The Shrine

No, I'm not interested in finding one, per say. I'm happily married, thank you.

Actually, I'm interested in creating one. It will be a compatibility matching system, somewhat like eHarmony, but...well, without all of the BS that eH hypes. Matches will be based on physical/mental attributes and common interests.

My initial problem right now is figuring out if I should even bother. There are quite a bit of dating sites out there, but it seems like the signal-to-noise ratio is quite low. I'm not sure if there are good dating sites like these of its type, but one would think that if it was a good site, it would be well-known by now. As it is, the only two sites that are in the mass market are Match.com (which is basically reliant on pics and bios, like most others) and eHarmony.com (which rejects users, costs too much, doesn't match nearly enough people, Christian overtones, etc.). MySpace doesn't count.

Has anybody here already done some of the research for this?

Create one for gamers.

bovine wrote:

Eric wrote:Create one for gamers.

That's a really good idea! you can have their like "wow playernames" and shit in there..... yeah..... good idea.

I meant gamers.

Not every females likes WoW, might be some FPS heads out there.

If you want a sausage fest then you would do one for gamers. Although, any regular dating website is full of long term relationship wanting women...

You defenitely need a niche, i would just go with age and be the young hip place alla myspace.

Well, what reason are people going to come to your website over the other thousands that are out there? That's the first think you have to think of. Then, what reason are they going to stay? Yes you need lots of people to provide action for them to want to come back, that's the core of any site, but how are you going to get the initial adopters to stay around long enough? And where are you going to advertise?

I kinda like the "gamer personals" idea actually.

I'd try that for sure.

Flip wrote:If you want a sausage fest then you would do one for gamers.

Aye. I'm not looking for a niche market. There will be an option to insert Video Games as a matchable interest, so it would already be available for gamers, computer nerds, rockclimbers, skydivers, or any other "group" that can be fit into an common interest.

The profile will be designed so that people will barely need to fill in a "bio".

Zeus wrote:Well, what reason are people going to come to your website over the other thousands that are out there?

Well, that was sort of the question I was asking anybody here. Is there anybody experienced with the online dating sites? What were they lacking? Is there any in-depth online dating site that actually matches on compatibility and personal interests?

This would be something I'd want to research myself, anyway, but I figured some of you guys had already tried the online dating scene.

Zeus wrote:Then, what reason are they going to stay? Yes you need lots of people to provide action for them to want to come back, that's the core of any site, but how are you going to get the initial adopters to stay around long enough?

Well, profiles won't get deleted, and unless there are X number of profiles bound to that city (or surrounding areas), the service is free. After it reaches around 100 or so profiles for a city, I'll start charging a monthly fee for those people.

Even then, people don't have to delete their profile to stop getting charged. As long as its set to "Not Looking", it will stop charging, as well as hide it from searches. So, people can turn it off when they find somebody, and turn it back on if they are single again.

So, for the initial time, there isn't really a problem with "getting people to stay", as the profile is always there, and if its free, they will likely always keep it on. Because of that, new users will create a profile and find a match with the older profile, which will get them back on.

Zeus wrote:And where are you going to advertise?

Google Ads. Fark, if I can manage it, or stuff like SlickDeals. Maybe even radio ads. This will be a serious business, not a generic website.

SineSwiper wrote:

Flip wrote:If you want a sausage fest then you would do one for gamers.

Aye. I'm not looking for a niche market. There will be an option to insert Video Games as a matchable interest, so it would already be available for gamers, computer nerds, rockclimbers, skydivers, or any other "group" that can be fit into an common interest.

The profile will be designed so that people will barely need to fill in a "bio".

Zeus wrote:Well, what reason are people going to come to your website over the other thousands that are out there?

Well, that was sort of the question I was asking anybody here. Is there anybody experienced with the online dating sites? What were they lacking? Is there any in-depth online dating site that actually matches on compatibility and personal interests?

This would be something I'd want to research myself, anyway, but I figured some of you guys had already tried the online dating scene.

Zeus wrote:Then, what reason are they going to stay? Yes you need lots of people to provide action for them to want to come back, that's the core of any site, but how are you going to get the initial adopters to stay around long enough?

Well, profiles won't get deleted, and unless there are X number of profiles bound to that city (or surrounding areas), the service is free. After it reaches around 100 or so profiles for a city, I'll start charging a monthly fee for those people.

Even then, people don't have to delete their profile to stop getting charged. As long as its set to "Not Looking", it will stop charging, as well as hide it from searches. So, people can turn it off when they find somebody, and turn it back on if they are single again.

So, for the initial time, there isn't really a problem with "getting people to stay", as the profile is always there, and if its free, they will likely always keep it on. Because of that, new users will create a profile and find a match with the older profile, which will get them back on.

Zeus wrote:And where are you going to advertise?

Google Ads. Fark, if I can manage it, or stuff like SlickDeals. Maybe even radio ads. This will be a serious business, not a generic website.

The one I used for about a year and a half was okcupid.com. The site was real laid back, lots of pics and pretty cool bios. It totally went against the constant visual barage that is Myspace. There is too much going on on a my space page for me to even to want to read what they were all about when I was single. I guess the thing that kept me coming back to okcupid.com over and over again was the compatbility questions that users would submit to the site admin who would then incorporate the answers into his little database which would incorporate your answers into the compaibility of another person. I think there are over 1000 questions plus numerous tests and user made quizzes people can take to find out about one another. The user pretty much has control of the site and you aren't forced to see the same people over and over again. Their approach to matching is pretty cool in my opinion. Unfortunately I deleted my account awhile ago (and no, I did not meet my bunny on the site, but I did meet another girl who was pretty cool but was doing the "Let's just be friends" thing which wasn't what I was after.). So that's my experience with online dating sites. Yeah, you'll get the occasional goth-emo kid who just wants to whine and kill themselves but okcupid.com when I was there was mostly college kids.

Facebook is pretty much the same but goes towards the college nitche.

Yeah, I'm not going to bother. Waaaay too many dating sites out there, and I'm pretty sure there's plenty of them with the same concept that I'm designing.

The main problem seems to be that the ones that work aren't popular (and don't have enough people in their database), and the ones that don't work are popular. A lot of the popular sites become popular by scamming their customers with $50/mo charges.

you mean I'm not the only person eHarmony rejected? I felt SO dejected. I spent like 30 minutes filling out their stupid ass survey...and then it says "We can't help you"

When you're desperate enough to try eHarmony, that's quite a blow

It actually tells you that it can't help you???

That's horrible!

I bet it says "You're too ugly" or something like that. What a cop out. At least you didn't pay for it.

Here's an idea - fbuddies.com

I know it's not "dating" per se, but it's something people want and you could make money at it.