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It’s no easy task; don't expect anyone to listen to you about your new free online dating site because no one will. No one will read your emails and no one will

by sosuke 16y ago

It’s no easy task; don't expect anyone to listen to you about your new free online dating site because no one will. No one will read your emails and no one will reply. Your biggest visitors will be people that want to scam or steal your members away to other dating sites or 419 deals There are several new hot free online dating sites started every year, mine is still running but after stopping my advertising campaigns it has languished. If you’re still interested in doing a free online dating site then more power to you and I hope you have better luck than I did.

mindcrime 16y ago
Out of curiosity, have you written about your experiences at all? If not, would you be willing to do so? I'm sure there's a HN'er or two that would be interested in hearing your thoughts and observations.
- sosuke 16y ago
  I actually had not thought about it before. You are right though I enjoy reading about other peoples successes and failures. Thanks for the inspiration to write!
jarin 16y ago
I'm the lead developer at http://setformarriage.com http://setformarriage.com and I can say that this is totally true. There are a lot of hurdles to running a dating site, the primary ones being dealing with scammer accounts and a stigma with the media and advertisers that borders on the level of running a porn site. However, if you've got some kind of unique angle (like Set For Marriage's focus on marriage-minded people or Ashley Madison's controversial focus on facilitating adultery) or some kind of newsworthy technology it's not really that hard to line up interviews with local news stations and blogs (the founder of Set For Marriage was interviewed by something like 15 local news stations around the US from a single press release and some nudging). Going to online dating conferences can also be very good too, as many of the people in the industry are very willing to help out serious and interesting newcomers. There's definitely a challenge in building traffic though. AdWords and SEO for dating terms are very competitive, and affiliate traffic can be very scammer-heavy. CloudFlare, some decent flagging algorithms, and OCD developers who check for spam accounts multiple times a day can help out tremendously with this, and we've given one nice woman a lifetime premium account for reporting a ton of suspicious accounts to us.

by sosuke 16y ago

mindcrime 16y ago

Out of curiosity, have you written about your experiences at all? If not, would you be willing to do so? I'm sure there's a HN'er or two that would be interested in hearing your thoughts and observations.

sosuke 16y ago
I actually had not thought about it before. You are right though I enjoy reading about other peoples successes and failures. Thanks for the inspiration to write!

jarin 16y ago

I'm the lead developer at http://setformarriage.com http://setformarriage.com and I can say that this is totally true. There are a lot of hurdles to running a dating site, the primary ones being dealing with scammer accounts and a stigma with the media and advertisers that borders on the level of running a porn site. However, if you've got some kind of unique angle (like Set For Marriage's focus on marriage-minded people or Ashley Madison's controversial focus on facilitating adultery) or some kind of newsworthy technology it's not really that hard to line up interviews with local news stations and blogs (the founder of Set For Marriage was interviewed by something like 15 local news stations around the US from a single press release and some nudging). Going to online dating conferences can also be very good too, as many of the people in the industry are very willing to help out serious and interesting newcomers. There's definitely a challenge in building traffic though. AdWords and SEO for dating terms are very competitive, and affiliate traffic can be very scammer-heavy. CloudFlare, some decent flagging algorithms, and OCD developers who check for spam accounts multiple times a day can help out tremendously with this, and we've given one nice woman a lifetime premium account for reporting a ton of suspicious accounts to us.