Thread: Is running a free site dating site for fijians worth it?

First of all since its my first post let me say hello to all

So I just happened to be crusing around looking for fijian dating sites and found that there arent too many of them and none of them free.

So I think why not create a free site. If I consider the costs

$100 for software and mods and everything else. Boonex?
$ 10 per month for shared hosting
$ 10 per year for Domain.

If I insert google ads, picture ads and maybe a papal donation link do you think it might be feasable.

Also please note that I am looking to this lil endeavour as a hobby and not neccecarily a money making scheme. no complaints if it make some money but I just want to do it for the experience more than anything else.

If I can just recover my hosting costs per month that will be more than sufficient for me. So I just need to make $10.00 per month from it for me to be satisfied with the deal.

I will spend time promoting the site on bulletin boards bars and maybe a lil bit of google ads.

Is even that feasable?

How Long may it take to break even?

Is there anyways this could actually make some money say 2 years down the line?

Which is the best version of aedating/dolphin for my pusrpose and how much will it cost without having any reference or links to boonex?

My Main Motto is to always keep each and every feature free for the end user. No credit card required.

Am sure many here are well experienced with the business so feedback will be greatly appreciated.

Cheers everybody.

Originally Posted by aniruddha23

mods and everything else. Boonex?

Bite your tongue!

"Boonex"

LOL!

Smoge

Originally Posted by aniruddha23

fijian

"The population of Fiji is mostly made up of native Fijians", in case anyone was wondering what a "fijian" was.

Smoge

Hey thanks a lot Trucker. Your replies are very helpful and do point me in the right direction. Have some more questions and observations below. would be great if u or someone else could comment on them.

Notes
- I think functionality wise boonex offers more than what I need
- Customization wise I do know some local developers in India who can get me new images and stylesheets done in like $ 300.
- If the site actually start getting 50+ concurrent users I wouldn稚 mind paying $40 per month for bandwidth
- As the site grows I am thinking of hiring someone offshore fulltime to answer emails administer it etc. Around $ 400 per month.
- I am certainly excited by the prospect of running my own site and plan to give it my best.

Questions
- Bandwidth wise can I just upgrade with godaddy without having to make any physical changes to the site? If I go for dedicated hosting do I have to transition everything to the new server manually?
- What is the catch with Boonex? I know the charge $ 40 for link and banner removal but does this get rid of all references to them or is it $ 20 per link and banner? Otherwise what other data does boonex keep getting from my site? Is there a way to totally isolate my code from boonex so that they have no information about what goes on my site?

Again thanks a lot for your detailed answer. Information from an existing provider is like gold. keep up the great work.

Trucker is absolutely correct. I've been running a very established datings site for years. We started off as free and basically broke even with money from banner programs and what not. That was a few years ago though. Now we run off of three servers. One JUST for media!!

Word of mouth is you absolute BEST advertising. Remember, people are used to seeing the word "free" in everything on the net and it's so easily ignored. I'd honestly say your best route is to get a few people on. THen get them on a messaging program (icq,msn..whatever) and then ask them for their input. By doing so you make them feel appreciated and you grow into a community. THey tell their friends...so on and so forth. It's easy as hell and you make good friends in the process.

It's never cheap, face that fact now. As for upgrading you hosting...it's childsplay. The host moves everything for you (if their any good). Members wouldn't even notice.

Good luck

Thanks Trucker and Toreador.

Now I am really excited about this new venture.

Some of things I have realised
- It aint easy
- It takes time
- It takes money
- It can be fun

As per your suggesstion Trucker I moved hosting to Hostgator.com which gives me cpanel which is very helpful. I had a question about the chat featured as part of Dolphin 5.2 call ray. Its flash based an pretty slow.

What the best replacement for it. Say around 30 to 50 concurrent users? I want to think long term instead of just loading everything up on my server so a separate host for it is not out of questions. Again I need just plain simple ole chat and dotn really need audio video but it would be great if its integrated with the site so you cna see profiles and all.

Any thoughts?

You could try flashchat

http://www.tufat.com/script2.htm

Originally Posted by Toreador

You could try flashchat

http://www.tufat.com/script2.htm

That looks neat. Pretty fast too. Any idea how much effort it will take to integrate it with dolphin 5.2? Basiclaly I want it to look like its part of the site and not some random page so it should come inside the dolphin "Chat" tab and should log users in from the local DB. I dont care about profiles anymore.

Smoge - Can you do this kind of integration? I fye show much will you charge for it. I will pay the license for flashchat.

nother quick question.

Does anyone know if there is some sort of ready to use FAQ for Dolphin 5.2? Like general Help questions and Answers which I could use as a template for the final product?