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Talked to a number of dating site startup in recent weeks. Here’s what I came away with along with a few of my favorite best practices. Of course not everything is right for all sites but these are key issues to address.
- Raise several million at least. Anything less and you run out of money before you get serious traction
- Do the exact opposite of what everyone else is doing and grab some of those 60 million singles not doing online dating
- Strongly consider launching on a white label platform to test and refine concepts
- Free with Freemium features: See OkCupid’s awesome A-List
- Dynamic Profiles: Pull from social services and actually do something with the information
- Make profiles easy to update via email/twitter/phone
- Add in location-based alerts: Dave’s at Ironsides Bar (with solid privacy controls)
- Trust and reputation: ID verification, perhaps background checks on back-end hidden from users if possible
- Game mechanics: Inspiration at emailga.me
- Loaded phrase but matchmaking prowess and Great Date leaderboards are fun and functional
- Make the site as social as possible
- Make it even more social
- Video profiles: crowdsource-reviewed
- Instant-messaging with strong filters
- Inbox filters
- Drag-and-drop photo upload
- Automatic time-outs for overzealous/creepers/psychos
- Partner with a reputable traffic driver. Too many co’s out there pushing crap into the system. Money is money but I like to sleep well at night
- Behavioral targeting, because people don’t know what they want
- Write press releases that don’t suck
- Buy traffic from other dating sites (keep it in the family like POF)
- Advertise targeted offers, not University of Phoenix junk
- Run beta.mydatingsite.com to test out new stuff publicly
- Buy a few small or medium sites and roll them up to get early traction
- Test and iterate: feedbackroulette.com, usertesting.com
Things I wouldn’t do
- Build out on credit cards: running out of money before critical mass is achieved = doom
- Try to be another Match/Meetic/Plentyoffish
- Do yet another casual/adult dating site
- Build a site based on generic features
- Try to compete in a saturated niche market: Jewish, Christian and Seniors – no way
- Base services on a standalone mobile app: Unless the concept was close to perfect
- Buy a lot of cheap crappy traffic to launch site
- Believe that viral marketing is going to keep my acquisition costs low
- Use a lot of busty co-eds in my advertising
- Forget that 99% of dating site launches go nowhere
The version I use with clients is 25 pages long. Consider this the absolute minimum list as you plan your site.
