Plentyoffish is still on top, now in both the US and in the UK, according to a recent comScore report. The dating site founded in 2003 by Markus Frind in Vancouver has provided us with a rather entertaining tale of minimal resources and resounding success. The spartan dating website draws in over $10 million per year from advertising, equaling out to around $1 million per year for every daily hour Frind puts into the maintenance of Plentyoffish.

In the US the numbers provided by comScore show that Plentyoffish receives over 36,000 daily visits, with Singles.net coming in at number two with just under 30,000 daily visits. On the other hand, the UK provides only about 8,000 daily visits to Plentyoffish, which is enough to put it at the number one slot. Plentyoffish’s daily traffic in the UK is nearly double that of Meetic, which comes in at number two with just over 4,000 daily visitors.

While the site isn’t anything pretty to look at, users couldn’t care less since it doesn’t cost them anything to use Plentyoffish. In my personal (testing) experience, I also found this free use of the site as an opening of the floodgate for scummy people that are less likely to be seeking their one true love, but you can’t argue with $10 million.

Whatever Frind is doing to promote Plentyoffish and its users is converting into high traffic and a fat wallet. Plentyoffish seems to be another case of quantity over quality, as we’ve seen with other industries like online video where a lot to sift through can often be more popular than an improved system for doing things more efficiently. What’s it worth to you?

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Dating on Plentyoffish - Trading Fees for Scumbags?Hookups Get More Random, with Jangl on Plenty of FishFacebook is Fastest Growing Social Network in EuropeGodTube Named August’s Fastest Growing SiteIs Facebook’s Usage Declining?ComScore Files for $86 Million IPOcomScore Report Shows Global Growth of Social Networks

Jason Calacanis hired popular videoblogger Veronica Belmont back in July to host a daily show for his so-called “search engine” Mahalo, but nothing had emerged on the Mahalo Daily front since then. Finally, the video series is set to launch next week. What does a daily video podcast have to do with “curating quality links” to improve search engine results? Absolutely nothing, of course. But the bulldog-cute funtrepreneur has a plan nonetheless.

Calacanis realizes that if search isn’t putting butts in Aeron seats, he can always try to boost geeky traffic with popular entertainment. He lays this strategy bare by orchestrating the amusing Belmont through an unamusing series of popular video show parodies: Ze Frank, Rocketboom, Ask a Ninja, Tay Zonday, Diggnation, and Lonelygirl15. The only problem? Calacanis’s hamhanded directorial approach destroys Belmont’s charm. (On the bright side, there is a bulldog!) The parade of references to one-hit wonders of online video past is telling. All of them had buzz that quickly sputtered. Fortunately, talent will out. Mahalo may end up a flash in the pan, but Belmont’s star, we suspect, is only beginning to rise.

Source:Valleywag

Here it is, folks: Facebook’s thoroughly nonpalatial offices, courtesy of Silicon Alley Insider. For this, they’re paying $29,000 a month? And with this, they expect to woo Madison Avenue to a new ad platform? Good luck, Zuck!

Source:Valleywag

Read/WriteWeb is pondering what websites are worth. It starts off comparing Plentyoffish, the Canadian dating site, with Facebook. By the numbers? Facebook will have about 15 times Plentyoffish’s $10 million in revenues this year. So shouldn’t it be worth one-fifteenth as much as Facebook, or $1 billion?

Nonsense. Plentyoffish’s founder Markus Frind should be glad his site is doing so well, and that he doesn’t have to share his company with investors — or, for that matter, employees, since he runs it by himself. Read/WriteWeb dives deep into an argument about which site has better click-through rates. But that entirely misses the point. Facebook has to find a way to grow into its $15 billion valuation — a daunting task, even as its user rolls swell by more than a million a week. Frind doesn’t have to do anything but rake in the cash his site generates.

Maybe, possibly, he could find a venture capitalist willing to write a check that makes him a billionaire — and then, only on paper. But what would he need VC money for? Being cash-flow positive means never having to say you’re sorry. There’s a simple reason why Plentyoffish hasn’t garnered more attention: Silicon Valley is only interested in stories it can grab a piece of.

Why would they kill a service that 15 percent of people who try are willing to pay for, and has resulted in “multi millions of profits per year”? Hong tells us free is the future.

Free sites are destroying pay sites (at least the ones that do not have extremely powerful network effects.. which dating sites generally do not because users can (and often do) join multiple services.). . . Sites like Match.com, Yahoo Personals, etc.. are going to be in a lot of trouble.

Hong explains it as when the company started out in 2000, subscriptions were the only way for a tiny site like theirs to survive. But as ad-targeting improved, and ad dollars moved online, ad pricing has reached the level where an individual or a streamlined small company can make a significant profit.

Hong says the online dating industry is reaching a “strategic inflection point” as the growth of the amount of paying subscribers for these sites becomes saturated and are forced to generate more revenue from existing subscribers. Over the long run, the result is fewer new subscribers, and a disappearing userbase, Hong says.

It’s not necessarily a new idea. While subscription-based online dating is still the dominant business model, we have covered free online dating sites PlentyofFish, OkCupid, and Iminlikewithyou.com. And Hong admits that they are a little late into the free ad-based game, but that “we are optimistic that it is not too late for us to change, as long as we have the courage (or insanity) to do so.”

Hong has made enough money off his site to afford to take risks. And the employee base is small enough, with no venture capital, that the company has some room to monkey with the recipe.

Share/E-mail