WORK HAPPY.NET — June 15 — Markus Frind runs a free online dating site called PlentyOfFish.com and he rocked the Internet world this week when he posted a photo of his latest Google AdSense check for $900k Canadian. It was a check for 2 months because the first check they sent was so big it was rejected by his bank.
You're a one-man show running a very successful dating site. Tell us how you got started.
Back in 2001 after my birthday someone in the office introduced me to online dating sites. I went back to my desk and checked out udate.com and kiss.com and lavalife/web personals. I was bored and I wanted to chat with people. I was really annoyed when I found out you had to pay for everything, I ended up telling the girl who introduced me to the sites that I could do better and make them for free.
Your site, if you'll forgive me, isn't terribly attractive. What's your secret and what are your thoughts about what it takes to be successful?
I created the first real free dating and the first one that actually worked. Just like Google created the first real search engine that worked. There is no such thing as a secret. When I came home from work I sat down and I forced myself to code for a hour or 2. There are only 1000 or so sites in the world with massive traffic, and of those mine is the only one that is run by a single person. For being successful in building sites you need to give something to the surfer faster or better or both. If you want to do pay per click, you just need to be good at picking words to bid on. For that business its just a matter of repetition and fighting boredom. At the end of the day you just need to sit down and DO it. Most people don't. FULL INTERVIEW @ WORK HAPPY.NET
Mark Brooks: I just started listing the Canadian internet dating rankings at http://www.onlinepersonalswatch.com courtesy of Comscore Mediametrix. Plentyoffish.com is #3, very close behind Mate1, and has 3.7 times the number of uniques that it had in May of 2005. I'll interview Markus for OPW again shortly. Let me know the questions you'd like me to ask him.
are you talking about a “dating” website ? 🙂
http://www.plentyoffish.com/member1839600.htm#in
PoF main traffic source when it was launched was traffic from search engines. This site was perfectly optimised and may be was on the foul-line because some of the techniques used there were a black-hat seo and those tricks still not removed from the site and sooner or later Google could integrate new filter and PoF traffic could go down. It would be interesting to hear his attitude to Search Engine Optimisation and what he thinks about future of his site if something will change in SE algorithms.
I know that at this moment PoF is a brand site and its success does not depend on SE traffic but anyway without new blood this site will go down.. unfortunately.
Alex Smirnoff
http://www.welcometodating.com
At http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2006/06/07/small-companies-google-adsense-is-the-future/
Markus Frind wrote:
“But i created this site to change the world, and make money at the same time.”
PlentyOfFish.com == Congrats, Great & Successful cheap channel for deliver ADS!!! == Internet Ads Industry.
As Mr. Frind proved us he can make some money; Mr. Brooks, please ask him how is he going to change the world.
PlentyOfFish.com pretends to be part of the Online Dating Industry. Technically speaking, PlentyofFish.com makes money off the ads upselling to other sites. It has all free users (the daters) and some paying clients (the advertisers)! It drains money from the Internet Ads Industry and not from daters/subscribers!
PlentyOfFish.com’s business model is not a future_trend for Quality Online Dating Sites.
Kindest Regards,
Fernando Ardenghi.
Buenos Aires.
Argentina.
ardenghifer@gmail.com
Hey Markus
Congrats even if it was just a fantasy or a joke.
I pulled some strings a got a copy of a Google AdSense check for the top four online dating sites that are ahead of PoF.
I broke the story on my blog.
http://blogspiel.com/?itemid=173
Woh, I am really impressed. Markus must be good at math and marketing. His success makes me work harder on my site.
Thanks for sharing.