Any way to get some pre-made profiles populated?

[dwhs]

I was wondering if anyone had profiles I could populate my new site with?

[strawberries90]

forgive my ignorance here, but are you seeking other website's users/customers' profiles?

[dwhs]

Yes real or not, Thanks   something I can import

Just to start, I would probably remove them shortly after I build up the community myself.

[maverick]

Unfortunately it's going to be hard to find anyone willing to do this. Unless someone states in their TOS when people signup, that they are agreeing to allow the site to freely distribute and place their profile on other dating sites, it would be a breach of privacy, which could lead to legal issues, especially if someone is unknowingly placed on some sort of adult based site that could effect a person's reputation.

[dwhs]

Unfortunately it's going to be hard to find anyone willing to do this. Unless someone states in their TOS when people signup, that they are agreeing to allow the site to freely distribute and place their profile on other dating sites, it would be a breach of privacy, which could create illegal problems, especially if someone is unknowingly placed on some sort of adult based site that could effect a person's reputation.

Makes sense, even like 20 example ones would be nice. I'm sure it would be better to get real people to start it off. Thanks!

[maverick]

I understand what you're saying, and it would be nice to have a bunch of profiles to kick start a site. This has been discussed a few times in the past on the forums here, but the problem is, sharing legit profiles of real people among sites creates potential issues as I stated, and fake profiles can almost be as bad as it could quickly blemish a site's reputation.

[admin2]

My position on this is neutral. If you find such profiles for sale and ask us to import them into your Etano, we will do it, no problem there.
One recent customer did this and we imported about 20.000 members into their database. You can probably find something on google.

But before making this step take a moment to think about this:
What would you rather look at? A dead cow or a live, singing bird? Won't you figure out rather fast that the cow is dead and there's nothing interesting for you there? So what if the cow is 10000x bigger than the bird? It's still dead
While this is a funny example it does apply in the online communities world too. Genuine members will loose interest in your site after 2-3 unanswered messages. The only way of keeping members on your site is by offering them something new with every visit. And the only way to do it is with a live community.
Instead of importing 20 fake members you could ask your friends and relatives to join, stick around and participate in discussions, forums, chats, etc. And the money you would pay on the fake database and on importing the profiles you could spend on flyers or newspaper ads.

Sallyb from this forum is such a customer: her site admin is her mom, her first members were her friends and her mom's friends and close locals. Now, after less than 1 year she has quite a nice and active community. It's always a pleasure for me to check out her site and see the progress.

[sallyb]

Thanks Dan, I just wanted to agree with Dan for anyone that is thinking of adding fake profiles. My members get bored very quickly, so we (my family and friends) keep them busy until new members join and they get chatting to others. Anyone can throw a site up and hope people will join but unless there is someone real to chat to I think you are going down the wrong road. Get chatrooms and forums that are busy, keep the looking busy yourself then when new people join they may not join in the forum but they will see it is an active site.

[Johnboy]

When I 1st started I had no members and setup about 6 fake profiles. I was swamped with replies, even for the ones that I made sound very uninviting. I answered everyone of them using a template type answer I made up. It worked and no one was the wiser and I now have almost 3000 legitimate members.

[strawberries90]

When I 1st started I had no members and setup about 6 fake profiles. I was swamped with replies, even for the ones that I made sound very uninviting. I answered everyone of them using a template type answer I made up. It worked and no one was the wiser and I now have almost 3000 legitimate members.

yehaaaaaaa! 

did you start your site many years ago, John?

I get the vibe that with so much competition in recent times, it is not as easy as it once might have been (not that it was *ever* easy)

[admin2]

I answered everyone of them using a template type answer I made up. It worked

Same problem, a different approach but the same goal: interactivity.
I cannot stress enough: the key to success with such a site is interactivity: between yourself and the users, between the users, between the site features and the users, etc.
Let them see the chat between you and your mom about weather or post a blog about the latest football match score and invite them to comment, etc. Even reading or watching is a form of interactivity: passive but still better than leaving the site.

[maverick]

What would you rather look at? A dead cow or a live, singing bird? Won't you figure out rather fast that the cow is dead and there's nothing interesting for you there?

I find looking at a dead cow very interesting as I see Hamburgers and Steaks!   

In all seriousness, it's a good point but in order to interact you have to get those initial few hundred or few thousand members to get any serious interaction going, and the only way that will happen is if they can find your site, which means at some point you'll have to do some sort of advertising that offers good incentives to draw them in, such as free memberships and so forth. Unfortunately with the massive amounts of sites now on the web, especially in the dating and social networking fields, just working the search engines and directories and trying to get quality link backs isn't going to cut it like it once did years ago. To get your site really kick started you're going to have to come up with some kind of advertising and marketing campaign geared around a budget you can afford. If you have a niche based site, don't over look the power of offline advertising such as in magazines and small publications etc, create cards to hand out, look into direct mail advertising, create some small posters and try and get some stores to let you put them up, often offline marketing can be more effective than advertising on the web.

You can even promote right on your site, run some contests, encourage people to blog by letting them know the benefits of blogging such as .... "creating blogs expands on your profile, writing blogs and commenting on other's blogs increases your visibility on the site".

Bottom line is, you can't sit and wait for things to happen, you have to try and make them happen.

[dwhs]

When I 1st started I had no members and setup about 6 fake profiles. I was swamped with replies, even for the ones that I made sound very uninviting. I answered everyone of them using a template type answer I made up. It worked and no one was the wiser and I now have almost 3000 legitimate members.

Great job, my site is 18 and over but not you know. If they are compatible maybe we can work something out.

[strawberries90]

yeah, let's be having those 6 fake profiles, johnboy.  Share and share-a-like, is what I say.   

[Johnboy]

OK for $25 per profile per month or 10 for $220 I will answer all emails and pretend I am someone else.