Q: We know that Single Christian Network is one of the oldest dating sites. Please tell us a bit more about your history.

A: I wish I could say I had the most altruistic motives for starting Single Christian Network (www.singlec.com). In reality it just happened.

I was an out of work computer programmer. My dad published a singles newspaper for Christians. He wanted to create a computer matching program for them and gave me a call. I needed the money. I agreed to write his program.
What happened is that it worked too well. He got overloaded with trying to publish his newspaper and run the matching program at the same time. Instead of paying me for the work, he asked me to take it over. I did. The rest is history. It was called Christian Computer Match back then.

What I did was put ads in singles newspapers all over the country. I posted full pages ads in some of them. The ad was an actual application. A new member would fill out the application and mail it in. I would key that information into the computer and once a month I would mail out matches to all the subscribers. Remember now — this is before the internet. I didn’t even have an email address back then. Everything was postal mail.
Once a month I would run the matching program, print thousands of matching reports and spend the weekend printing, folding, stuffing and licking envelopes. It wasn’t the funnest job in the world. My house was filled with envelopes, paper, stamps and lots of neighbor kids helping fold and stuff.

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UsabilityTesting.tv published an article which outlines the most common mistakes made by dating sites. See for yourself if you have any issues from the checklist below:

1. Registration is too long.
2. Photo upload is not part of the registration flow.
3. No easy way to find who’s online.
4. Not letting members know the status of their emails (or asking them to pay for it).
5. Making updating a profile tougher than necessary.
6. No search by partial username.
7. Not notifying users when someone “hot listed” or “favorited” them.
8. Sending the content of the email to their personal email.
9. Not sending real-time notifications.
10. Connecting IM and Online status.

Source: usabilitytesting.tv

You’ve finally made the decision to enter the online dating market. You have come up with a splendid idea which will definitely make your visitors join your dating site. That’s great! Having a unique approach is so important when dating business is so competitive and the potential for dating traffic is bigger than ever.

This article will give you some tips for making your dating site a success. You want your database of members to grow daily, so you need information on how to ensure the delivery of quality dating traffic to your site. These 5 easy to follow tips will show you how to attract that traffic, identify what makes your visitors leave or stay, target your desired demographic and encourage your visitors to join your site.

How to Get Highly Targeted Dating Traffic:

Marketing comes in many forms. There is traditional advertising, which brings in targeted, immediate traffic; and SEO, which gives your site more visibility and enhances your reputation. Advertising can be online or offline and include a variety of different methods; SEO works by distributing links and information throughout the web to pull in highly targeted traffic. There are three types of traditional advertising and two SEO tactics you can use to immediately start seeing more visitors at your dating site.

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Niche dating sites along with white label solutions are still hot topics in the online dating industry. We continue interviewing leading companies, which can help webmasters to build their own dating website.

Today we talked with Greg Kett from World Dating Partners. The company is headquartered in United Kingdom and provides not only white label solutions, but also branded and template dating websites. They can be seen at such events as Ad:Tech London and the upcoming Internet Dating Conference 2009 in Miami.

Q: What are the unique advantages of your platform?

A: World Dating Partners offers:

• Unparalleled levels of niching within the industry, allowing highly targeted specific interest sites to be created. Sites of this type tend to generate higher conversion rates than mainstream dating sites due to their targeted traffic.
• Truly global coverage – We have the ability to create sites in any language & process payments from 42 Currencies internationally, and furthermore the presence to advise our partners where to direct their attention geographically.
• Our analytics and site admin centre gives our partners meaningful and detailed reports, which provide complete transparency. Detailed tracking and in-depth analysis gives partners complete control to generate maximum ROI.

Q: Who are your clients, can you name some of them?

A: Since establishing ourselves in the B2B marketplace World Dating Partners have secured valuable brands such as Dating.com, the social network Perfspot, varied media clients from Radio; Matchlink radio in the USA, Several regional and local radio stations in the UK; Printed Press such as The Canadian national newspaper and Essential Publishing; and TV, with the popular American show No Cheaters.

We are currently working on several extremely exciting new partnerships, which we will be announcing in the very near future.

Q: How the current financial crisis affects your operation in the UK and worldwide?

A: We continually evaluate the cost of membership to the many sites we power, to ensure it is both competitive and affordable. Internationally we undertake competitor analysis and liaise with our Channel Partners to review our pricing structure. Their local expertise is invaluable in providing realistic and helpful answers that are both region specific and up-to-date.

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Below is a partial transcript of this podcast. Click here to listen the entire 30-minute interview.

Q: What’s your background and what inspired you to start EliteMate.com?

A: I came from owning a dieting fresh food delivery service called ‘Zone Diet Fresh Food Delivery Service”. We did really well and were on TV. Then we sold out the company and decided that we are going to get into the dating business. And in 2001 we’ve started Elitemate.com. We had to build a foundation, and we did most of it offline, by doing testing calls for the next TV commercial we were going to do, because I was in a TV business with an actual dieting company. And all the people that showed up for the casting call – we took their picture, had their video – pretty much had all their information. At the same time we signed them all up to Elitemate free lifetime membership.

Q: How many people do you have in your team?

A: Right now I have all in all - with techs and everybody else - 52 people.

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