Online Dating Developments

Staying Up To Date - Online Dating DevelopmentsBy Rw Oneill

Personal ads were once seen as the last resort for single people who couldn’t strike up a relationship in the traditional way. A simple “will you go out with me?” was just that step to far when ever that crunch moment came around, and personal ads were their saviour, a middle-man could do it for them. However with this came a stigma, that of desperation, and those who used personal ads were often privately ridiculed.

However times change. Professional career demands, higher divorce figures coupled with less pressure to get married in the first place, and many other variables have led to more single people, with less time to socialise. In some cases these people have grown out of their previous social circles and have had to make new ones, in other cases people have just forgotten how to socialise at all with the opposite sex. And then of course you still have the younger generation who need a little help to get things moving.

The stigma of desperation is no longer relevant and personal ads have become an alternative social network for many people. This ‘acceptance’ has coincided with the Internet revolution and has seen a new market develop for web entrepreneurs – online dating.

The online dating business is massive, however the market has become saturated in recent years. Figures show that spending increased from $8 million to $117 million at the beginning of the decade, but has now levelled out at around $114 million.

To compete in this flooded market, competitors are looking at different ways of capturing new custom. At the beginning the mechanics of the online dating site were simple: alert member to other members who match based on physical indicators such as eye and hair colour, height etc. The mechanics have now advanced to deep profiling to cover all of the compatibility bases in the hope of building more successful and long term relationships.

Some dating sites have explored the exploitation of various niches to target more custom. Many of the big players have started to cater for couples and religious groups, or have jumped on the security bandwagon. Others have increased their use of technology, and have integrated video and audio into their web sites to allow members to visualise and talk to each other before arranging a date.

One thing is clear; the only stigma that now exists in these circles is with the web site owners and how much of the market share they have. The individual looking for love is no longer a seen as a sad or desperate individual but an important and sought after commodity. For the businesses concerned, now more than ever they need to stay up to ‘date’.

Rob is a moderator at http://www.northendates.co.uk
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Increase traffic to your site with Social Networking

Build Your Social Network for BusinessBy Allen Taylor

In a word, social networking is a means of developing relationships with potential business partners and customers. It can take place in a number of ways and is still in the infancy stage of its life span.
PC Magazine defines social networking as "A web site that provides a virtual community for people interested in a subject. It provides a way for members to communicate by voice, chat, instant message, videoconference and blogs."

The key to social networking is in the building relationships with people with similar interests. All kinds of examples abound and the Internet is rife with sites that target a specific community of interests or allow people to build their own.

Myspace.com is by no means the first social networking site. It has been preceded by many dating sites, business sites, and other interest-targeted web sites. It is, however, one of the most popular web sites on the Internet, enjoying a higher ranking even that Google.

Ryze is another popular site for social networking but geared toward businesses. Other business-minded social networking sites include Ecademy and LinkIn. Mediabistro is an example of an industry specific social networking site, focusing on the needs of freelance writers.

But should you join one of these communities and, if so, which one is right for you?

I'm not going to create a glossy picture. Instead, I'm going to say you should be realistic in your expectations. You can get business through social networkinig and it can be an effective marketing medium, but don't expect your inbox to be flooded with orders overnight. Furthermore, how you approach marketing through social networking is totally different than how you do it through other media.

The number of networking communities are numerous, more than one man can count. They vary in features and amenities as well as focus. Some are simply for building social networks as in MySpace and Facebook, while others are better suited to building business networks. Some can be used for both and many successful marketers do use them for both. Again, how you approach networking through this medium is different than through other media.

You don't want to blatantly advertise your product or service. That turns people off. You do want to build an exhaustive profile of yourself and your business, however. Here a few tips to how you can do that.

* First, be focused. Don't talk about your dog or your goldfish named Sam. Write a profile that mentions who you are, the name of your business, what your specialty is, and who your target is. Hit it hard and quick, be specific and don't dally.

* Next, include a photo. People like to know who they are doing business with.

* Link back to your business web site. If you have more than one, link to them all. You can also link to your blog and, by all means, include your e-mail address. If you don't do this, what is the point? You're networking for your business; link back to your web sites.

* Invite people to visit your profile page. On MySpace you can visit other people's MySpace page and invite them to be your friend. Do this but don't just invite anyone. Invite people you think you might like to do business with. Then go an comment on their pages and send them a nice, short, friendly e-mail thanking them for helping you build your network.

* MySpace also allows you to send bulletin board messages to everyone in your network of friends. Do it, but not often. Some people go overboard with this and spam the board. That's annoying. Don't do it. But every now and then send an invitation to try your ezine, or purchase a product. Promote yourself in a friendly, non-pushy way.

* Every networking site is different. Take some time to learn the features of the site you are using. Get comfortable with those features and use them to build your network.
If you use the social networking sites correctly, people will want to do business with you. Don't be pushy, be friendly. And let people know what you can do for them. But most of all, have fun.

Allen Taylor is an award-winning journalist, freelance writer and copywriter. He specializes in providing low-cost content for online businesses. For more information about how to make your business shine visit http://www.taylor-and-associates.com/. Be sure to sign up for The Content Letter, Taylor and Associates' weekly e-zine. Allen Taylor also manages Articles.pn, an article directory with social networking tools.
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Dating sites and the 21st century

Dating Sites And The 21st Century...Or How It All Began...By Damien Brodel
Okay, let's face it - there are obviously millions of people using dating sites. What's important here is the number, not their objectives or reasons. Not a regular dating site user myself, I have friends who spend A LOT of time on such places. I suppose the emotional aspect of that can not be described in words and one has to hook up to it in order to understand it. But nevertheless, it seems to feel like a part of the lifestyle for some, say, a few hundred million users.
For the regular dating site user, looks and sounds of the site are not the most important part of it. But for people like me, who spent last 10 years working on design, branding and identity projects, it does. And it does not need much observation to see what I am talking about - just take a look at couple of ugly sites that has a counter showing users that are currently online or how many members from your country are there. Just go to Google and run a search for "dating site" - you will get the idea right from the first page.
This will only show you that users are not much interested in the visual or aesthetical aspects of a site once they find the fun of it. Disregarding the fact that dating sites are usually well visited, the truth is they seem to be stuck in the past century. They look and feel outdated.
Sure, that seems not to be affecting their profits in the very same way as ugliness does not affect eBay's, but in the time when people are talking about web 2.0, how long will it be okay to keep your crappy looks just because your users got used to it?
When the idea of creating our own dating site came, we went through tens of dating sites to check out the competition and plan our startup tactics. Along with the competition, we conducted a research on the existing dating site backends, as a major milestone was to choose whether we are going to use a third party application or write our own. Once we had enough information and impressions, we sat down and brainstormed the hell out of us. Each one of us shared his thoughts and impressions. Then we draw the line (sorry if there is something you already know, but it will do you no harm to go over it again):
1. There are two general types of dating sites - free and paid. Free sites are getting profits by running third party advertising campaigns; paid are run by charging people monthly or yearly subscription.
2. There are quite a lot of third party products to build your dating site with. Both free and commercial.
3. There are few big players on the scene we can't compete with at this point.
4. There are a lot of smaller dating sites we can easily outperform if we plan our strategy right.
5. Dating business is a win-win kind of business - no matter how many new dating sites come out - users will always join as many of them as they like, but will still keep their membership to previously used sites. Or at least on the free ones.
6. Loosing a member is not because the competitor is a bastard, but because the user is bored with your service.
7. Making your dating site popular does not necessarily mean you should target top position in search engines and pay a bunch of money on SEO. At least not right from the start. There are plenty of free marketing alternatives and what's even better - more are coming on a constant basis.
8. Today's dating sites don't rely much on the looks.
9. Today's dating sites don't rely much on the name either. Yesterday I landed on a site called Herpes Dating. HERPES!? Are you for real!?
10. Most of today's dating sites sport a generic set of features.
11. Most of today's dating sites stop developing once they make a fair ammount of members.
12. In general, a great lot of today's dating sites look like crap, sound like it and do not give a damn about it.
After we analysed this information, we came to the following conclusions:
1. There always be a niche for new dating sites. Coming up with well-thought, good looking, appealing and catchy site however puts you in a flying start position. Getting your site noticed by design galleries and into discussions acts as a free initial marketing campaign. Not to mention the fact that it's way better to have a good looking site than crappy looking one.
2. If you want to build a website that stands above the rest, you should go for a custom solution rather than using a generic one. This does not necessarily need to be MUCH more expensive. For example there are lots of features in some sites we found useless and thus not implementing initially in DateYard. Which gives us two benefits - 1. keeping the cost low for the startup; and 2. adding new features to the site in future will allow us to constantly develop, which will strenghten our members' loyalty in our service because this way we will show we care about them.
3. Having a site that looks good and feels different will certainly bring some attention to it right from the start, which is a good move as we did not have marketing budget at all and thus needing to popularize the site in alternative ways. This is also useful as this way we will always be researching and enriching ourselves with information on the latest internet marketing and branding techniques.
So it all began as an experiment. The results will either be that DateYard will be the start of a new era in online dating business, or it will simply prove that ugly sites with stupid names and no branding whatsoever are preferred by today's internet-using Pavlov dogs.
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It takes time to succeed

Launching A Dating Site... A Challenging Endeavor
By Vivienne Neal

I have been in the dating business for over 20 years. It has not been a cakewalk. In l986 I started a pen pal club which over the years evolved into a worldwide correspondence and introduction service for singles and couples seeking friendship, romance, marriage and broadminded contacts.

In October 2001, I decided to go on the internet with my club to reach a broader market. The mission was the same, to target the singles' and couples' market. It wasn't an easy task. Of course I knew it would take years to build my site into a moderate money making venture. Moving from brick and mortar to the World Wide Web was like starting a new business all over again.

Last year I decided to offer a more traditional dating site for people who weren't necessarily into the erotic scene. I searched around for a dating affiliate that could host my singles' site and still maintain my own brand name. I found a server that already had a database of over 100,000 singles' profiles. All I had to do was market and advertise my site to attract new members.

I was prepared to give this site five years to grow into a successful money making site. Just like I did with my correspondence club. Experts will tell you, it can take up to five years before a business begins to see a profit. In many instances it may take longer. When you make a profit, you'll be putting that money back into the business for maintenance, advertising and marketing. And I can attest to this. After all I wasn't in this business to make a killing overnight. I was prepared to provide a professional service and build my membership slowly. I wanted people who visited my site to know that I was going to be there for the long haul. The money will always follow.

Everyday you read about businesses becoming "successful overnight." However, this is the exception and not the norm. You have to ask yourself "how long did it take the business to succeed; what mistakes were made along the way, and were there any failures before the successes."

After running my new online dating site for a year, a total of 456 people became members, and 1% of them became paid members. I thought this was good since my correspondence club site had a very slow start. For a couple of years we had roughly 25 visits a day. Some days were even less. Today we have over 125 visitors a day. To date we have had over 64,000 visitors. This did not happen in a year or even two years. This may not seem like much, but when you're operating on a shoe-string budget, to me this is pretty darn good!

In late February, the affiliate powering my dating site sent out emails to all its members saying that it was removing sites that were inactive and sites that did not point to their servers. Of course, I didn't think this applied to my site, because in my mind, my site was active. It was bringing in new members. Unfortunately, they felt that 456 members wasn't active enough. They decided to remove my site and closed my account because in their words "my site was inactive." I said to myself "inactive, how could this be?" After all people were joining. My lowest month was February 2007 with 8 members. Than in March, membership picked up. By March 21, 2007, 22 people became members, and more were sure to join. I understand that everyone visiting my site will not join, and not everyone who joins will upgrade to become a paid member. To me it takes time to build a large membership.

When I contacted the service to inquire about why my site was removed their response was "we are tightening up and working to offer a leaner, meaner Partner program which functions more efficiently and maintains our high brand quality across the internet."

After reading that sentence, I finally go it. Nowadays instant gratification seems to be the norm. You see it all around you. New TV series are cancelled before they have a chance to build an audience. And in many cases shows are cancelled before they even air. Everything is rush, rush, rush! You're constantly bombarded with the catch phase "got to have it now."

The belief seems to be when a person starts a business, he or she must make the money now. If this doesn't happen, it times to throw in the towel. We all like to think that when starting a business, we are going to make fast money in no time, but life doesn't work that way. You must build trust before you get loyal customers. You must be around for awhile before people will spend their hard earn money on your product or service.

While searching the internet, I came across an affiliate program and read some of their affiliate's testimonials. This particular testimonial struck a cord with me; it was honest and to the point. I am paraphrasing what the person wrote:

"I joined an affiliate almost 4 years ago now, and was informed that it would probably take around 4 years before I started to earn a reasonable income as an affiliate. I now have over 1,500 members registered and With the new site design, this promise is coming true. Affiliate payments have become easy to request, and are paid on time as requested."

This testimonial sumarizes the point I have been trying to make. If you're thinking about starting a dating business or any type of business, remember it's not a "get rich quick venture; it's a long-term commitment where profits may be a long time coming. As a professor once said in a "How To Start A Small Business" class I took in college "owning a business is 90% perspiration and 10% aspiration."

You're probably wondering if I found an affiliate to power and host my dating site. The answer is yes. In fact this service offers great tools and features such as a newsletter suite to contact my members, an online link exchange to build my very own link exchange, an affiliate program so others can advertise on my dating site, site optimising tools which can help me to rank higher in search engines results and so much more.#

Vivienne Neal is the founder of HMCS which manages One World Singles - The coolest place to meet the nicest singles from Australia, Canada, the UK and the USA. If you are seeking marriage, love, dating, companionship, a soul mate, friendship, online romance or just a pen pal, then this site is for you. All colors, ages (18+) religions, etnicities, and lifestyles are welcomed. It is free to join. Browse through thousands of profiles, upload your own photo and personal details, see who is online, meet your soul mate and begin having fun!

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Internet based dating services receive millions of pounds

How to Start an Online Dating Service Business

How to Start an Online Dating Service Business
By Lawrence Andrews

Making new friends and finding the person of your dreams is not as easy as it used to be. With the busy daily life of singles in the US, there is no available time for socialization outside of work.

Why is online dating service considered a profitable business? Here are some of the facts:

* Almost .5% of the US population is either single or divorced. The largest online dating websites have over 700,000 personal advertisements and profiles all enthusiastically searching for a partner. There have been thousands of marriages resulting from internet introduction.

* Internet-based dating services receive millions of dollars in revenue every year. There is guaranteed money in this business.

* Basic emotional needs are the easiest to sell. These needs include dating, love and romance. You will be paid by marketing romance to the increasing number of single web surfers.

If you are thinking on starting up your own online dating service business, here are four important factors to consider:

1) Online dating business plan: Organizing a plan would allow you to operate the business and ensure your company’s growth. A business plan is crucial for organizing and seeking potential clients. A business with development potential is always a safer investment than a business that settles for breaking even.

A plan would provide you with a clear view of your business’ future. It summarizes the company’s goals and provides your future staff to have information that is vital to the daily function of your company.

2) Website management method. You should plan for a presentable and quality web design or hire the best web designer in the industry. Determine which web hosting service is the best and enroll in it. For your website to attract thousands of visitors, you would need web hosting that could accommodate all the traffic and database of your members. You could also consider being your own web host that would enable you to manage your own server.

3) Marketing and advertising. The online dating service would require a large amount of advertising money to be able to set your company apart from the thousands of other dating services in existence.

4) Financial plan. Organizing your financial plan would help you establish the budget necessary to cover your daily operating costs. This plan would also help your company to develop long-term financial goals.

If you have successfully achieved all of your plans necessary for the company to run, you could now start your own online dating service business and give the singles a chance to meet their dream partner.

About The Author:

Lawrence Andrews is an ePublisher, software developer, consultant,
and author of numerous books. Visit his Private Label Content and
Software site at http://www.lmamedia.com for more information about
Dating Do's and Dont's.

You may use this article freely on your website as long as this resource
box is included, a link point back to my site, and this article remains
unchanged! Copyright 2005 Lawrence Andrews

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Tips for starting a Dating Business

Tips For Starting Dating Service Business In Los Angeles

By Alexander Gordon

Nowadays, finding a dream partner is not as easy as it used to be a few years back. The reasons for this are hectic professional lives and unfamiliarity with dating services. Singles in the U.S. would be glad to know that there are several online dating services. Hence, there is no longer a necessity for them to go and hunt for partners to socialize. They can just go online and browse for such sites that will offer them a lot of options. These sites are of different types: Some of them are broad-based and have members from different backgrounds looking out for several kinds of relationships; others provide specific services for members considering their interest, location, and relationships sought after.

If you are planning to set up such a service in Los Angeles, it could be a wise business decision, given the popularity of such services in the city.

As a provider of an Internet dating service, you need to facilitate individuals, groups, and couples to meet online and encourage them to develop either a romantic or a sexual relationship. You could also consider providing un-moderated matchmaking services by way of personal computers, cell phones, and internet. These services will enable people to exchange personal information and allow them to search for eligible partners based on the criteria of age, gender, profession, and location.

You may also provide the users the opportunity of uploading their photos to your website so that interested people can consider them for “hookups.” You may think of providing additional services such as online chatting, messaging through message boards, and web casting. If you are providing only basic services, allow the users to register for free. However, if you are offering additional value-added services, you may charge them an extra fee on a monthly basis.

Such a business could yield great results, if you take it up seriously and invest considerable time in it. Research reports show that U.S. residents spent nearly $469.5 million in 2004 on online dating facilities. This makes the segment the largest paid web content, according to market experts. Moreover, towards November-end in 2004, nearly 844 lifestyle and dating sites were operational, which marks a 38% increase since the beginning of the year.

Market analysts point out that online dating services are likely to grow significantly in the U.S., considering the growing population of divorcees. Moreover, the online dating service is an already established industry and has been instrumental in marriages of thousands of americans. The business just needs your focus and commitment for guaranteeing success. Make sure that you have a business plan in place to start with.

Alexander Gordon is a writer for http://www.smallbusinessconsulting.com/ - The Small Business Consulting Community. Sign-up for the free success steps newsletter and get our booklet valued at $24.95 for free as a special bonus. The newsletter provides daily strategies on starting and significantly growing a business.

Business Owners all across the country are joining "The Community of Small Business Owners” to receive and provide strategies, insight, tips, support and more on starting, managing, growing, and selling their businesses. As a member, you will have access to true Millionaire Business Owners who will provide strategies and tips from their real-life experiences.

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UK Dating Partners

By working with us you will have a site created for you, tailored to your specific requirements, at absolutely no cost. The site will be built using technologically advanced software that enables your members to identify and communicate with individuals who are psychologically, culturally, educationally and demographically compatible. And it will operate under the umbrella of the most advanced online dating affiliate platform in the world.
One of the main aims of what we do and what we have created is a cooperative of dating sites that are integrated together to share the benefits of one extremely large site. What you - our partners - bring is expertise in marketing specifically in the dating industry. We bring the reward of working with a massive database, higher conversion rates (which we will explain later), and customers staying as members longer to enjoy the full benefits of our sites' advanced utilities.
You have no staffing costs, no worries about either online support or the major cost of developing or maintaining your own site, or paying for unrestricted bandwidth or hosting. There is a free integration package and maximum choice in how to carry this out.

What are the Benefits?

Independent dating system
Independent partner program
Full customization and branding
Advanced administration control
Demographic info for calculating costs
Statistics for measuring traffic and links
Geographical or subject-specific sites
Top level administration
Own banner program for partners
No Hosting costs or other overheads
Supports any language
Tremendous earning potential

Marketing tips on creating your Dating site

How Can You Start an Online Dating Site
By Fione Tan

Everyone knows that online dating is picking up real fast. Have you met a friend who hooked up with their spouse online? I had a beautiful friend that found her true love online, from half way around the globe. So, if you want to start your own online dating website, what should you do?

1. Create your own profile in other online dating websites

• check out what goes on in the other popular dating websites, browse through postings in other personals website
• you probably would want to use a non-work / non-business related email to sign up for such services
• read more online dating safety dos and dont's at other popular matchmaking resources website

2. Create USP for your website

• what sets your new online dating website from the other millions of online dating sites out there?
• USP means unique selling point. Even a pet shop owner competing with other retailers in a local brick and mortar market also needs a USP.

3. Decide on how you want to do up your e-dating site

• There are a couple of ways that you can use to create your matchmaking system for your online dating site. The cheapest method is to join other people’s affiliate programs as this allows you to promote another website that is already established and have many members in their database.
• You can also decide to buy online dating software, and then customize the look and feel of the software to fit your requirements.
• Read the internet marketing forums or affiliate marketing forums for reviews of online dating softwares and online dating affiliate programs tips.

4. Market and promote the website

• Use online and offline marketing strategies to promote your website. One of the participants in my coaching program 3 years ago, is still making good money on his online dating website. This shows that good internet marketing tactics such as search engine optimization can still bring in the sales to you in the years to come.

For newbies to the Internet, it’s great to attend basic internet website marketing seminars like those at eOneNet.com to prepare you for the internet marketing success short-cuts.

Fione Tan is the President & CEO of eOneNet.com
eOneNet.com ranked World's No.1 Internet Marketing Coach in top search engines. eOneNet has offices in Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong

She is Malaysia's representative to the Board of IT Committee in confederation of Asia Pacific Chambers of Commerce (CACCI) and has spoken and trained over 5,000 people in Internet conferences in Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Dubai, Pakistan, Iran etc.

She has helped clients ranging from home-based, small businesses, up to multinational companies such as Apple Malaysia, NEC, FujiXerox, Goodyear, increase business via Internet marketing strategies such as email marketing and top search engine optimization services.

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