorist wants Markus to pay up $10,000 or he will take his site down. I love how transparent he is about these things. Most sites would never talk about this. Incredibly refreshing in an industry built on secrecy, bad press releases and decade-old thinking. Read the rest, this is hilarious.
I’m glad Markus can run his million-dollar dating site from his apartment, working only a few hours a day. That gives him time to find stuff like this.
People wonder how Markus makes so much money. Here’s one reason. He makes money off affiliate deals with paid dating sites.
If you’re in the dating or social industry, you should be reading his blog, ’nuff said.
