A reader asks:
I’d like to start an Internet dating site. Where can I get hold of the software to be able to start one? How much is web dating software likely to cost me?
A quick Google suggests there’s quite a bit of free dating site software available, although how good it is, or how well it will fit your needs I can’t say.
If you’re prepared to pay for such software then pretty much any web developer should be able to put together a basic dating site. In their most basic form they are not particularly complex. My brother and I once built one in a little under six hours from concept to workable system. That said if we’d built the same site for a customer it would have taken considerably longer – customer work involves meetings, sales effort, acceptance and revision meetings etc. all of which take time and increase the cost. So a basic bespoke system will probably set you back several thousand pounds, then if you manage the grow the business you’ll need to invest tens of thousands of pounds into scaling the software (and hardware) to cope with the demand.
The reality is however that the cost of developing the software is insignificant compared to the cost of marketing a dating site. The figures I’ve seen suggested a typical customer acquisition cost in the dating industry of around $42 per customer and you need tens of thousands of customers, meaning you’ll need a marketing budget of several hundred thousand dollars. Which is why we binned the idea of a dating site.
Asking John:
Do you have a business question you would like me to answer? If so you can Ask John or or you can ask on the forums where you’ll get both my input and that of your fellow entrepreneurs.
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