Building An Internet Dating Site

Let's be honest there are way too many of you out there that think building a internet dating site and getting traffic is going to be easy. Of course you're thinking most of the top dating sites look like crap and you can develop something better. Here is the honest truth about all of this, you are going to need a lot more time, money and patience than you may have. In this article I am going to breakdown some of the things you need to think about when trying to build the world's next great internet dating site!

First things first, if you aren't a web developer and I mean a really good one, find one! This is going to be one of the harder parts of the entire process. There are many sites that have been built by 10 or even 1,000's of developers, my opinion the old saying of too many chef's spoil the soup is a damn good saying. Less is better, you're looking for talented individuals that can either build the site buy themselves or accompany you in design. Most developers can't do both design and code. What you need to do is either get lucky and find a guy that can do everything or find 3 developers. One for design, one for code and at some point you'll need a database expert to handle the traffic you will hopefully receive.

Now that you have your team of developers it's time to research your competitors and this is going to take a fare bit time. Why, because there are hundreds of sites out there, some are free and some cost which brings up your next decision. To be free or not to be? Now you need to decide what features you want for launch and you should really think of some things that will set you apart from your competitors. I would suggest signing up to as many sites as you can and start talking with other members and of course start using all of the features that your competitors have. From here you can best see where you can improve on or even create new features for you members.

Now that you have built a list of things you want on your site and have a plan for development you need to budget how long this will take. Of course whether you are a developer or have hired one they are rarely on time so add at least 15% to whatever time budget they have given you. Once the development is complete you need to test, test, test! I can't stress how important this is, the more testing the better I would do at least double what you think is necessary.

The last step in the process and arguably the most challenging and time consuming is your marketing plan. If you have a small budget and most do, the best way to get traffic is either virally or through SEO. I like doing both, the problem with any marketing campaign especially as it relates to SEO is the time you are going to need. While there are literally hundreds of things to do and do well when it comes to SEO, Google does give a fare bit of credit for age. Quite simply regardless of how well you did building your site you are behind the 8 ball as there are many good dating sites that have been in business for 5 years and more. You need to one up them in every area, linking, content and of course how Google views all of this. While explaining all of this would be better suited as an article by itself you should have a very detailed plan on how you plan on getting users to your site.

Lastly you need to constantly optimize your site. Updating it for speed, user retention and for the folks at Google. As you grow you will require more servers and servers are expensive, you can mitigate these costs handily by optimizing how your site runs. Less drain on the servers to run and function usually translates into less servers.

Good luck and like you have heard most of your life, plan things out before you do them and hopefully this article will give you a decent guide on the process that you need to plan. The internet dating world is a big one and can handle many sites, the question is will your be popular?

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