How to Start Your Own Dating Site Business
5 step guide
To start your own online dating site business and turn it to lucrative project takes time and creativity, but in the end it's worse it. Here is a 5-step guide how to create a dating site, powered by SkaDate Software.
1. Dating Site Concept
Define Your Dating Niche
When you want to start your own dating site, you have to think about a market niche first. The big players occupy the vast majority of the general dating market, so it'll be hard to compete with big platforms like Tinder, Bumble, and OkCupid. Instead, narrow down your target audience by some specific topics. It should be something that unite people, for example, interests, location, religion, sexual preferences and etc. For your convenience, we have outlined several quickly-expanding niches in the SkaDate Dating Software blog and in our latest article about niche dating ideas. Alternatively, you can come up with your own idea. Consider vegetarians, smokers, food lovers or pretty much anyone else as potential target audiences. The more unique the social group you choose, the more converting potential it will have. However, we don't recommend diving into the niche you are not familiar with just for the sake of the potential it may have. Choose something close to your interests.
Brand Name and Domain
Developing a name for your website is crucial in brand building. In many cases, the domain name choice is a key to dating site success. Even if the timeframes are tight, don't rush to pick any random word that struck your mind. Think up a short and catchy name with a prominent top-level domain. For instance, visitors are much more likely to find your site quickly if they associate it with the name you picked so that they will merely add .com at the end.
Also, if your dating site implise any adult content, you should be careful when selecting a domain name. To avoid any "misunderstandings" with Google, it's better to register your website to .adult domain extention. In this way, your website could be more specific and have the right audience.
2. Technical matters
Choose High-Quality Software
The selection process of dating software could be tedious. Sometimes you might be overwhelmed with the number of things you have to consider. The quality and value of a software are often determined by the best price-to-performance ratio, company record, product flexibility, customization opportunity, and technical support. In this sense, SkaDate Dating Software is often the preferred choice for both industry professionals and startups looking for a solution to satisfy their specific goals. SkaDate offers an entire dating website software package of features needed for administrators and users. One of them is a handy dating website builder, which allows you to customize your platform the way you want. The advantage is that you create a potentially successful dating/community site at a one-time fee for just a few hundred dollars.
Decide on a Hosting Provider
One of the most vital decisions to make when starting your own dating site is choosing a web host. You need keep in mind the current and future needs of your website, host's features and the costs for subscribtion updates. It is important to select the right option, as all the efforts could be wasted or lost. Also, you should consider that not all hosting companies are optimized for the best performance results. If you think it's too much for you to handle, it's always better to delegate the technical stuff to professionals, so you could concentrate more one the business side. Skadate offers its own hosting and also can recommend a few tried-and-trusted providers, so you won't have to worry.
3. Website Design
Design a Logo
In simplest terms, your site’s logo is a meaningful symbol that communicates the depth of information in a well-organized manner. Symbols are used to replace what would usually need a lot of explanation. That is why having a simple and creative logo expressing the concept of your business is crucial. It will help your potential target audience and existing site members to memorize your site easier.
As well as website design, a logo is also a significant element of your brand. It defines what your customers feel about your product and service. To hire a professional designer to develop the concept and draw a logo is a first thing that may come to your mind. However, if you are creating a dating website on a budget but have some creative skills, you may design it yourself. Try services like Canva, FreeLogoDesign, Adobe Express or any other free online tool to create an outstanding logo for your website.
Choose a Template
There is only one chance to make a first impression online. You only have a few seconds to grab visitors’ attention and make sure they come back to your site. The more visually attractive and clear the home page is, the longer users stay to learn more and sign up.
Luckily, all SkaDate Dating Software customers can pick from a variety of free trendy and professionally designed dating website templates. You can choose any theme that will fit your niche, and with the help of Skadate site builder, adjust it to your needs. However, you can always request a custom design from our team.
In addition, there are several Premium Dating and Social Networking Themes developed for SkaDate Dating Software to make customers' sites even more unique.
4. Dating website promotion
SEO
It’s a well-known fact that one of your online dating site’s success depends on its rank in search results. SEO or search engine optimization is a set of practices that improve your presence in search engines like Google. In other words, putting your website in higher positions and thus making it more visible. That is why it is highly advisable to make your new website search-engine-friendly as much as possible. This process is time-consuming, but free of charge and can lead to fantastic marketing results.
The essential Search Engine Optimization (SEO) steps include developing high-quality text content spiced up with relevant keywords, inserting meta information into page source code, increasing the number of incoming links, etc. For more info on SEO and marketing refer to SkaDate FAQ section.
Social Media
Being present in social media is a must for every business project, especially if it's an online dating website or app. But constantly updating your content, building up a community, and starting a social media ad campaign could be a good addition to your other promotion channels.
PPC Advertising
Pay-per-click is an Internet advertising model, based on the following condition: advertisers pay for displaying their ads only as they get clicked.
Advertisers set the bid for their campaign or specific keyword: in other words, they select a maximum cost they agree to pay per one click. After running a PPC campaign, this advertising strategy places your website on the first page of search results in a short period of time. Profit for advertisers is evident since traffic is directed to a website almost instantly. However, you can not just pay and appear at the first position on Google due to the high level of competition. Which ad will be displayed at the curtain keyword entry automatically calculated by Google or other search engines at the Ad Auction. Top positions depend on many factors, but the most important ones are the relevance and validity of the website and the ad to the user's search entry.
5. Dating site monetization
Subscription Model
Even if you are mainly an idea-driven person, you still want to find out the ways to monetize your dating website business. First of all, there are a lot of monetization strategies, and one of the most popular and successful is a subscription model. For example, you can create three types of subscription models: freemium, premium, and VIP membership.
For freemium membership, users have the access to the majority of the website's features, while some of the advanced options are available for a fee. If you are a startup, this model is the best choice.
The premium membership model implies the payment for usage of the website services for a certain amount of time. This option will work well if your target group is people who are very serious about dating. You can set a free trial period for a premium membership so that users could be "hooked" on the benefits and more likely expand their subscriptions.
VIP Membership is a combined paid membership model, where free users can upgrade for having privileges like account promotion, unlimited reading and sending messages, hiding/showing personal data to particular members and etc.
Other Revenue Channels
Advertising
Once your website gets some traffic, you can use it as an advertising venue to promote other businesses. By combining this revenue strim with a subscription model, you can hide the ad for paid users and show it only to free ones.
Affiliate Program
The difference between advertising and affiliate models is that with the last you join an affiliate network and promote various advertisers instead of one product or service. The exact earning models depend on the particular affiliate program you join.
In-App Purchases
To easily convert your free users to paid, you can offer them to buy a premium feature for one-time use only. For example, unavailable for free usage options can be purchased to be unlimited for a specific amount of time.
Virtual Gifting
Virtual courtship could resemble a real one with the gifts sending option. And as it is in offline reality, in virtual, you also have to pay for your date's treats. Even if flowers, candy boxes, gift cards, and other things could exist only online, you can charge real money for them.