

Ask HN: Given $50k, how would you market a dating site? - daeken

Let's try a thought experiment.  You're given $50k to market a new dating site and solve the chicken-and-egg problem.  How would you spend the money?  This seems like a solvable problem, but as it stands the answer tends to be "ads everywhere and hope that it reaches critical mass".  Let's do better.<p>Edit: Post ideas separately so that they can be voted on independently, please.
======
wheels
Make it exclusive and hip. To me, at present, dating sites seem to signal some
degree of desperation. I suspect that is very common and why a lot of folks
won't use them. I'm not going to go on a "date" with someone from a dating
site because (a) I don't ever go on anything that get called "dates" and (b)
I'd assume that folks that needed to get dates online are those can't get them
in real life.

So, if you made them zany events -- like renting out a full restaurant and
curating a list of 50 top matches where folks don't get to pick them ... all
of the sudden that sounds fun. Or a first class at ball-room dancing. Or
canoeing. Actually, I'd prefer even goofier stuff like the flash-mob-ish sort
of things where you have groups that baked into their activity / assigned
mission you have some reason for pairing them up.

If you can just create environments for people to do stuff that's fun and meet
other people along the way without the baggage of calling it a date or the
signaling of "I can't get a date", then it's cool, not desperate and attacks
the largest part of the market: the folks that wouldn't use current dating
sites even if they didn't suck.

~~~
revorad
Like this - [http://waynechang.com/2010/09/15/patrons-formula-for-
buildin...](http://waynechang.com/2010/09/15/patrons-formula-for-building-a-
successful-online-community/)

~~~
wheels
Right, that's a great example. Do that, but manage to pair people off a bit.
Not a "date" of course; just happens to be a person of the opposite gender
that some mix of automatic and hand-picked shuffling thought you'd find
interesting.

------
il
$50K is not enough to get a dating site to critical mass for a broad
demographic. Most dating sites spend over $50K every day driving traffic. So
the question then becomes "How do we leverage this initial $50K to generate
enough initial traction to demonstrate a scalable user acquisition model?"

The best way to do that is to focus on a specific untapped niche (dating for
hackers/geeks/reddit users?) or a small geographical area you can take over.
Once you have a manageable, highly targeted audience, it becomes a lot easier
to reach them in a cost-effective way. Then:

1\. Seed the site with some profiles to start. You NEED to do this. Everyone
does this, and it works. Either work out a data sharing deal with a small
niche dating site to cross post some(mostly female) profiles to your site or
just make some yourself.

2\. Males join many more dating sites than females. Since you already have
lots of female profiles, you can start by targeting males in your niche. Male
dating traffic is SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper than female dating traffic.

3\. Spend $10K testing _interest targeted_ Facebook Ads. Don't just target all
single males- you will get destroyed by better funded competition. Target by
specific interests "Like WoW- Meet Gamer Girls!" and optimize for the highest
CTR possible until you get cheap clicks. Once your CPC is below $0.30 or so,
up your budget and scale.

4\. Spend $10K on carefully targeted Plenty of Fish Ads. They have an
excellent, powerful self-serve ad system that many dating sites use
successfully. Think about it- everyone on POF is interested in online dating,
so it's super relevant.

6\. Spend $20K doing carefully selected direct media buys on community forums,
discussion groups, etc. If I'm targeting WoW players, there are many forums
happy to sell banner space at a cheap CPM. Same thing if I'm targeting
athletes, fishing enthusiasts, etc. The general thrust is "Meet someone to do
X hobby with". You can also do this on AdWords(content network).

7\. Deposit the remaining $10K with a reputable affiliate network. If you
offer an attractive payout and have high converting landing pages, you can get
thousands of affiliates to promote your site on all of the niche traffic
sources you don't have time to test. Pay significantly more for female signups
to balance out the site. This is where you begin to get consistent growth
every day and can presumably raise more money or start monetizing your users.

------
roboticleopard
The most important thing is to get WOMEN onto the site first, and mostly
attractive women. A dating site is similar to a bar or club. Where attractive
women go, men follow. Do you think you are going to get a lot of male signups
if there's nothing but unattractive women on your site?

How do you use $50k to get attractive women, who can easily get dates in real
life, onto your dating site? Offer them something they find valuable, but most
importantly, wouldn't be embarrassing for them if their friends found out.

What might that be? What about a charity auction? Men bid on women's profiles
and the highest bidder gets to take the woman on a date. 90 % of that money
goes to charity (10 % to you, the owner of the site). Women can choose to
either make their bid amounts public or private. They can also choose a
charity of their choice.

Women don't have to be embarrassed about doing something for charity - in
fact, they might drag their friends along for kicks (and among some groups of
women - to see who can get the highest bid). They also get to go on dates with
generous and/or wealthy men. Valuable + not embarrassing.

To set this up, start in NY. Throw events with the $50k where women get to set
up profiles online and men bid on them, preferably with influencer type
groups.

You can offer the reverse as well, so it's not sexist (although that sort of
controversy mixed with charity gets you a lot of press) and because some women
would delight in bidding on men.

Later, you can expand bidding to include other, non-monetary things: home
cooked meal by professional sushi chef, help with moving, etc. So the less
wealthy men can too have a chance at wooing the women of their dreams.

~~~
farout
ok so what so attractive women want - what will attract them to this dating
site.

the cynical person would say show me the money.

another might say ... not sure.

However you don't just want attractive women, you want women that are looking.
(Personally I would leave out the attractive since that is in the eye of the
beholder.)

Ok so what are women who have recently dated and are looking to date - want.
Hmmm.

Complain about bad dates Learn about the happening things New styles New
restaurant theater reviews movie reviews

Look at that silly show Cougar town or Sex in the City

What do they want? Where are they? Who are theY? What do they read? What are
they concerned with?etc

Start with that mindset.

------
maxklein
Facebook Ads targeting people who are 'single', then offer those people free
'pro' upgrade if they refer 3 more of their facebook friends who are single
(via a facebook share link).

~~~
faramarz
That is an excellent idea. Refreshing, and I don't think ever been done before
by a dating service. Suddenly, you have people not only admitting to their
friends in using online dating, but you've taken away any friction there was
towards an account upgrade!

A (free)mium dating site built on the Dropbox model essentially.

Would love to see this in action.

------
tzs
If you are just doing a thought experiment, might as well not limit ourselves
to ethical approaches. There are two unethical approaches that come to mind,
one of which we know someone has already tried, and one that I suspect has
been used.

The one that we're sure has been used is simply scrape profiles from somewhere
else. Someone just did that, scraping from Facebook, and it made quite a stir.
At first you'd think that could not even have a remote chance of working, as
the scraped people would certainly notice when you started matching them for
dates!

If you were a bit smarter, though (and unethical people can be smart), you'd
just use those scraped profiles to make your site look busy. You'd never match
anyone to them. You'd only make matches among people who actually come to the
site and register.

~~~
tzs
The second unethical way to do it would be to create fake blogs slamming the
existing sites, and recommending your new site in those blogs.

I've noticed on Google searches for OKCupid and Plenty of Fish that among the
suggested completions are "OKCupid scam" and "Plenty of Fish scam". Among the
results on those pages are plentyoffishscam.com and okcupidscam.net. Those are
blogs, both slamming the dating sites they are named after, and both
recommending cougarlife.com, ashleymadison.com, and arrengementseekers.com.

It's pretty apparent that these blogs are written by the same person. (Oh, I
just remembered, there is also eharmonyscam.com, also clearly by the same
people and recommending the same three sites).

There are also many other blogs that quote these blogs, and it seems likely
that many of these are fake, too. I think I've seen them quoted on legitimate-
appearing forums, too, so there is a real possibility the cougarlife.com
people are spamming forums.

------
adw
What makes a dating site work is having people who are going to chime with
each other; you don't need mass-market hegemony. So, what you want is
_demographic_ similarity but little social intermixing – people drawn from
similar, geographically close but socially-separate communities.

In other words you need a niche. I'd hit up – maybe even sponsor – something
like book groups. (Pick a major metro and blanket it; that buys you the
geographic proximity). Then, once you're rolling, use the success to knock
over the surrounding geographies.

------
daeken
Hold a contest for $50k to the first users to get married.

~~~
ericb
A bold PR stunt like this might be a good gamble and get you the best return
on the money.

~~~
ericb
Do 10k and a PR blitz with that idea, then a month later follow up with a
contest where every referral of a new member is an entry in a drawing for a
10k prize. Then a month after that, another 10k contest for putting up the
most pics (with a facebook import feature).

Edit: and start in NYC or one of the biggest cities in the world. A single
sign-up in a high density city, is much more valuable as a search result
because the population density is a multiplier for how many searches that new
profile will be a result for.

~~~
daeken
It is indeed starting NYC-exclusive to begin with.

------
marketer
Make it a concierge service. Manually match people and set them up on dates
(maybe even pay for the dates). It's a lot more work but it's the only way to
create incentives to join an empty dating site.

------
daeken
Give users $10 off their first date, for the first 5000 dates.

------
daeken
Mystery tickets raffled off to users to go on dates based on compatibility.
(Credit goes to my mom for that one)

~~~
kayhi
Tell your mom she can add another point to her hacker news point total on the
frig

------
mattgratt
Get a ridiculous prize for the affiliate that does the most volume for you
(like Epic's playboy mansion parties), and spend all of your time and money
trying to convince large affiliate marketers to drop whoever they're pushing
currently and push your site instead.

~~~
revorad
Look at this for ideas - <http://www.doubleyourdating.com/>

------
alexchu
do a contest to select a group of people where you give them a make over and a
perhaps a couple dating lessons. then pair up people on dates. Document
everything in videos. what kind of fashion advices were given, what kind of
places you should take people to along with dating tips that were given to
them. and then post the videos on the website. your dating site could also
serve as a goto resource on dating etiquette and tips to improving your odds
in dating success.

A big percentage of people go on dating sites because they don't have time to
actually go out and meet people. But I believe there is a bigger percentage of
people that just lack the know-how of doing things in real life.

------
gte910h
Give away 1 $5k Date, 10, $1k dates, and 100 $200 dates, and let PR do your
thing. Spend the other $5k letting news outlets that you're doing it

------
sambarvada
a) Buy or Rent a Hot air balloon and let the best couples date on it.Choose a
couple based on how much interaction they have had and their engagement with
each other.(no.of messages passed between them)

~~~
sambarvada
b)Develop a FB app which suggests who are my possible dates among
univ.alumni,friends & friends-of-friends.If I decide to date any one them use
a) as reward .Ding !

------
revorad
Sponsor weekly dance lessons leading up to a competition at the end.

------
faust1
word of mouth, would spend money on sponsored blog posts, facebook ads, pr and
news stories, etc.

------
farout
do a the worst date contest. But give the money to a charity. Choose 3 worthy
charities - something couple oriented.

Then get radio shows involved. Radio shows need new material everyday.
Everyday do a mini contest with no prizes for different topics:

1\. worst place to meet 2\. worst pickup line 3\. worst foobar 4\. worst
dressup etc.

do this every week before the contest ends.

make sure to get the nonprofits involved. Feature a nonprofit each week.
Always make a story about how a specific person would specifically benefit
from the charity.

Felix Denis in his book mentions selling beer on the island, donating a
portion of the profits to the women and orphan fund.

Holding a contest for the winning cap. He describes in detail here:
[http://books.google.com/books?id=meKL68N5esEC&pg=PA261&#...</a>

