There are thousands of dating sites on the internet today. These personals sites can offer dating possibilities to all singles or they may specialize and offer their service to only a certain type of single. More dating services have tried to evolved into a niche market since competition has become very fearless in the last few years. The smaller dating sites just can't compete with the advertising dollars that the large services spend.
The major categories that online dating sites specialize in are:
General Dating Sites
This category contains the most sites as well as the largest dating services out there. These type of dating sites don't specialize in any one area. They have members from all ages, backgrounds, personalities, interests and locations. All singles who joined a dating site that falls in a category listed below could have joined one of these sites as well.
Location Specific Dating
The next dating site type is based on it's members location. This can range from being a country specific dating service, and all the way down to city specific. These services tend to be very popular with younger singles as they allow people to meet new friends in their area. These dating sites also tend to hold more single events since there members tend to live close together.
Senior Dating Services
As the name suggests, senior dating sites cater to singles over the age of 65. Most of these types of dating services usually count singles aged 50 or greater in their demographic but some sites advertise for people aged 40 and over. This are is one of the fastest growing areas thanks to the aging baby boomers.
Religious Dating
These dating sites usually focus on either Christian dating in general or on just a specific religion like Catholic or Jewish. To attract members, these sites tend to have a variety of interest groups as well as message boards (very popular with members).
Adult Dating Sites
As the name suggests these sites are for adults only. They deal with singles more interested in a sexual encounter than a long term relationship. Marriage is usually not looked for on these types of sites. These sites also usually have a much larger percentage of men than woman (not that they advertise this).
Ethnic Specific
Dating Services based on different cultures are becoming more popular. These sites help ethnic minorities in such countries as the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom to find each other. These singles usually have a strong cultural background and believe families are very important.
Miscellaneous Dating
This includes all other dating site categories. Popular dating sites on the rise include sites for singles who are heavier than average (BBW), dating sites that deal with single parents or dating services with singles from certain jobs like the military or firemen.
As you can see there are many different types of dating services. To compete with the established dating services, more dating sites have had to start specializing. This is good news for the dating single as it means more choice for us with sites tailored to fit our needs.
Few people can have failed to have noticed the recent and continuing growth of the online dating industry. Even in times of economic decline there has been growth in this area as more and more people use the internet to socialize and to make new contacts. Some people have wondered how they can start their own dating sites. In this short guide we'll cover the option of starting a white label dating site and how to promote and market your new venture.
What do we mean by the term 'white label'? A white label product or service is one that has no brand or obvious identity. It's sold or leased under licence so that another company can add their own branding and then sell the product or service and sharing the revenue with the originating company. The term is said to derive from the days of vinyl records when DJs would affix a plain white label to a record to disguise its true identity. So a white label product or service is one that another company supplies but to which your company adds its own identity.
White label dating sites are those for which the owning company supplies and controls the technical and administrative side while the partner concentrates on the promotion and marketing. This means that any individual or small business can become a dating site 'owner' without having to know anything about the coding, databases, and other IT tasks needed to keep the site running, and without the need for a team of administrators to deal with all the administration work. The partner can concentrate his/her efforts on advertising the site to the target market.
Since the process involves a partnership the first step is to approach one of the white label dating companies to register as a partner. There are several big names in the business and googling for the term 'white label dating' will provide lots of leads. Check out each company and look at some of their existing partner sites to get a feel for the type of market that they lean towards. Which one you choose will depend on your own interests and which markets of which you have knowledge and to which you feel confident about advertising. You might want to concentrate on a particular niche so choose a white label company that already has a plentiful supply of members in that niche. Talking to the companies is the only way to determine this for sure so take some time to do your research thoroughly before committing to one company or another. Of course, if you don't aim for any particular specialty site then a general dating site can be built using the services of any of the white label companies.
Having registered with a white label company you'll be given access to an administration panel in which you can design, build, and manage your sites. The control panel or administration area will probably give you access to templates and other design tools that will help you to give your site your site a unique look and feel, as well as one that suits the intended audience. It will also enable you to use all your SEO knowledge in order to give your site the best chance of being found in search engines. If you don't know much about SEO then you'll need to start learning fast as it's crucial for the success of any site in this competitive industry, or any industry for that matter.
You may have the option of using a domain name for your site based on the domain in use by the white label company. This is fine if you want to get started right away but in the long run it's probably best to register your own domain name and to make use of that. Choosing a domain name for an online dating site can be a bit tricky but with a little imagination, consideration of your target market, and some keyword research it's still possible to come up with something both memorable and descriptive.
Let's assume you have designed and built your first site and completed all your SEO tasks and you're ready to launch the site. There can be a temptation to launch your site too early and doing so can be counterproductive. Hold off until you're fully satisfied that all pre launch checks have been completed. As well as the SEO checks you should also check all the spelling, punctuation and grammar in all that unique content you added to the site in your control panel. You have added lots of unique content, haven't you? If not then go back and do so now. Make sure the site's HTML and other code is error free and that your sitemap and robots files are both correct.
Another task you need to perform before launching any site is to create a marketing plan. Online dating is a competitive business any sites launched with no marketing plan is doomed to fail. You should have a plan ready to be put into action before you launch the site so that the promotion follows on without a pause after the launch. The plan should include all the methods you're going to use to advertise the site. These might include: a Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign, creating backlinks to your site, disseminating banners, creating an affiliate network, advertising in print media, and viral videos or emails etc. As you can see there's scope for lots of work, some of which you can do yourself but there'll be some tasks you'll need to outsource and that will inevitably incur costs so make sure your marketing budget matches your plans.
After you've launched your site you'll need to monitor the progress of your marketing plan by checking on the statistics and reports in both your control panel and in your Google Analytics account. Examine where the traffic is coming from, what keywords where used to find the site, and adjust your campaign accordingly. Keep working on those backlinks! It's a tedious task but one genuine link to your site from another site within the same niche is worth so much more than a listing in dozens of directories. Join webmaster and affiliate forums to pick up tips from others who have trod the same path that you're following know.
There's a wealth of knowledge out there and all you have to do is find it and put it to good use. Time, effort, and money will bring you success with your white label dating site portfolio.