It can be free or it can be paid, it doesn't matter. What matters is how you market it and what you give to your users. You can be very successful both ways

Hello, Topfan!

And the same POF is not free. There to enjoy the many necessary functions, you have to pay.

I agree with you that Marcus started at the right time.

Therefore, free dating sites is "not going away." Sooner or later have to pay to enter the function.

I think that the paid dating sites are more serious then free dating sites !

I use to run paid sites, than IMBRA became federal law. Myself and several other dating sites tried to fight the law in federal court as unconstitutional. We lost.

This law only applies to sites  in the United States. I don't think other countries have this law.

If you run a free site (no fees) IMBRA does not apply.

I don't want to debate IMBRA (do as you please), but just letting you know there may be other reasons why some sites are free, especially if running a paid dating site is so heavily regulated that costs make it almost impossible except for the larger corporate dating sites with deep pockets.

You can read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internatio … lation_Act

http://www.uscis.gov/files/pressrelease/IMBRA072106.pdf

The fines are pretty stiff.

Last edited by db3204 (2012-01-05 14:45:39)

What constitutes a 'time waster'? A non active member doesn't waste anyone's time from the admin point of view, and every website paid or not, has people who become inactive for all kinds of reasons. Vldpersonals has a great filter system for removing inactive members and I really can't see what the problem is. Members to who send messages to other members and don't get replies does not mean the member they contacted is inactive - most likely just not interested. Even if a member is inactive, its normal on any membership website and nothing to cause concern as far as I can see.

Dragon, I believe here "time wasters" not the guys who waste their own time but also and that's more important they waste time of other site members who have serious intentions regarding being a member of site.

The referral system is easily gamed using a proxy. Of course people have a right to charge for their site but who is going to pay for a site with 20 members? It's easier to make money from adsense for the first year while building your site into something worth paying for. I would feel guilty for ripping people off if i put a monthly charge for anything under 10K members. It also depends on the niche, for a specialized site, you might be able to get away charging for a few members. But that wont work for general dating

Last edited by definitive (2012-01-06 16:31:36)

Hello,

I started my vld site last year and it is paid from the beginning. I have activate credits to send messages to each other.
Why is my site paid because I want to keep Scammers away.
remember Scammers will never pay. So I have created some membergroups, silver and gold member.
Most serious daters will upgrade their membership To silver or gold.
Scammers will also scam blogs  and Guestbooks just give standard members a limit.
I hope we can approve comments in the next release to keep the site clean.

I did this on my old site love2u before I bought a commercial vldpersonals dating software.
limited to sending 1 email/day for a week then they could upgrade to VIP membership and it was actually most of them done this so it worked well but unfortunately I could not move my old database with all my members so I had to start from the beginning and it had take a very long time

sometimes I get the feeling that free does not make a serious impression of members who want dating or meeting someone. so I'm going to rebuild love2u today so members can try it in one week and become vipmember after that and we will see how it works. I will tell you if it is working or not but not allways free is a good point !!!

(sorry for my english had little hurry then I wrote this post)

Last edited by gugu (2012-01-06 19:35:57)

Is this sort of compliment or crit?

I disagree. My site, and plenty of others, are serious dating sites - I've been in the free dating business for 16 years. That's more serious than the many 'paid' sites that start up and fail.

You can't really stop free dating.
However for every client there is a type of site. If you really want to run into real persons ... then a few bucks per month will do the trick. No spammer will pay money for something like this.