Tips for Easily Creating Websites

Could you just imagine an online enterpreuneur gaining millions of dollars from a dating website ? Well, there are certainly more that just one person, but there is a man who has really made online dating an art. Markus Frind, the creator of plentyoffish.com is the mastermind behind all this.

This highly admirable personality, not only across online dating but business world as well, has really given a great lesson to everyone who has ideas for new online things and is afraid to make them a reality.

The year was 2001 and Markus was motivated to begin programming a new dating website by himself. He is a competent programmer and at the time wanted to do so as a means to enhance his asp knowledge. He states in his blog that he just went about creating a plain index page and almost abandoned the project. Then, little by little he went on with creating new features, learning more about SEO and attracting more and more people.

The important lesson is that Markus never really thought about quiting, he kept trying new things, experimenting, not being afraid of failure. He states “I refused to accept defeat of any kind, and I constantly forced myself to test new things” and that is REALLY important. You have to motivate yourself everyday and have faith that you can succeed. Work, try new things, never give up, said by the most successful online businessmen and women on earth, it certainly must be true.

However, we really have to dig deeper into plentyoffish success. Markus did make some mistakes too but was determined enough to overcome them. We do not have to reinvent the wheel by making the same mistakes. It would be much better to spot them and avoid doing them. Moreover, it would be essential to understand how Markus created his empire and what we can generally learn from him.

The creator of plentyoffish.com started his journey after having a nice idea that in fact a friend proposed him. At that time, online dating was not free and he thought it would be nice if he created such a website. Therefore, he had the advantage of innovation. His idea was really new and turned out to be great. Why? Certainly because people prefer free services and if they can get the same services for free rather than pay, the would certainly prefer the first.

The VERY important fact is that Markus Frind was patient and determined. He had to face failure in order to reach success, but he was not drawn back by it. He said himself that he did not know anything about SEO and that was his first vital mistake. SEO(search engine optimization) is very important for every website. It’s the means for your website to connect with the search engines of the world. If your website is not SEO optimized, you could be losing lots of traffic that you would otherwise get. However, Markus quickly understood the mistake, worked his way around it and took the advantage.

To be sincere, Markus had not taken the best steps towards getting new traffic. For instance, he went about creating a website where people would register and socialize with others. He was a bit lucky at that point. Since there were no competitors at the time, people would generally register in order to get free services in hopes of more people coming aboard. If one would be making the same steps today, there is absolutely no way he could get that traffic.

Instead, bearing in mind today’s reality, more precise steps should be made. Since there’s TONS of free dating websites, in order to succeed at that area, you would really have to make careful and well designed steps. For instance, it would be a big mistake to start with a dating website alone. How would you attract people to join ? Unless you were willing to pay lots for advertising(and that is money that you can not really get back soon), you could just be a supermarket in Mars.

A better approach would be to create a supporting website or blog that discusses some dating issues. Probably a website about dating tips or maybe a niche dating topic. Provide useful content, get traffic and build your audience. It is only when you reach a good deal of traffic that you would go about advertising your dating website at your “content” website. Do not underestimate that fact. YOU HAVE to already have a steady source of traffic BEFORE even launching a dating website, otherwise you would be the only one socializing there.

Another important idea is to not be too generic. Creating a specific dating topic on your website is by far better than creating international dating websites. Do not think that the more generic the subject the more people would want to follow. This is misleading. The fact is that the more generic the subject, the bigger the competition would be. Understand that there are others who are already established marketeers and people know about them already. Why would one join your international dating website when plentyoffish.com has millions of members ? On the contrary, if you had a niche dating site, say online dating for pet lovers, that could really do it. People want to join specific groups and associate with people sharing the same interests. After all, when you manage to get the wanted traffic at that website, you could easily create another more generic dating website and direct some of your traffic there. It’s all about intuition when you do the initial things correctly.

Do not try to be Markus Frind. Under any circuimstances. Doing that will 99.9% lead to failure. Follow your own path and try to stick with things that you know and are passionate about. Whatever you do, though, always learn from the best and admire them. To be successful online, you really have to respect others and definately not envy or dislike them for what they have created. Open your mind and move on because learning from others could really be a path on your way to success.

Related Posts

• Are Success Stories About Websites TRUE?

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 4th, 2009 at 8:50 pm and is filed under Website Case Studies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.