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Old 27th July 2009 | 10:09
  #50 (permalink)  
IO540
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Joined: Jun 2003
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From: EuroGA.org
I don't think so.

Years ago, I looked at internet dating as a business.

On the face of it, it is easy money. IT-wise it is trivial. You could run the whole op from a spare bedroom with a 2mbit DSL line (£5k/year these days??) and a half decent PC/server. In fact, not even that; you would get it hosted for relative peanuts. The database structure is easy. The site design takes a bit of work (unless you want to be clever) but standard stuff nowadays.

If you can get say 100k blokes (most UK sites are a lot bigger than that today) to pay £20 each for a year's membership, you have £2M/year coming in. From that you subtract advertising...

The huge problem is getting women to join up, and without loads of female profiles to browse (for free) few men will pay to join so they send them messages.

I very strongly suspect that when the business started in the UK ~ 10 years ago, most of the then sites started by generating thousands of fictitious female profiles, age 25-35, slim, looking for a "casual" relationship. Most women don't put up a picture anyway, so this would work (it was pretty obvious in some sites), and as you get going you can clear out the fake ones.

Now (not having looked at it for 6 years - honest ) it is very mainstream and dominated by big names who spend bundles on advertising in conventional media, sponsorships, you name it. While I think one could still do a good scam and walk off with a million or so, enough to buy a used TBM700, I doubt one could enter the market now.

The GA market would be a very thin place to fish, IMHO. Many years ago, well pre-internet, a business called Dateline tried the "anorak desperate men" approach by advertising in motorcycle and computer mags. I spoke to somebody there about it... sure they got loads of blokes to sign up but the women complained about the poor quality of the dates they were getting As the joke goes...

A pilot goes on a date. Halfway through he says "now, enough talking about planes; let's talk about ME".
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