SCOBLEIZER — Mar 4 — At the Northern Voice conference I met Markus Frind, founder of Plentyoffish.com. He's Google's #1 Adsense user in Canada. His site is pulling in more than $10,000 per day from Google, he told me, and has millions of passionate users. Tens of millions of page views EVERY DAY. What's the secret to his success? Ugly design. I call it "anti-marketing design." He says that sites that have ugly designs are well known to pull more revenue. Google. Is it pretty? No. Craig's List? Pretty? No. MySpace? Pretty? No.
The full article was originally published at Scobleizer, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: It's not the fact that these sites are ugly. Consider further. The winning formula is that the sites appear anti-commercial, humble, and non-pushy. These sites appear to users like a person or group of smart people doing them a favor without hawking too hard to them. Most users don't realise that Craigslist makes $10 million+ a year from charging for job postings in a handful of cities…the average user never posts a job. Craigslist just looks like a cool nerd doing everyone a favor. How refreshing. Same deal with Plentyoffish. And Google? A lot of very smart, passionate, 'do no evil' nerds.
I think the whole “ugly design” concept is getting far more attention than it should. Whatever kind of design a company chooses, the design they choose should fit with and leverage their brand. For sites like Google, Plentyoffish, Craig’s List and MySpace (del.icio.us is also a good example) an “ugly” design is the right design, but for other companies, say Apple, Yahoo and Flickr, it isn’t. And even more important than looks is usability. Ugly or pretty, no one is going to use a site that is unusable.
I for one will never understand the ugly-design draw. Maybe it’s more usable than ugly? Ebay put some cash into Craigslist recently, will be interesting to see how they capitalize on the relationship. Please don’t equate POF with Google, that hurts.
Scoble comments are worth a look: high traffic due to fact it’s a free dating site, shows a lack of credibility, and so on. Good counterpoints to the “ugly sell” angle. Imagine if it looked a bit better and didn’t have so many low-quality profiles.
Its a good article, it reached pretty much every major dating affiliate. I wonder how long it will take them to stop sending match.com eharmony etc traffic and start thier own site?
Marcus, if your site is “pulling in more than $10,000 per day from Google”, that works out to $3.65M/year (well, “more than” that). Let’s say your profit margin is 40%, or around $1.5M/year before tax or $900,000 net (assuming 40% tax rate). Not bad.
Except, why then are you living in a 1-bedroom apt? That area near Stanley Park is nice, for sure. I am guessing rent is around $2,000/month or $24,000/year. That leaves $876,000 for everything else.
Or perhaps you own the building?;-)
Or, maybe when you say that you are “pulling in more than $10,000 per day” you mean on a good day?
Or, could it be that, as you state on http://www.plentyoffish.com/about.aspx , “Money? Who Cares”?
I’m guessing you’re exaggerating (just a tad).
I surely hope our site http://www.webdatedepot.com fits well into the “ugly site ” category.
Surely many more paid sites that collect monthly fees will be complaining as I see some doing here as the ugly sites offer a real niche product called “free online dating” to consumers that are sick of paying you pretty sites. But in all reality it is the large paid sites that are our best advertisers and income.
Just like the way that TV evangelists motto was “keep sending in the cash and we keep firing out the trash”. But it is very apparent that the cash spenders, are now finding a free social network at many sites and are actually finding love for free.
And Mr. Markus, keep that ugly site going and I fully expect to see you climbing higher weekly on the Hitwise chart.
Best Regards,
Jenn
Support
WebDateDepot.com
Actually I was off a bit in my post here a few days ago. http://onlinepersonalswatch.typepad.com/news/2006/02/online_personal_1.html
“Alexander, How can you think a site like POF make 5 to 6k a month on google ?
I would bet with the traffic that pof gets that figure you mention is daily not monthly.
Jenn
Posted by: Jennifer Dinwell | March 13, 2006 at 08:32 PM
”
Ok, Marcus, I just read your post on http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum89/12751.htm (skip the login w/ the ‘passed url’ link), “How I made a million in 3 months.” You clarify this to mean “1 million NET”.
This means my above calculations were off, as I assumed the $10,000/day figure you claim was gross. So, you are actually claiming to be netting around $1.5M/year after tax ($3.65M/year net assuming 40% tax rate).
$1,500,000/year – but living in a 1-bedroom apt.
Riiiiiiiiight.
Sam, thx for the reference to the post.
Markus, the post is really good, but…
You got totally confused in terms of your own marketing since you don’t have any.
Google is simplistic, ’cause it deliver the information. So is Craigslist.
But dating is totally different ball game.
I’ve said it once, I can repeat it again: POF is anything but a dating site. It falls under a Social network category.
But whatever it is, it lives by its own laws being free and primitive.
Good luck, Markus. You’ll need it.
Alexander, here’s another link for you:
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/003519.html
“Ugly Sites Earn More With Google AdSense?”
I like this part: “…consider the site that reportedly made $10,000 in one day…”.
Notice how it says “in one day” not “every day”.
Still, regardless, Marcus is on to something. $10,000 is no pocket-change, even if it was only for a day…
We have $10,000 days on occassion and that is nothing to sneeze at. That is equivalent to one really nice hot tub!
Sam
P.S. There is nothing quite like Winter and sitting outside in the tub when it is -40 outside (F or C degrees, same thing) and the water is at +40 🙂
Everyone is just rewriting the above article. The site reference one & clones yesterday got huge publicity and ended up sending me over 80,000 unique visitors most affiliates and webmasters from links. I bet that next month there will be an explosion of free sites and a reduction in affiliate based sites traffic.
Oh Markus! You are making just the first steps but have caught a Napoleon disease already.
One or ten more free site are not gonna change a thing.
But how about this issue? You obvousely have a conflict of interests. On the one hand, you try to convince your visitors to stay with you and forget about paying sites. On the other hand you derive all your revenue advertising and promoting paying dating sites.
That identifies your very mischievous position. Why would anyone promote anything that is worthless to his users? How is it fare to both users and advertisers?
Moreover, the more Click Through rate you have on Google Adwords the more traffic you lose, because you promote your own direct competitors. It’s like a dragon eating its own tale.
I’m telling you, your marketing strategy lacks a bit of a common sense.
It must be reasonable for POF position the site closer to MySpace and forget about dating. May be another Rupert K. Murdoch will buy you for $580 mln. Or may be not.
Hey Alexander, notice how Marcus never answers direct questions? He has a habit of side-stepping them…
Lots of claims – no factual back-up.
“May be another Rupert K. Murdoch will buy you for $580 mln.”
As it is “a one person company”
What will happen if he:
– become ill for 1 month?
– suffer an accident and have to be in bed for 2 months?
– become sued by parents of “girls who are 12 and pretend to be 21”?
or
– suddenly die?
Will PoF survive his management if he sells it?
Could PoF survive without him?
(Please, do not think I am rude or not polite, but a potential_investor could be asking this questions)
Kindest Regards,
Fernando Ardenghi.
Buenos Aires.
Argentina.
ardenghifer@gmail.com
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