Digg has plenty to learn from POF. Even though digg is not a dating site, digg gets no where close to the amount of hits plentyoffish gets, and they have a huge office - 80 employees - 10 million yearly cost and runs with a loss.
simplicity works all the time, I run 3 blogs by myself - spend over 50 hours a week on it - work from home and make well over 6 figures. Most importantly I enjoy what I do and don't have to share my income with anyone.
Take that Digg! :)
anon
· 11 months ago
This guy in an unsung hero of true entrepreneurs. Not one of the whiz-bang paper millionaire bling-bling "CEO"'s from a deeply funded, hype coupled with smoke and mirrors, venture.
Please find more of these to report on Mashable.
Thx!
Avatar
· 11 months ago
Congrats to Markus. no wonder he is a Asp.Net Legend.... i bet many still wonder how he managed to develop plentyoffish and make it so stable and scalable. it is shocking.
TDZ
· 11 months ago
I spent a year looking over sites and paying attention to what works and what doesn't work out there... I learned by watching Marcus that K.I.S.S. works best, but in order to compete in the market you have to use that philosophy and still over deliver to your members.
That's why I'm just starting the launch of my very first site right now. Marcus has been an inspiration, but the times are evolving and soon members will want even more out of a free dating site. I'm hoping I can build the membership before Marcus catches on and passes me up with toys.
The Race Is On you could say.
TechLang
· 11 months ago
I m a fan of the Plentyoffish :)
Ben Strackany
· 11 months ago
Let's not overlook the fact that POF is free. That's got to count for something, both in terms of boosting usage and getting as much new content (i.e. profiles & pictures) as possible. We have a dating site client who's trying to decide whether to go the free route or paid memberships, and with all the competition and need for content, free makes a lot of sense.
Also, people like flipping through pictures of attractive people. :)
mark
· 11 months ago
So is it all in a name? I mean, there are tons and tons of free dating sites. What is the big deal about POF?
The Ghost...
· 11 months ago
I find it interesting Brian that your a huge fan of Markus'... It's really interesting that you aspire to be like a guy who is a complete liar. Look at it a little closer if you will...
Markus advertises directly on his home page and throughout his site that he has "No Employees" and runs the entire site out of his apartment. Now if you go to his own blog at http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/ you'll see that he admits to having employees and spends $5400 per month on serve lease fees. Hardly the cost of just 1 or 2 servers.
Further, Markus promised his members a 100% Free Site and even says in his slogan "Put Your Credit Card Away" yet has already started charging his members for items like a picture of flowers, that they only get to keep for 2 weeks. So your not even buying the flowers, just leasing them for 2 weeks. His prior shot at charging members is the contract he worked out with Imeem to allow members to upload music to the profiles, where he has Imeem charge them and then collects a portion of the sales in this little joint venture. Hardly free for the members from my perspective.
Moving on, Markus then hops into his own blog and publicly insults his members, yet if they happen to peep a word he tries to kick them off the site. Only problem is, Markus can't seem to figure out how to effectively initiate an IP tracking blocking program. Trust me, I've seen plenty get booted by him for speaking out within his site. These members just change e-mail addresses and walk right back in...
In the meantime, his home page that advertises he bans scammers/spammers permanently is also a lie. Markus could give a care less about the people who scam/spam his members as he continuously allows them to stay on the site. And if his mods boot them from the fora, they just cruise right back in with a new profile. If the site was truly effective and did what it said this would not be possible to pull off.
Moving on, he advertises no fake profiles. Yet Markus himself got caught by his members, he deleted the entire thread on this, in his own Fora for having over 40k profiles all leading to the same exact gmail account. What? Now, as a site owner, I can tell you now, only the site admin can create multiple profiles under the same e-mail account.
There is nothing genius about Markus Frind, he's just another crook on the net who scams people into believing what he wants them to believe and then attempts to silence the people who have the guts to stand up to him.
So tell me Brian, how can respect someone who blatantly commits the above and spends his days acting as if he's innocent?
Markus deserves all his success, he has worked clever and hard for it. The amazing thing to me about the numbers is this is still less than 1% of global internet traffic. So the sandbox is indeed big enough for many players, especially those who can differentiate and the trend towards zero continues for web services...congrats MF!
Tom
· 11 months ago
I really hate that 10 hour work week number being throwen around. I highly doubt this is the case. Sure he could probably do that a week here and a week there but average it out over a year and I bet you his work week hour average is much higher.
Running that site, promotion, updating scripts, hardware issues, dealing with google adsense and publishers all take time.
Web Laureate
· 11 months ago
i guess it is time for me to check out plentyoffish's sea of men. would be nice to be less single in the new year. also, thinking - http://web-poet.com/2008/12/27/plentyoffish/
INGY
· 11 months ago
THAT IS JUST OUTREGAOUS WE HAVE A CRUMBELING ECONOMY AND THIS GUY MAKES 10 MILLION DOLLARS A MONTH??????? HE SHOULD GIVE IT TO PEOPLE THAT REALLY NEED IT CUZ NOBODY NEEDS THAT MUCH MONEY BUT WE HAVE PEOPLE OUT OF WORK AT A 15 % UNAMPLOYMENT RATE SO RICH PEOPLE LIKE HIM SHOULD CONSIDER WHAT THEY REALLY NEED TO DO
TDZs
· 11 months ago
What is outrageous for one is your inability to turn the caps lock off on your computer. Let me help you out here, it located to the left of the "A" Key.
Next it would be great if you could please learn how to spell correctly, or at least take a moment to review what your posting. This site is mostly comprised of individuals who graduated the 1st grade, your proof not all of them have though.
Moving on, why do you think he should give his money away? Have those who are currently unemployed done anything to earn the money themselves? Beyond that, he he does not currently make $10M a year, he's at $450K in Gross revenues per month out of which he is paying the operating expenses of the site, this involves payroll, servers, bandwidth, advertising (I know, he has his ads on my site) and several other items that come into play. Now, he probably clears around 2M a year after all of his expenses in profit, but he has earned it himself. Now, if you want part of that piece of the pie, then do like the other site owners around here, myself included, and go out and create something that will draw people into it.
But to sit there and say he should give it to you or someone else who has done nothing for it is exactly the reason the economy is destroyed.
All Comments
simplicity works all the time, I run 3 blogs by myself - spend over 50 hours a week on it - work from home and make well over 6 figures. Most importantly I enjoy what I do and don't have to share my income with anyone.
Take that Digg! :)
Please find more of these to report on Mashable.
Thx!
That's why I'm just starting the launch of my very first site right now. Marcus has been an inspiration, but the times are evolving and soon members will want even more out of a free dating site. I'm hoping I can build the membership before Marcus catches on and passes me up with toys.
The Race Is On you could say.
Also, people like flipping through pictures of attractive people. :)
Markus advertises directly on his home page and throughout his site that he has "No Employees" and runs the entire site out of his apartment. Now if you go to his own blog at http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/ you'll see that he admits to having employees and spends $5400 per month on serve lease fees. Hardly the cost of just 1 or 2 servers.
Further, Markus promised his members a 100% Free Site and even says in his slogan "Put Your Credit Card Away" yet has already started charging his members for items like a picture of flowers, that they only get to keep for 2 weeks. So your not even buying the flowers, just leasing them for 2 weeks. His prior shot at charging members is the contract he worked out with Imeem to allow members to upload music to the profiles, where he has Imeem charge them and then collects a portion of the sales in this little joint venture. Hardly free for the members from my perspective.
Moving on, Markus then hops into his own blog and publicly insults his members, yet if they happen to peep a word he tries to kick them off the site. Only problem is, Markus can't seem to figure out how to effectively initiate an IP tracking blocking program. Trust me, I've seen plenty get booted by him for speaking out within his site. These members just change e-mail addresses and walk right back in...
In the meantime, his home page that advertises he bans scammers/spammers permanently is also a lie. Markus could give a care less about the people who scam/spam his members as he continuously allows them to stay on the site. And if his mods boot them from the fora, they just cruise right back in with a new profile. If the site was truly effective and did what it said this would not be possible to pull off.
Moving on, he advertises no fake profiles. Yet Markus himself got caught by his members, he deleted the entire thread on this, in his own Fora for having over 40k profiles all leading to the same exact gmail account. What? Now, as a site owner, I can tell you now, only the site admin can create multiple profiles under the same e-mail account.
There is nothing genius about Markus Frind, he's just another crook on the net who scams people into believing what he wants them to believe and then attempts to silence the people who have the guts to stand up to him.
So tell me Brian, how can respect someone who blatantly commits the above and spends his days acting as if he's innocent?
Running that site, promotion, updating scripts, hardware issues, dealing with google adsense and publishers all take time.
computer. Let me help you out here, it located to the left of the "A" Key.
Next it would be great if you could please learn how to spell correctly, or at
least take a moment to review what your posting. This site is mostly comprised
of individuals who graduated the 1st grade, your proof not all of them have
though.
Moving on, why do you think he should give his money away? Have those who are
currently unemployed done anything to earn the money themselves? Beyond that, he
he does not currently make $10M a year, he's at $450K in Gross revenues per month
out of which he is paying the operating expenses of the site, this involves payroll,
servers, bandwidth, advertising (I know, he has his ads on my site) and several
other items that come into play. Now, he probably clears around 2M a year after
all of his expenses in profit, but he has earned it himself. Now, if you want
part of that piece of the pie, then do like the other site owners around here,
myself included, and go out and create something that will draw people into it.
But to sit there and say he should give it to you or someone else who has done
nothing for it is exactly the reason the economy is destroyed.