Question: How do I find advertisers for my new dating site?
August 7th, 2007
Advertising can be an important source of revenue and, for free sites, the only source of revenue. We all know about Markus and his plentyoffish Adwords empire (we do, don’t we?) but we also know that things are usually not as straightforward as that.
Placing Google ads (adsense) on your dating site can seem like the easiest answer, but it’s not always the best one. There can well be better options on both big and small sites.
New sites with a little amount of traffic have a harder time trying to sell advertising, as most advertising networks would require a minimum amount of monthly impressions before taking on a site. There are a few ways of getting started with advertising.
Tenancy
If you don’t have a lot of traffic, then view and click based advertising may not be the best thing for you. Your best bet is to try and get small sums of money from people in return for displaying their ad on the site for a set period of time. This works like a newspaper or magazine ad, which is not going to suit web-savvy advertisers but is perfectly fine for small businesses. Local restaurants and bars where your customers could potentially meet up, beauty salons where they could pamper up for the date, professional photographers, date coaches, etc. could all be suitable for this type of advertising. If you are short of traffic and want to start getting some money in anyway, this could be a good place to start.
Affiliate networks
Joining an affiliate network as a publisher is free and if you find a product that gels well with your audience and pays well then you could potentially make some good money. Of course, with most affiliate programmes only paying comission per sale, this method is riskier.
Adsense
Although easy to sign up to, Adsense and their Yahoo/MSN equivalents are not always profitable on low-traffic sites and can be rather intrusive, compared to banner advertising. Their contextual nature means you would likely be advertising other dating sites, which may not be what you want. Some people have done pretty well from these (see above) do they may well be worth a try, especially in conjunction with other forms of advertising.
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6 Comments Add your own
1. Zoltan | August 8th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
In my opinion, if you are talking about a “new dating site” your initial aim should be traffic and members. When you have a considerable amount of traffic and members you can think about how to get more and more advertisers. Until then, just simply add the AdSense or YPN code and you are all done.
I am doing the same thing on OneLoveNet.com, free singles & dating website and I have to tell that I am not complaining, although the site is quite new, I am satisfied with the results.
2. Cheesy Pick Up Lines | August 20th, 2007 at 1:05 am
I would also recommend checking out adbrite and adengage since there is are a lot of dating sites that are offering cheap advertisements on their sites.
A joint-venture type project would also be interesting.
3. Chris Boswell | September 12th, 2007 at 11:23 am
The trick that a lot of established dating sites use is to introduce new dating sites and to populate them with free trial members or temproary members that they migrate from their other dsting sites. A lot of dating sites are also tied in to together by using dating software which ties them in to sharing dating membership details with other users of the software. That way, each new dating site can be instantly populated.
If you want to steer clear of this practice, you are still going to need to grow your membership in order to be successful and this is much more important than generating advertising revenue. It doesn’t matter if your dating site is on the top of Google,no one is going to pay to join unless there are plenty of other members to interact with, so you need a strategy.
You need the right marketing and the right hook for your dating site- say first few 1000s members free, next few thousand at a discount, or some other such deal, then you can grow over time, and get a good idea of the point at which you will see a return on investment on your dating site.
If you are intending to offer a free dating site then, its all a question of the discrepancy between your advertising income and your advertising spend plus other investments in your dating site. If you intend to make a profit from your dating site, or even just to break even – this one is beyond me. Plentyoffish have managed it, but dozens of other dating sites at least will have flopped
4. Craig | January 13th, 2009 at 8:44 pm
I have recently started a free dating website supported by Adsense (MyFairyTaleEnding.com) and I’m experiencing the up-hill struggle of free advertising to get noticed.
With so many pay-sites claiming to be free by using various angles such as “free to join”, “create a profile for free”, etc…yet still requiring people to pay to use the site, it’s difficult to get good rankings in the search engines as a truly free site.
Currently users don’t stumble upon my site, I have to go out and get them.
5. Matt F | February 23rd, 2009 at 4:26 am
I launched my dating site 15 months ago with the intention of charging subscriptions. I tried the free trial thing, spent lots of money on Adwords to gain a good memberbase but noone would pay it was the simple. What I have learned is that people nowdays are very savvy and only trust the established big online dating sites. If I were single there is no way I would pay a subscription to a little known dating site over the tried and trusted ones. So I was forced to take my own advice and change tactic. My online dating site has been 100% free for 10 months now – What a difference it makes! I am getting new members non-stop and my adsense revenue is around $3000 per month topped off with an affiliate combination. I have spent around 2000 hours of seo since the launch so all my traffic is organic now but its been much harder to get to where I have than first anticipated. To succeed with a dating site dont waste your time unless you have a load of free time to work on it.
6. taw | March 10th, 2009 at 5:22 am
Google adwords is the safest bet, but you might find a niche site that will pay more for the same thing. I would start with google and try some other sites until you find that works well for you.
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