[Geronimo]

I have a unique idea about making a dating website. Have any of you started something similar? What about the laws? Is it legal to start something like this?

[PDX]

Have you looked at existing sites' disclaimers and user agreements? Probably a good place to start.

[Gmac]

You're asking questions that are far more complicated than any single sentence (or paragraphs) could answer.

It depends on where you live and what exactly you have in mind. My advice is to do quite a bit of research to make sure no one is out there already doing it. Find out who your potential competition is and make sure it's not a waste of your time. You would be essentially creating a complex online community, which in itself is extremely complicated in ways that I can't even begin to write about here.

Here are some resources you might look at regarding building a community:

http://mashable.com/2011/01/12/online-co...-business/

This article gives a lot of good information and insight from the perspective of a guy who built his own dating site:

http://bakery.cakephp.org/articles/Mingl...66-5-hours

As you can see, Mingle2 is still alive (though barely kicking) and he created it in 2007. I'll admit I've tried it in the past, not really my bag.

Quote:

The Idea - Cooking up a brand with a name, identity, and purpose

Planning - Creating functional specifications, visual wireframes, and information architecture

Design - Creating mock-ups and defining aesthetics, typography, positioning, and color

Development - Writing the actual code

Testing - Ironing out the kinks

Launch - Going live

[Caligula]

There are all sorts of issues. The legal issues will be the least of your worries if you get a good lawyer to help you draft the Terms and Conditions, etc.

Some things to consider:

1. How will you gain traffic / get noticed?
2. How much will it cost you to acquire users? (this is usually expensive, my impression is that most dating sites have low margins due to the cost of acquiring traffic)
3. How will you make that money back? What is your customer's lifetime value likely to be?
4. How will you deal with churn? Good dating sites can become victims of their own success in that people get matched up and then stop being customers. This is why customer acquisition costs are such a big expenditure.
5. How unique is your angle in reality? Does it address any of these issues? Eg. OKCupid is successful because it's free (less churn, users keep their profiles even when they're not actively looking), it has spread via word of mouth because it's a well designed, easy to use and free site. They have focused on building community and engagement around relevant content and insights. There's also strong lock-in in that people have taken a lot of time to answer the questions and quizzes on there, so they may be reluctant to throw away all that 'work'.

[Dash Global]

to late in the game brutha.

there already got established pay sites and free sites.

[Geronimo]

But Im talking about a dating site in another language here. I'll look into the links u gave me, thx.

[babelfish669]

I started a free dating site about 5 years ago. It didn't exactly fail, we got a few thousand members, but the project wasn't profitable so I moved on to better stuff.

You can make a dating site but it absolutely has to be niche. One interesting thing I've noticed is that every couple of years a new website for girls to meet rich guys seems to pop up and get all of the press. Years back it was wealthymen.com, now that seeking arrangement p4p site seems to be getting lots of news articles. You also have to design the initial ad campaigns around attracting female members rather than guys. Some dating site owners have chosen to start with fake profiles but I do not believe that is necessary (also not exactly legal.)

If you can't program, have little to no experience with online advertising or email, I would guess you need about $20,000-$40,000 and 12 to 24 months to get to the break even point. If you can do both well you should be able to get a free niche site growing at break even and make it profitable within 6 or 9 months. I had my system custom built by my inhouse developer. The out of the box systems I've seen in the past are pretty flawed but that may not be the case anymore.

[el mechanico]

(09-16-2011 08:09 PM)Dash Global Wrote:  

to late in the game brutha.

there already got established pay sites and free sites.

This market has just begun. The sky is the limit. I remember when windows 95 came out and I had the idea of gathering up domains. I sat and thought of some names and decided I was too late.That was one of the stupidest decisions I have ever made.

[Caligula]

(09-16-2011 08:09 PM)Dash Global Wrote:  

to late in the game brutha.

there already got established pay sites and free sites.

This is absolutely not the case. Sure there's been some consolidation in the market, but it's still growing and there's always space for new entrants who play their cards right.

[Smitty]

(09-16-2011 08:09 PM)Dash Global Wrote:  

to late in the game brutha.

there already got established pay sites and free sites.

People are still getting used to the idea of online dating. I think there is plenty of room for growth in the market. It fits perfect into the American lifestyle - sit on your fat ass and post pictures that make you look better than you are from the comfort of your home. Plenty of room for growth.