Thursday, February 7th, 2008
Many people when buying a dating software think about its promotion and the different ways to earn money, of course. The common question I used to hear from customers was about membership. Should it be for free at the beginning? Isn’t it better to set a paid membership from the start? If the membership is for free, how should I earn? And so on.
There are tons of dating websites already, but as we can see they choose different business models. Let’s take a look at the most popular scenarios to understand how it works.
FREE START. Most dating web-sites start with free membership. Why? Profile database. The goal is to get as many people on the website as possible within a short period of time. The other point why it is reasonable – you put your new website online and people are joining and having fun for free while you have time to test the software, check hosting facilities, improve design, adjust admin settings, add necessary features, fix bugs if appeared. Once you are done with preparation you are ready for big promotion and to start earning money.
100% FREE. The example can be www.plentyoffish.com, which is completely free for everyone, no hidden fees and paid upgrades. The website earns on advertising. This is one model. With the right advertising strategy it can become a very profitable business.
JOIN FREE. Another way you can choose is partially free dating service. I call it “Join Free”, because usually joining (with some rare exceptions) is the only free service on such kind of websites. This is made to attract people at the beginning and shows the benefits of paid membership when they are already inside.
There can be combinations of the schemes mentioned above or some slightly modified examples, but basically the idea is like that. Which way to choose, you decide considering your target audience, promotion experience, knowledge of advertising tactics and professional preferences. Just make sure to take into consideration your clients’ perspective (think of client’s needs!).
Also, look at the article on the www.freedating-sites.com. I like the text, because the author gives some words of advice from the user’s point of view, which is very important to know before you make a decision about your marketing strategy.
So, which strategy do you choose for your website?
Posted in Marketing | Tags: income · marketing strategy
Wednesday, December 12th, 2007
Thanks, Emil! :))) So, here we are and let’s begin!
So many questions on how to launch a dating website and no answers? We’ll start from the very beginning and provide you with some tips and recommendations of how to start your own dating or social networking web-site.
The best advice for today:
Stop thinking of big client database – start thinking of client needs!
No objections! That’s true, it works! What do I mean by that?
I used to hear from people starting dating/community website that they need a big database to become successful. They are definitely right… if this is not the first question they ask after buying software. Got it?
Your first question should be “Who is my audience?”. Who are those people I’m doing this website for? What do they like? What do they need? WHY do they need your website?
Ask as many questions as possible to find out who is “your database” before thinking of increasing it to hundreds and thousands of people.
In order to identify your clients needs you should know who your audience is. You need to “draw” the client portrait. Try to describe in details (more details – better results).
Example: My client is single man/woman living in Paris aged over 50, with high average income and passion for traveling.
If you start by taking care of people needs in real life dating you will result in big client database. There is no other way to make people stay on your site.
In our future posts we’ll cover the steps you may take to start dating/ social network web-site and costs associated with this process. Wish you to have more active and interested users on your web-site!
Posted in Marketing | Tags: clients · tips
Wednesday, December 12th, 2007
I’m glad to announce that we are opening community business marketing section on our blog. Let me introduce Uliana Kumenova - our VP Marketing and editor-in-chief. Uliana will share her thoughts and gather most useful Internet materials specific for our market.
There are certain marketing technics to promote an internet community - some of them are effective, some are not. Those technics tend to change over time, so our work is to follow them.
Not only you will be able to get help on your individual questions, we can build constructive dialogs, exchange ideas and learn to understand our customerbase better. Welcome to our discussions.
Feel free to subscribe for marketing section RSS.
Posted in Marketing, News, SkaDate | Tags: discussion · promotion
