

Ask HN: get traffic to a new dating site? - o1iver

Hi,<p>We are considering starting a project in the online dating world. We are however kind of stuck with our traffic strategy.<p>Dating being a kind-of-but-getting-better-taboo topic, we don't think that word of mouth will be such a big driver, nor share-to-twitter/share-to-facebook as these have the same problem (do you want the fact that you are trying online dating posted all over your facebook wall?).<p>We think that these sites mostly get traffic through search or advertising. The latter is out of the question for us as we cannot afford to (apart from some guerrilla marketing). And getting a good spot for the dating keyword seems insanely hard.<p>Additionally there is the question of a subscription service. Starting of with a site that requires payment up-front sounds like a traffic-killer. We hate the current solution (spend 40 minutes to make your profile and then find out that you have to pay to message or reply).<p>So do you guys/girls have any ideas about this? Any past experience? How does a site like speeddate.com get started? How do you make a taboo site go viral? How do you overcome the fact that you have to charge people (for a product with such a bad reputation)?
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patio11
This is why I told people to dodge dating.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2171382>

OK, so let's say you've got a gun to your head and must do dating:

1). You don't have to appeal to everyone or the population average. You can
start appealing to outliers in terms of viral spread ("Sure, I'll RT that I'm
looking for a boyfriend, why wouldn't I?") and hope they have friends in the
wider population.

2). Scalable content generation, the technique for all seasons when coming
from behind in SEO. "online dating" is competitive, "20-something white guys
in Ogaki" is not. Local search optimization for dating is an angle, although I
know it has been plumbed before quite deeply (welcome to _everything_ about
this space).

3) See the OKCupid link bait? Think you could come up with similarly juicy
headlines without the data? I'm thinking the answer is "yes", since Cosmo has
done it for years. Twenty Reasons Guys Don't Date Smart Women, etc. (It _will_
spread.)

4). Find an enemy, manufacturing them if necessary. If your marketing
generates an emotional response it is less likely to fall into the background.
A previously successful strategy for many dating sites has been "The world and
our competitors won't let X do Y but we're different and love will win out,
booyah."

5). Everybody in this space plays dirty. If you can't see the bloody knives in
any competitor's hands, that is only because they're buried so deep in the
body of everything right and good in the world. You will stoop to their level
- and then some, because incumbents hold al the cards and their sins are
buried in Google backups whereas yours will be fresh in Matt Cutts' inbox. You
will be dancing on the knife's edge until you get your site burned to the
ground, or you will never have enough traffic for that to even matter.

Seriously, do you _really_ want to do online dating?

~~~
o1iver
Hey sorry about the late reply, we have had an insanely busy weekend. Thank
you very much for the insight, especially points 2 and 3 and will keep 5 in
mind, sounds pretty scary :-p

We are going to give it a try. It seems like there is enormous potential in
the market.

Thanks again for the comments!

------
sagacity
> And getting a good spot for the dating keyword seems insanely hard.

Okay, how about this:

* Make a Windows desktop widget or executable that sits in the system tray and polls for active Internet connection. Whenever the user goes online, it checks with your server if any 'matches' for the user are available and if so, goes Coooo! (and notifies the user.)

* Make it available for free download.

* Submit it to all the freeware/shareware sites out there...

... and see your rankings (and PR) soar.

HTH

ps. If you're going to do this, do it fast, before your competitors do. ;-)

~~~
o1iver
Thanks also for your comment. Since we are not going to match anybody this is
going to be hard, but it may be interesting for notifications (ie.
"messages")...

Thanks!

