Since they were new sites I had 0 members to start off with. This is a problem with all sites just starting off. I solved my problem by making it so guests could not see or browse members until they signed up. Since the site was free to join the sign up was my conversion. I sent tons of targeted traffic to the site and had great success with sign ups. The very first users were quite confused but I posted messages everywhere thanking them for joining and assuring everyone that more members will be joining. I stepped up my traffic and was getting 100-150 sign ups a day.

I had gotten to 1.7k members and disaster struck. Through my own error and my lack of php/sql experience I had the script delete the entire database instead of a single user. I had lost about 1k in traffic but I hoped that members would sign back up when they saw their accounts were gone. I posted many messages about the error and moved on. About 600 members signed back up the following week. Which made me step up my advertising once again.

After more advertising and another 600 invested my site is now at 1895 members and grows by 10-15 a day from SEO. Users do not seem to be staying on the site for long though because adsense reports $2.81 in the last 7 days! The only time adsense reported some real numbers is when I was heavily advertising. I would be earning about half my ads in adsense so a 100 spend would make 50. I would keep this going until it was profitable but I currently do not have the capital to grow the site to a point of sustained profitability.

I have learned that the key to dating sites is impressions. The key to impressions is users. The key to users is marketing.  Once you have all of these things down you should have a profitable site. Right now I am hoping that I will be able get the user base high enough that another dating site will want to buy me out but that is going to take a long time. Until then I will be trying to make the site more profitable.

Also before everyone starts posting about using affiliate links instead of adsense, I want everyone to know that the sites are extremely niche in nature. I only found one affiliate program which I tried and it reported 0 leads and 0 signups after a month of traffic. Which would have been $200 in adsense revenue. If anyone thinks they can help or has experience in building dating sites hit me up at beer at beermonies.com and we can chat on skype or something.

This past month I launched a few REAL dating sites. Yeah I know its insane and starting a site costs some serious money to get it going. The thing is that I had a bunch of niche dating domains that I was using as a whitelable with copeac. What’s odd is that my little one page landers were ranking for their terms and saw some normal traffic. This was great until I saw copeac’s leads had dropped to nothing. I am not sure if they killed the program, changed the backend, or if the code needed to be changed on my end. It never did as well as I had hoped it would when I started so rather than get it going again I dropped the program and researched into making these landers into real dating sites.

It took me a week to find a free script / backend that would work out the box. I was not going to pay to have anything made with my test since it would probably crap out anyway. I ended up using PHPizabi for my sites and despite it being a old POS it was simple enough that I could use the php/sql code to fix any problems I found and add new features. I highly recommend not using this script though! It is the biggest POS I have ever seen and lacked even the most basic of features. It took me 3 weeks of coding to get it to a useable state, heck it still needs more work but its good enough to run now until I decided on getting a script made later.

I threw up ads on facebook for m 4 dating sites across my niches and soon learned that some of them were way to much of a niche. Great for landers, but horrible for real sites. So three of them have died off a bit, they still get SEO members but it’s a slow trickle. In a year I should have a pretty good crop of users on them though. What’s left is the one site I didn’t expect much from but did very well on facebook. I was getting a sign up for less than a dollar and I invested $1,000 into the site for member ships. At one point I got to 1,100 members and that’s when I caused a major crash trying to fix some SQL BS with the backend. Through my own fault I deleted every member on the site with one button! Should have seen it coming but was in a hurry. After fixing the error i learned that the SQL backup feature of PHPizabi never worked and was just in the template but no code to execute I about died. I have since fixed the bug I caused and wrote my on backup script but it was a major set back. The members took it with stride though and most signed back up within a week. With SEO traffic and returning members the site is now at 762 active members and is growing.

When advertising I was making 30-40 in adsense and spending 100 in ads. It helped pad the cost at start up. Having now stopped the ads the site is making about 2-3 bucks a day in adsense which isn’t bad for a site this small. I may have 762 members but they are not all active everyday, if the site scales as well as it is in the future it could generate some serious income. If i had 10,000 members the site would do at least $30 a day in adsense alone and could be made more profitable with affiliate ads. Sure its not major money but its pretty good for an automated site which someday could grow to tens of thousands of users.

I have lots of other stuff to talk about but this post is long enough so I will schedule them for the following days.

First off, you need to use the OLD adsense code. I made a new add and pulled the new code and I just could not get this to work. Maybe its just me, but it didn’t work. Back to the old code.

<script type=”text/javascript”><!–
google_ad_client = “pub-0000000000000000″;
google_ad_width = 200;
google_ad_height = 200;
google_ad_format = “200x200_as”;
google_ad_type = “text”;
google_color_border = “FFFFFF”;
google_color_bg = “FFFFFF”;
google_color_link = “000000″;
google_color_text = “444444″;
google_color_url = “444444″;
//–></script>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js“> </script>

The above code will make a 200×200 ad that looks normal. But as you see I have given the correct options on changing the link, bg, and text. These fields accept html color codes and you can put any color you want. If you want ads of a different size just change the sizes and change the ad_format to match your sizes making sure to keep the “as” at the end of it.

This is some seriously simple stuff here but I had to post it since Google totally failed me in finding this basic information in the first place.

AcademicArena.com
AdaptedTechnologies.com
AfricanSoapstone.com
AirfarePittsburgh.com
AllDayKindergarten.com
AlternativeCancerMedicines.com
AngerManagementExercises.com
AnonymousEmailAddress.com
ArizonaBackgroundSearch.com
AutoSoapDispenser.com <- I am starting to see this shit in retail stores, there must be a affiliate program or merchant with them.
BeginningGerman.com <- Seriously? Simple German lessons, and adsense.
BikeStorageGarage.com
BritishPilots.com
ButteBusiness.com
CableSignalMeter.com
CanadianCommercialMortgage.com
CarReviewsAndRatings.com
CarmelValleyHome.com
CarpetDyeKit.com
CarpetDyeKits.com
CentralSanDiego.com
CertifiedInsuranceCounselor.com
CertifiedInsuranceCounselors.com
CheapAirfareToSpain.com
CheapDebtConsolidationLoans.com
ChemicalForensics.com
ChildproofCap.com
ChinchillaBreeding.com <- Strange I know but these guys are pretty damn popular.
CivilRecordSearch.com
ClientHospitality.com
CockneySparrow.com
CollaborationEngineering.com
CollectionDrive.com
CombinationWrenchSet.com
CombinationWrenchSets.com
CommoditiesCash.com
CompleteSurveysForCash.com
CountryWesternParty.com
CozyFit.com
DecorFountains.com
DesignEnhance.com
DeterFraud.com
DigitalTextures.com
DiscountGroupAirfare.com
EmeraldBrooch.com
EtchedDesign.com
ExpertHandicapping.com
ExternalFloppyDiskDrives.com
ExtraordinaryTales.com
ExtremeMiniGolf.com
FamilyHeritageSearch.com
FelonyRecordSearch.com
FlipDownLcd.com
FloorRemodel.com
FloralCorsage.com
FruitGrains.com
GlassBottomBoatRide.com <- Very popular thing to do on vacation.
GlassBottomBoatRides.com
GlassBottomBoatTour.com
GospelMusicRingtone.com
GreatLakesTransportation.com
HartfordRentalCars.com
HealthInsuranceCompanyRatings.com
HipHurray.com
HistoryArtifacts.com
HolidayGiftsForMom.com
HomeAutoRepairs.com
HomeEnquiry.com
InternetGamblingIndustry.com
JapaneseFlowerArrangements.com
JerseyMotor.com
KingdomOfGreatBritain.com
LadiesUmbrellas.com
LandscapeEdger.com
LeadsForMortgageLoans.com
MagneticBusinessSign.com
ManagedCareHealth.com
MilwaukeeSportsRadio.com
MortgagesForInvestmentProperty.com
MultilingualApplications.com
MultimediaUser.com
MyEndeavour.com
NaturalHealthJobs.com
NonprofitStudies.com
OldLinen.com
OnlineInformationNetwork.com
OutstandingTrip.com
PalliativeTreatment.com
PalmSpringsWaterPark.com
PeanutButterSauce.com
PergolaStructures.com
PermanentHairDyes.com
PokerWorldOpen.com
PovertyAndWelfare.com
PremiumDebit.com
ProportionalOwnership.com
RateRefer.com
RecliningArmchairs.com
RestLodge.com
RestaurantsOfParis.com
RetractableWindowAwning.com
RigidCase.com
SanFranciscoTouristAttractions.com
SanJoseAnimalCare.com
SapphireBrooch.com
ScotlandGardens.com <- Photo site with deals on travel? fucking easy.
ServiceAide.com
SiliconePad.com
SlideOutAwning.com
SlideOutAwnings.com
SocketWrenchSets.com
SpeechTesting.com
StagecoachRide.com
SteelFilingCabinets.com
SteelStorageShelving.com
StuffToTalkAbout.com
StuffedHotPeppers.com
SummertimeNews.com
SupplementalRetirementPlans.com
TalkTouch.com
TaxLawResources.com
TemperedGlassShelf.com
TemperedGlassTable.com
TemporaryTags.com
TopazBrooch.com
TravelingExecutive.com
UsedCarFinanceRates.com
VanishingWilderness.com
YouKnowItsTrue.com
YouthGolfClubSets.com

I only highlighted the ones I liked all of these are pretty damn good. Some may do well just parked but it would be best to build a small niche site around the subject and gets some ads up on that bitch.

Now go out and make money, beer isn’t free you know!