I've been reading but it seems that 90% of this info is for blogs. Write more articles, use social bookmarking, etc.. I just started a dating site yesterday (after a few months of coding) and am looking for ways to promote it. Any tips appreciated..
You may have a good start by offering free membership for female members. With dating sites, quality and content is the issue, there are sites in different niches that are satisfied with %10 of incoming visitors becoming dedicated visitors, with a quality dating site a great percentage of incoming visitors will come back. With great percentage of incoming visitors converting to dedicated visitors, quality dating sites do not require as much (constant) marketing. Key is in the content and your main targetted marketing field in early beginning are female members, male member will follow. You have to figure out where to reach female audiance.
Have you considered trying to set-up within a certain type of dating niche? For example for busy professionals or a certain culture? Niche dating sites seem to be doing quite well.
Great advice for him, it would definitely make a site stand out from 90% of dating site of general nature.
Thanks guys. Just some comments: The site is and will always be 100% free, so no trial memberships or anything are necessary. And, I know that niches are good but quite a few of them are alreayd covered, and those are usually pay sites. I didn't want to go that route. To be honest I just made it because plenty of fish is horrible and there are no alternatives. SO I made one to see how it does Thanks!
All the best to you, I was wondering why there are not too many site in the free dating sites market that is worth millions, usually everybody go for paid membership and end up in the sea of similar sites. I just read AOL bought Bebo for $850 million, haven't heard of that site but social-networking sites are valued high, the priciest sites on the Internet are those offering free things. p.s. you may give some glamour in design and girlie freebies to attract female audiance for members. I always remember in these situations a story about a 16 year old owner of whateverlife.com or similar that made a $1 million worth website by offering free glamorous layouts for MySpace. Girls like girlie stuff I guess, even when they are over 30, try with 'sparkling' stuff.
Alot of people do not want to belong to a free site. Mainly because the users who are on it have not been verified in any manner. Sure people can still lie about their stats, but there is that sense of security that comes with a paid site that a free site will never have.
Top tip number 1 - find a way to build links naturally - register on spicypage.com - they allow adult sites and will get your site indexed fast by the Big G
www.comefriday.com -- sign up and check it out we're trying to start off local (Toronto area) for now becuase it's easier that way, but you can still sign up and poke around. We JUST put it online yesterday pretty much so it's just mostly friends and stuff testing out, and we'll start pushing it hard in a week or 2 when the bugs get worked out. Thank you! I feel exactly the same way, we were showcked that there were so few decent free dating sites so we decided to have a go.. I don't really follow here...can you explain more? Maybe in 1999 people were scared of meeting others online, but now with pictures, webcams, etc it's pretty safe. Again I'm not sure what you mean by security...do you think people are afraid that the other person is a criminal ors omething? Thank you, although I'm not sure why you pointed out that it accepts adult site as this isn't an adult site. By building naturally you just mean no link exchanges right? So submitting hte site everywhere = natural? Thanks everyone, keep it coming, and now that I posted the link feel free to give feedback!
Dannic06 may have reffered to the fact that on free dating sites 'all kinds' of people can sign up and scare away 'normal' people. With paid membership, you give your name and pay for it, you are not anonymous to do whatever without any money to lose. A must is to have 'invite a friend' buttom where a member can invite his/her friends to join the network, it's one of the most effective (plus free) marketing tools, member will reach for you their friends candidats to you the site. Last night I received email FaceBook invitation from a High School friend to join and chat there so my HS friend has done marketing for FaceBook. I haven't joined as it's a friend from my city I see once every month or so but I presume my friend has sent away a number of invitation to friends and some of them have joined the network. If one member of your site would invite/initiate at least two of his/her friends to join, you would have a great progression of member growth.
That is what I am referring to. There are some successful free dating sites but they are usually a local phenomenon. Most of the really successful Dating sites are not free at all. People feel a bit safer on those sites just because of the paid membership. Anyone can grab a picture off of google, myspace, ect and put it up as their image. This will happen more often on free sites than on paid sites. I was just trying to point out that the free membership option isn't always helpful.
@dannic06, i agree. Free doesn't always mean good, and when it comes to online where you can see a lot of fraud, some people just rather spend cash on a Paid Dating website. When you ask yourself what's better as your traffic: More people who can buy membership, or a lot of people who click ads, i would go for membership because they are dedicated to the site and also if you go to ad networks such as cj.com , you can see a lot of paid dating sites and you can list there your own and drive sales thorough an affiliate programs.
plentyoffish.com is a great example of a super successful free dating site. Their story is very interesting too. Take a gander at it.
Yes, post video to Youtude, Google, and 30 or so video hosting site. You will get all the traffic you need with Video.
http://thelist.fm/marketing-advertising.shtml If you can get six figure hits a month by the end of the summer, if not sooner, I don't know what to tell you.
I started a Free Classified ( video , MP3 , Text link ) you can post an ad if you want http://www.cosmosing.com/classified/index.php
You may check my Dating Business Blog http://www.usualdating.com for promotion tips. I've just started too, so more dating promotion tips will come up. I would definitely start from special dating directories and social bookmarking sites. Best wishes