Launching A Dating Site... A Challenging Endeavor

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."

More...