I only spend MAYBE 4-5k a month on ads now, but in the "hey day" of 99-2001 I was spending a LOT of ads... for a while, whatever I bought produced profit, or at the very least broke even, and this was without recurring! I was charging 39.95 for lifetime access to www.penilefitness.com.. jesus, had I charged a monthly fee then, I would probably be the one being written about :thumbsup


Anyway, this guys dating site is very nice and congrats to him, but 4 million a year in profit from adsense only sounds fishy, but then again the sites name is plentyoffish.. heh.

I had quarter page ads in Hustler and Penthouse for about 4 months back in 99 and 2000 that still bring in about 40 unique clicks per day... If he had that much money to spend, I would certainly diversify into the adult market as well, and put full page ads in hustler, penthouse and maxim..

within 3 years of that, he'd have some serious long-term traffic and business...

I dont even see a "send this site to your friends" link on his pages.. WILD!

He's just retarded. He probably owns www.stillsomefishleft.com and bitter nobody is signing up.

Oh no, he hyped himself into a corner. Now the "grown men" will kick him off the internet.

You idiots crack me up. :1orglaugh

thanks for this. interesting stuff.

pretty amazing you're still getting so many daily visits from six year old magazines.

I'm not a cheerleader for this guy or this site by the way - just find it a really interesting story. and as far as I know it's $4 million revenue from adsense, not profit. he's probably getting commissions through other programs too, but I've no idea of course what his private figures are.

from his radio advertising, tv advertising, search positions, alexa ranking...etc. $4 million a year isn't impossible I would say. the whole artificial intelligence angle is interesting, but I'd be surprised if it's as accurate as he says.

If you look at page views then the $$$ we are talking is not that huge. Compare it to THEHUN.com.

The free advertising he is getting is blowing up his site. Not sure if he wants a buyout but think of all the new profiles he gets with every new news article. I think it was really smart. He is not the only free dating site but now he has turbo charged his growth.

at this point, he is truly creating his own competition. there are ways to get buyout offers without the self-aggrandizing posts. so what's the next dating business model? I think I have an idea. :1orglaugh :winkwink:

.

Look at this -

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/tr...entyoffish.com

I know he stated he screwed with but still informative right now.

interesting. is he getting mainstream publicity too?

true. maybe he just likes to brag. :winkwink:

No, not at all. I'm not factoring in the competition. Who cares what they think. I'm talking about the VC firms and potential buyout partners he's targeting with this blitz of self promo. From what I can tell it's only him doing it and he's doing a good job to a point. What I'm referring to when I say he's overhyping himself into a corner is when he goes and makes statements like:

You let others speculate or make that statement for you. Not for the fact that it isn't true, it may or may not be, but for the fact that when it comes out of his mouth it just seems like pure hype. That makes any investor pause.

The $4 million a year I wouldn't argue about. Plenty of people here make that so it's not some distant unachievable number to anyone in this business. Although your average mainstream moron is absolutely fascinated by it! LOL

I say good for him, the site is simple and even if he makes half of what he claims he's really doing well on a novel idea. While I'm not happy about the free dating trend I'm not bothered by his success.

The only thing I will say about him personaly that's not flattering is that I think it's time to hire a pro to keep the publicity wheels turning in the business circles. He needs some help. Webmasters are easy to flatter. The wrong statements can cost you a lot of money on the biz side of things.

This is the best thread I've read all day

Very very interesting stuff

I see your point. he does seem like the type of guy who tries to do everything himself, but you can't be great at everything.

a similar kind of story in a way is the milliondollarhomepage.com one - still loads of people thinking that's bullshit too, but anyway - what really seemed to push that site into the major big time is hiring a dedicated PR person that got him interviews with ft.com, bbc, most major US networks...

I thought some of those quote had to be more mainstream. He needs to get into some majors now.

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ne...fish&btnG=Sear

thanks. doesn't seem to have really hit the mainstream press yet though - probably because the press release was too technie minded and not human interest focused enough.

Amazing and very inspiring.

btw: this is some of the most intresting threads those days on gfy!

Yup, that's a great example. They did one helluva job!

I wonder how he handles quality control with AI

ys, but how many webmasters are launching their own free dating sites right now BECAUSE of his posts? :thumbsup

they really did. for six months he was everywhere, and getting interviewed by everyone. it'll be interesting to see if he manages to follow it up or not.

yup, soon we'll have lotsoffish.com, seafulloffish.com, etc...

There are some, but I'm not sure if there is plenty, at least not without more than one staff member and large overhead costs such as bandwidth. If he is in fact doing that on his own, that's a tremendous accomplishment.

I'm not familiar with adsense. Just to be sure, adsense pays per click and not on impressiosn right?

Interesting - in 2004 his traffic has a sharp hike... at the same time he was posting this on another board:

So beside being the next wonderkid in programming, then it also pays off to be buddies with a major spyware company. Who would have thought that :upsidedow

He has most of them beat already. He's made the right moves and found a way to grow his site. There were and are still many free dating sites out there that have existed for years but aren't close to the success of his site. He 'knows' something.

they pay on both now, depending on the advertisers preferences

keyword targetted adsense pays per click. with keyword targeted google chooses which sites to show your ads on

site targeted adsense pays per impression. with site targeted the advertiser chooses which site to advertise on and then how much to bid per thousand views. the owner of the site then gets a cut

What a great inspiration to all of us. :)

interesting thread

Not really. Very, very few people on this board have the skill, both technical and otherwise, to achieve something like that. Regardless of all the silliy bitching about his true net profit that guy does have a VERY successful site and make a lot of money, but then he has skills many here couldn't get in 7 lifetimes.

thanks for the link(s)

Quite interesting to read some people getting $1 per CPM - I haven't got a single channel sitting at $1 all are 10 to 15 times higher which makes me 1. wish i had more traffic and 2 wonder what average cpm is for others?

Just because someone doesnt have the skills to do something immediately doesnt stop them from obtaining the knowledge to do it.. I think this guy is definitely inspiring alot of people in alot of ways including broadening their own knowledge.

bumparoo

thanks for posting, a very interesting read indeed

Is set to make a million last year on Adsense and came close, on 1/1000th of the traffic this guy has and no technical skills, so I think it is veruy possiable for him to make that much in fact I'm suprised he can get more from it, a few targeted advertizing pages would do it :)

Find what people pay for, offer it for free, run ad's

wow that is really incredible, thanks for posting!!

this guy rules!
but he deserves the money. I'm stupid and still able to make some bucks off the net! ;)

actually, this guy really didnt make that much, but just published a bunch of articles saying the site was making so much money, bringing in lots of traffic and now maybe he does. Its funny that he makes this much but still isnt a premiere publisher or whatever