A developer at SEOmoz built a dating site from concept to launch in 66.5 hours.
The first month of being online Mingle2 had around 90,000 unique visitors. By July the site’s popularity exploded, seeing nearly 700,000 uniques and 1.9 million page views for that month alone. Being the founder (and a user) of the website, this has been the most interesting and rewarding website I’ve ever been involved with. Before long I started getting emails from various other dating websites and investors and after countless sleepless nights trying to decide what I wanted to do, I put my indecisiveness to rest and sold Mingle2 to JustSayHi, a competing dating website. I chose JustSayHi primarily because their aspirations are very aligned with mine; we both want this property to be synonymous with free online dating, much like how craigslist has become synonymous with free classified ads.
This is the kind of guy who could give PlentyOfFish a run for their money and he’s only 25. I love hearing stories like this.
The reality of building a dating site is that it usually takes a lot longer to get buy-in from all parties involved, a solid workable game plan in place and all of the behind the scenes bit-wrangling that happens when building any software from the ground up. Eharmony spent something like 3-5 million to get up and running and on solid ground.
I had to share some inspiration for all of you out there sweating through the development of your new dating sites. Now get back to work!
