Dating Agency

[Pipsp73]

WEll I am the past owner of the site TERESA2084 mentioned - teudates.com. Firstly, let me set the record straight, the site was never officially put up for sale whilst I was involved. It did not cost £10,000. The initial development cost was £6,000 incl. VAT.

The concept was good - allowing members to voice chat securely within the site using Voice Over Internet Protocol to give members added security and relative anonymity rather than giving out their personal phone numbers in the early days of communicating with each other. With the still remaining stigma attached to internet dating and the safety of using such sites by some people, this could have been called a market niche.

Additionally my business partner, who shall reman nameless, felt that financially rewarding members for introducing new members was a way of building up the database. We will never know for sure the hours he spent on other dating sites trying to get women to join our site !! He did get about 100 to join - FREE - but I think his enthusiasm overflowed into having to meet each and every single one of them and promising them all a share in the compay if it became successful. Needless to say, he ended up very tired and with his eye not completely on the objective of marketing the site !!

However, the development was slow - which was largely due to the web designers concentrating on their larger and more prestigious projects. We had a lot of problems in resolving functionality and design issues on the site and were resolving issues on an almost daily basis after receiving feedback from a few original members, one of which was Teresa.

Needless to say, there were additional running costs accrued over the year from inception which in total amounted to about £2000.

However, the major stumbling block was in marketing the site on the search engines. When you imagine how many 1000's of dating sites there are on the web worldwide, you have to have either a vast amount of money to buy your page ranking or have a very willing web marketing guy in your pocket who is prepared to do it for nothing. Research shows that most people when browsing for a site will not go beyond Page 2 so unless you have a ranking that places you this high, you will never be "stumbled" across as the likes of Dating Direct, Udate, match and the other multi's are.

I actually resigned from the company at the end of 2004, and left the site in the hands of my former business partner. It is interesting to note that trudates can no longer be found on the web, although references to it can.

If anyone is considering developing a dating site, my recommendation - having lived it, breathed it, and slept it for more than a year is - DO NOT DO IT and if you do, then you must have equal support from your business partner, if you have one, and sufficient funds available to market it. There is no cheap way to get it up there on the page rankings, however good a salesperson you are.

It contributed to my current illness and nearly killed me and I would never consider doing anything like it again. Just for the record though, I didn't lose my investment. I threatened to sue the web designers for breach of contract and they settled out of court within 5 days !!!!