
How Plentyoffish Conquered Online Dating (Hint: Its Founder Works Just One Hour a Day) - bd
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/and-the-money-comes-rolling-in.html
======
medianama
This is Frind's response to this on his blog --

\----------------------------------- I found myself reading an
entrepreneurship forum today talking about the Inc Article. I thought I would
post here as well as some others might find this useful.

1\. I hardly call myself lazy or a sloth. I built the site in 2 weeks 5 years
ago. Since then and even now all the user interaction happens in only a
handful of pages. At the end of the day there are only so many ways in which
you can reorder the search results. It’s like trying to rearrange the deck
chairs on the titanic, it accomplishes nothing.

2\. The only way to grow a site once its running its self is to have brilliant
ideas. Great ideas don’t come from sitting in front of the computer screen for
8 hours of the day wondering what to do next. You have to inspired or have a
really deep understanding of what is going on. So a Brilliant idea may start a
business but you need to have many many more brilliant ideas if you are going
to go from one of many to an industry leader.

3\. Opportunity/luck doesn’t come to you, You are the one that creates it. I
debated with myself for weeks before posting the million dollar check, and I
figured the best way of doing that was by creating a blog and give myself a
voice. I knew my free site competitors where going to venture capitalists and
asking for huge sums of money, and my competitors where claiming to be first
movers etc. After posting that check their chances of raising money went to 0.
The wall street journal called after reading that post. WSJ article came out,
next day the Today Show Called. The next week my total US site traffic was up
over 50% and kept on growing. In Fact many things i’ve written on my blog have
made it into the national papers. Inc Magazine story was a result of my blog,
and i’ll be going on a national talk show next week again as a direct result
of my blog. I post a lot of things on my blog, many of which seem like
bragging, but when reporters read that it gives them an idea for a story which
is the whole point of a blog anyways.

4\. Work smart not hard. If all you do is work hard making incremental
improvements you are just like a hamster running in a wheel and never really
getting anywhere. If you want to get somewhere you need to come up with great
ideas, or something that is significantly better than the competition and
execute on that. Then you go back again and do the same thing over and over.
Far too many people think entrepreneurship is like an attendance award, where
you can win just by showing up.

~~~
vaksel
so what great ideas did POF have that noone else was doing? Seems to me that
the guy is completely discounting luck, when in reality his site would be
nowhere without it. Luck plays a huge part...and almost every single
successful person accounts their success to some degree of luck

~~~
unperson
I would try not to look at 'luck' as some random, mystical force that just
happens to favor some people. Instead:

"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." - Seneca

Could be interpreted in this situation that he was in the right place, with
the right idea, at the right time.

------
Tichy
Now where have I heard that story before? Only mabye about a million times?
Hopefully with this submission the last three people on the planet who didn't
know it yet have been "filled in", so that we can turn to other things.

The funny thing is that this "story" is probably the single most effective
marketing factor for plentyoffish. Nobody would have heard about it if it
wasn't for the story...

~~~
inerte
A million times, yes, but this in particular is the best I've read. Wish I
could go and retroactively delete the past ones :)

~~~
Tichy
Fair enough. I guess it was just the "hint: he only works one hour a day" that
ticked me off...

------
tdavis
For an apparently really smart guy with all the time and money in the world,
he doesn't seem to do much of... anything.

Congratulations, you created a pedestrian website which makes gobs of money
and requires 10 minutes per day of "work" to keep the current iteration
running.

Now, _do something interesting_. Because, I'm sorry, but Plenty of Fish
_isn't_.

~~~
trapper
Not everyone can do something as interesting as selling tickets :)

Seriously though, what would you do after you finish your hard slog?

~~~
brandnewlow
That's not fair. I completely see his point. As I was reading this, I also
realized that this guy's kind of an empty void. And that bugged me at first.
But those same qualities probably helped him out a good bit.

~~~
trapper
A lot of people say they want to change the world, then do something that
won't. I often hear excuses how a bug tracking application or a twitter app
will change the world - come on, be realistic. Your simple webapp just won't
change the world in any real way.

Very few things actually help or change the world - and those that really want
to change the world are doing it already. If you want to change the world, go
do it - you don't need money to make a difference. What are you wasting your
time for?

Full props to the pof guy, he is obviously doing what pushes his buttons.

------
compay
I'm calling bullsh^H^H on the one hour a day of work... Markus is the king of
obfuscating his business practices with strategic misinformation.

------
sam_in_nyc
Interesting:

When searching for a prospective mate, one is inundated with pictures that are
not cropped or properly resized. Instead, headshots are either comically
squished or creepily elongated, a carnivalesque effect that makes it difficult
to quickly size up potential mates.

Frind is aware of his site's flaws but isn't eager to fix them. "There's no
point in making trivial adjustments," he says. Frind's approach -- and the
reason he spends so little time actually working -- is to do no harm. This has
two virtues: First, you can't waste money if you are not doing anything. And
second, on a site this big and this complex, it is impossible to predict how
even the smallest changes might affect the bottom line. Fixing the wonky
images, for instance, might actually hurt Plenty of Fish. Right now, users are
compelled to click on people's profiles in order to get to the next screen and
view proper headshots. That causes people to view more profiles and allows
Frind, who gets paid by the page view, to serve more ads. "The site works," he
says. "Why should I change what works?"

~~~
akd
"The business works," said Mr. Peterson, owner of the East Lansing Horse and
Carriage company in 1891. "Why should I change what works?"

------
snewe
Best quote:

"I don't listen to the users," he says. "The people who suggest things are the
vocal minority who have stupid ideas that only apply to their little niches."

------
bd
See also accompanying video from the photo shoot:

<http://www.inc.com/inctv/2009/01/oh-shoot-markus-frind.html>

------
johnrob
It sounds like one of the more overlooked parts of that story is his use of
SEO (From March to November 2003, his site expanded from 40 members to
10,000). 10K is enough to cross the chicken-egg chasm, which is probably a
make or break for this kind of site.

I wonder how hard it would be to do something similar today using SEO.

------
greatreorx
I don't see how anyone can read this blog post by Markus from 2006 about
faking site traffic rankings and not think his current traffic stats are
severely manipulated.

[http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2006/06/14/competitive-
int...](http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2006/06/14/competitive-intelligence-
and-counter-intelligence/)

I'm not saying I don't respect what Markus has done. I just don't think his
stats are anything near what is reported.

~~~
BvS
Isn't that post about how he tried to prohibit people with the alexa toolbar
etc. to enter his site? This would actually decrease the number of pageviews
these services would show for pof. I wouldn't consider this an argument not to
believe his own numbers by now.

------
diN0bot
i assume there are tons of millionaires out there who do as little (if not
less!) work than Frind. espeically considering inheritance and resting on the
laurels of subordinates or slaves (re: recent alavery article that appeared on
hn a few weeks back).

the neat part is that Frind very strategically set this up for himself. maybe
this will encourage more people to value smart moves over cramming work-hours
(mindless or otherwise).

------
trjordan
An interesting note about the dating market is that there is almost no
consistent repeat business. People don't get fed up with the site and leave -
they either get a match, or they don't. If anything, people might return after
a few months because they found a moderately successful relationship. To my
mind, that's precisely the reason something like this can work. If Facebook
had a lousy interface, people would eventually lose interest because they
wouldn't stay continually interested. But for PoF, that's just not a factor.
They come for the results, and if it works, the interface is irrelevant.
They'll be back regardless, and if they aren't, there's always more people
looking for a date.

------
dhughes
plentyoffish is one of the worst websites I've tried, dating or not, the style
of it is like something from 1999. Random technical problems that if you ask
about go unanswered or you're told to shut up, if not the thread is deleted.

The forums are a mess too, bickering and thread closures I mentioned seem to
happen all the time. I left when I got tired of witnessing personal attacks on
members...by the moderators!

------
agrinshtein
That's quite an amazing feat that he accomplished. The message rings true.
Find something people need, and provide it.

