getting visitors to your dating site

[silverglade]

Hi, this is probably one of my last questions. The 1 million dollar question. "How do I get people to join and use my site? When there is plentyoffish.com already there?". I have seen a post of the same subject, and people had different opinions. Some said make fake profiles and start talking to users, some said pay for google advertising, some said try local advertising in the paper and other offline methods targeted to some niche group of people such as "christians" or "people who like blue hats". Maybe a little too targeted on second one.

This is what I have done so far. I have made 2 fake profiles. 2 pictures of average looking people. Man and woman.  I will probably make about 6 or 8 more. I might then spend about $25 to see how an ad in the local paper goes by advertising the site as a free dating site, not necessarily niched to some particular audience yet. I don't really want to niche the site, I want it to be a general dating site, although if I can't get the people, I may have to niche it. When I have more money which won't be for the next two years, I will be able to afford a lot of google advertising after I graduate college and have a job with that degree.

Also, I am not sure where I would place an ad on the front page or pages of the site without ruining the design. Like a google adsense ad. Or where in the scripts I would paste the adsense code in for the main pages. There is also the problem of the possiblity of the adsense ad, detecting that my site is about dating, to post ads about my competitors like "plentyoffish.com"! haha. Not that I will ever be like that, as I have a lame form of chatting between people which is integrated skype and Yahoo IM. But it is better than no chat and is less overhead on the server by using skype and Yahoo IM apps instead of an app on the server. Not that I would ever have that many people that it would matter.

Well sorry for the long diary, anyone's feedback on how to get members to my dating site would be greatly appreciated, thank you!

EDIT: This web page might help some people. Didn't help me much I guess as I don't want to niche and I don't have money yet. But some of the ideas are good

http://net.tutsplus.com/articles/web-roundups/50-ways-to-get-your-site-noticed/

[maverick]

Getting traffic is the hardest part for any new site and there's no easy secrets or magic bullets and therefore will require a lot of research, time, and hard work, especially if your funds are limited.

One key method for getting traffic is trying to get your site to come up on "page one" in Google searches for Keyword Phrases that are relevant to your site. When starting out you'll have to choose Keywords that aren't very competitive, for example the keyword "dating" is extremely competitive and unless you have REAL DEEP POCKETS you'll never get anywhere close to showing up on page one. Unless you can afford to pay a good SEO company to help you with this, you'll have to do your own research and and try to learn some methods you can do and try on your own, there's a fairly strong and lengthy learning curve to really get a good grasp on SEO techniques and be efficient.

This is one the main reasons so many people recommend going with a "niche" dating site since the Internet is so saturated with dating sites picking the right niche can be far less competitive than trying to compete and get a slice of the general dating scene.

Placing Google Adsense Ads directly on your site isn't going to generate traffic to your site, all it will do is place ads of dating site competitors on your site and drive visitors away from your site. Every time a visitor clicks on the ads you have the potential of earning a few pennies, which won't ever add up to much of anything unless you have tons of traffic. Don't confuse Google Adsense Ads with Google AdWords pay-per-click (PPC) keyword advertising.

[silverglade]

thank you. you are right, the niche will give me less competitive search keywords for people to find my site. I think I am going to have to make a niche, I just don't know what it would be yet. There are even a lot of niche sites now, I will have to see what niche I can come up with that will put me at the top of the google search. I have another site that comes up on the first page on google for an art keyword , about a specific artist and I get a decent amount of traffic. So you are right, I think if I don't make a niche, my site will spend the rest of its life anonymous and unvisited in cyberspace. thanks for that feedback. At least now I know where to change the name of my site now in the files. But I will have to buy a domain name probably of the new niche.

Any advice on coming up with a niche? The ones I am thinking of already have a ton. Maybe I will think about making my site relevant to the local population, such as in my county. Related to a physical location, then I won't be competing with the rest of the internet. Oh well, I will have to think. thanks again.

[silverglade]

this is a good site I found so far.

http://www.squidoo.com/dailyniches

I just thought of a great dating site niche. It is related to my own interest. There is only about 1  minor competitor. Do you think that is sufficiently narrowed to dedicate myself to based on the number of competitors? The major sites like Match.com have this niche too, but they are not really marketing that. Match.com comes up on the search for that niche.  I am not worried about the demand for this niche, I think it will be popular.  I am glad this is a niche I can be proud of instead of like "Little people dating.com" LOL!

EDIT: Ok I looked up keywords for my niche on adwords, and here are the stats for the search term for the website. Are these stats enough to justify a website?

Competition LOW
   
Global Monthly Searches  4,400
   
Local Monthly Searches  2,400
 
Do you know what local monthly searches mean? How local? please.


EDIT:

just found a better search term for the site name.

competition LOW

global monthly searches 14000
local monthly searches  5400

what do you think?

[maverick]

Do you know what local monthly searches mean? How local? please.

Local Search means searches in selected Country such as USA, which Google usually basis on your IP address.

You should target at least 2 or 3 keyword phrases rather than just one.

The first is a bit weak, but the second one is decent and worth pursuing.

[silverglade]

great thank you.

[HyerGrnd]

Hi, this is probably one of my last questions. The 1 million dollar question. "How do I get people to join and use my site? When there is plentyoffish.com already there?". I have seen a post of the same subject, and people had different opinions. Some said make fake profiles and start talking to users, some said pay for google advertising, some said try local advertising in the paper and other offline methods targeted to some niche group of people such as "christians" or "people who like blue hats". Maybe a little too targeted on second one.

This is what I have done so far. I have made 2 fake profiles. 2 pictures of average looking people. Man and woman.  I will probably make about 6 or 8 more. I might then spend about $25 to see how an ad in the local paper goes by advertising the site as a free dating site, not necessarily niched to some particular audience yet. I don't really want to niche the site, I want it to be a general dating site, although if I can't get the people, I may have to niche it. When I have more money which won't be for the next two years, I will be able to afford a lot of google advertising after I graduate college and have a job with that degree.

Also, I am not sure where I would place an ad on the front page or pages of the site without ruining the design. Like a google adsense ad. Or where in the scripts I would paste the adsense code in for the main pages. There is also the problem of the possiblity of the adsense ad, detecting that my site is about dating, to post ads about my competitors like "plentyoffish.com"! haha. Not that I will ever be like that, as I have a lame form of chatting between people which is integrated skype and Yahoo IM. But it is better than no chat and is less overhead on the server by using skype and Yahoo IM apps instead of an app on the server. Not that I would ever have that many people that it would matter.

Well sorry for the long diary, anyone's feedback on how to get members to my dating site would be greatly appreciated, thank you!

EDIT: This web page might help some people. Didn't help me much I guess as I don't want to niche and I don't have money yet. But some of the ideas are good

http://net.tutsplus.com/articles/web-roundups/50-ways-to-get-your-site-noticed/

I recommend trying to reach a nitch. Anyone can put up a singles site, then what you have is just another singles site. Try to do something unique, you see various names out there that reach various audiences. Catholics, Jews, Geeks, etc. Use your imagination and possibly target an audience that you are familiar with. The largest websites target a nitch and experience a half million hits a month or more. I've consulted organizations on growth, building their sites and reaching the audience they want. It boils down to targeting your clients for starters. There is more, you need to put the right buzz words on your site. I took a very small nitch and made it the largest in the world for that audience simply by putting words related to it right on the etano site. Just a couple lines at the bottom without going over board. I took another site that was getting around 10,000 hits per month, put the right words on the site and it sky rocketed to almost half a million.

You don't need to pay an SOE company as some would have you think. You just need to sharpen your pencil and work on your web pages a bit. Choose a theme, something that will attract the kind of audience you want on your site. I put up a site recently that within the first week online it was experience up to 1100 hits per hour.