The latest comScore Media Metrix numbers now rank the free dating site Plentyoffish.com as the leading dating site in both North America (U.S.A. + Canada) and the U.K.
The new "Worth Keeping Test" from the free dating site PlentyofFish.com is a 28-point questionnaire designed to tell you whether to reel him or her in, or to cut bait.
PEER 1 Network Enterprises, a provider of online IT infrastructure, is the recipient of four Telly Awards for outstanding achievement with its original short online videos. The winning videos, episode one of "Growing Pains" and the PEER 1 PlentyofFish.com customer testimonial, were selected among thousands of entries for their humor and creativity.
According to comScore World Metrix, Plentyoffish.com is now the #1 online dating
site in UK as ranked by unique visits. Plentyoffish.com received 7,209,000
visits in the U.K. during the month of October, 2007. Meanwhile, the combined
total traffic of all the Meetic sites was 4,397,000, and 2,100,000 for Match.com
in the same period.
A study of over 50,000 women daters aged thirty and over on PlentyofFish.com
from April 19th-25th, 2007 reveals that 35% contacted men 5 or more years
younger than themselves. Markus Frind, Founder and CEO of PlentyofFish says,
"It's not just men who want to date a few years younger these days. Women in
their thirties, forties and older are pursuing younger men on dating sites.
On Friday 9th February PlentyofFish launched a section devoted to member
marriage testimonials. Within three hours, ninety marriage success stories had
been uploaded. Now, five days later there are a total of 295 marriage success
stories, complete with photos. See http://www.plentyoffish.com/success.aspx.
Industry analyst and watchdog, Mark Brooks, of OnlinePersonalsWatch.com stated,
"No other top tier dating site has such an extensive marriage testimonials
section." PlentyofFish now gets 400,000 user logins a day and Markus continues
to operate it from his Vancouver apartment. The average age of U.S. PlentyofFish
members is 39. PlentyofFish is the most popular dating site in Canada, the 6th
most popular in the U.S.A. and the 6th most popular in the U.K.
Userplane, a subsidiary of AOL, today announced that PlentyofFish, the world's
top free dating site, has joined Userplane's new ad revenue-sharing program.
PlentyofFish has more than 1 million daily visitors and is ranked by Hitwise as
a top five dating service in the U.S. Since 2004, its members have used
Userplane Webmessenger(TM) to initiate, on average, more than 100,000 IM
sessions and exchange millions of text and audio/video messages per day.
A major paid dating site put out a press release announcing their ten millionth
member. Markus responds, "Yes, they may have millions of members registered, but
that's to their detriment. We cull and clean out old profiles once they become
inactive and unresponsive. Most other sites prefer to keep the old profiles in
place for excessive periods. It's good for conversions, but bad for users. I
won't do that to my users. I don't have to, we're free." PlentyofFish surpassed
300,000 logins in a day in August 2006.
On July 22, 2006, Plentyoffish will bring together over three thousand eligible
singles for what will be the largest speed dating event held under one roof. The
record attempt has been pre-approved by Guinness officials and will establish
the first such world record.
In 2004 Plentyoffish.com was growing in leaps and bounds and CEO and sole
employee Markus Frind had a decision to make: He could either hire hundreds of
employees and convert to a paid service like all his competitors, or develop an
AI to run the site.
_____________________________
PlentyofFish in the Press
January 13, 2008 - The New York Times - From 10 Hours a Week, $10 Million a Year New York Times Article
Markus Frind, a 29-year-old Web entrepreneur, developed software for his dating
site, PlentyofFish, that operates almost completely on autopilot, leaving Mr.
Frind plenty of free time. On average, he puts in about a 10-hour workweek. Mr.
Frind operates the business out of his apartment in Vancouver, British Columbia,
and has net profits of about $10 million a year.
January is the busiest and most profitable month for online dating services.
People start to re-evaluate their lives and they all set their New Year's
resolutions to find someone," said Markus Frind, founder of Plentyoffish.com.
Plentyoffish.com, with 10,000 members in Washington state, projects a 30 % spike
in traffic this month.
Over the past few decades, we've seen a growth of riches in a small slice of the
population. Remarkable is PlentyOfFish, an online dating service. Launched in
Canada in 2003, the site experienced explosive growth. By late 2006, some
300,000 people were logging on to the service every day, and they were looking
at about 600m pages a month. Only one person, Markus Frind, did this booming
business employ.
Mr. Kawasaki said his “hero” is Markus Frind, founder of PlentyofFish.com, a
free dating site. “And by the way, he makes $5 million, $6 million a year with
Google ads.”
Ron Jacobs of ARCast TV, a production of the Microsoft Architecture Strategy
Team, traveled to Vancouver, British Columbia to interview Markus Frind, the
founder of and one-man show behind PlentyofFish.
Plentyoffish.com runs itself. A free service, which was the 82nd most-visited
site in the United States last month, according to Hitwise. It ranks third in
U.S., ahead of Match.com and eHarmony.
July 6, 2007 - Chicago Tribune - Plenty Of Fish; Plenty Of Cash
Markus Frind, the 29-year old founder of Plenty of Fish, posted a check recently
showing the site earned nearly $1 million from Google AdSense in a 2-month
period. He gave it to all his employees. Markus is also the only employee. The
site recently jumped into the top 100 among all US Websites. Markus says he's
been ignored the last 4 years because of ethnocentricity towards US sites.
Markus Frind, CEO of PlentyofFish is on The Today Show this morning. One man,
one (simple) site, #1 in Canada, #1 in U.K. (for heterosexual dating) and #4 in
U.S.A.
The wave of the future, perhaps: free internet dating. PlentyofFish.com, a free
dating site that was launched in 2003, now brings in 200k U.S users a day - and
$5 million to $10 million in advertising a year according to Markus Frind, who
runs the site by himself. "I think all the paid sites are going to go away, he
says" Even Match.com is offering discounts to subscribers: six months free, if
you don't find Prince (or Princess) Charming in the first six months. While the
online dating industry has been enormously successful so far.
The headquarters of what may be, on a per-capita basis, the busiest, most
profitable site on the entire World Wide Web is on the 16th floor of a brand-new
Vancouver building with panoramic views of the nearby Canadian Rockies. It
happens to be the apartment of 28-year-old Markus Frind, the owner and sole
employee of PlentyOfFish.com, a free online dating site and a model for the next
generation of Web entrepreneurship.
I'd like to see a law pass endorsing arranged marriages. In the meantime, I'll
study the personal ads, from which to glean my recommendations. Here's an
exception: according to its ad, PlentyofFish.com is a hundred percent, "put away
your credit card" free. Hopefuls upload a photo and post a witty blurb
describing themselves, then cross their fingers and wait. Some report amazing
success. One discovered her true love lived two streets down though they'd never
met.
Those looking to play the field without spending much cash should check out
PlentyofFish.com. In addition to claiming to generate "300,000 relationships a
year," the site does not charge visitors for its
While it may be tough for the middle-aged of Silicon Valley to find a perfect
partner, it's never been easier for the young and the restless in the high-tech
industry to make a love connection. A growing trove of Web sites enable search
for those who share feelings and fetishes. Check out the free online dating site
PlentyofFish.com.
Online dating is 10 years old. But the days of paying to find a match may be a
thing of the past if you believe one couple who met online and started their own
dating service.
At iDate 2007, vendors demonstrate ways to meet, court, virtual date and even
marry without ever leaving home. ...Plenty of Fish, with 400,000 hits a day, was
created by Markus Frind, who still runs it out of his apartment. He figured out
people essentially exaggerate on profile answers. He follows a more sensible
creed: actions speak louder than words. For example, Susie says she wants a
solid, stable man who earns $100,000-plus but keeps clicking on profiles of
muscle-bound bad boys. Plenty of Fish makes sure she meets plenty of
underemployed weightlifters, and some of the stable ones she ignores. "People
don't even realize we do this. They just know they are getting results," said
Frind.
Frind -- who operates PlentyofFish from his downtown Vancouver apartment -- said
he got an e-mail from the U.S. Marshals Service at 8:16 p.m. Saturday. Someone
watching Americas Most Wanted had called to tell them they saw Bennett's picture
on PlentyofFish. Frind combed through the messages Bennett had sent to other
users which showed that Bennett had been sending messages to various women as he
travelled north from Arkansas. One woman had agreed to let Bennett stay at her
place. Frind checked that woman's profile and realized that both Bennett and the
woman had recently logged into PlentyofFish using the same IP address -- meaning
they were visiting his site using the same computer. Frind was able to give
police the phone numbers of other people she had contacted. Frind spoke with
U.S. marshals on Sunday, following Bennett's arrest, and they thanked him for
his help. "They told me it was vital information," he said. "Basically they had
no idea where he was until I gave them all the numbers and the information."
Frind is not worried about the bad publicity Bennett's case may attract. "When
you're dealing with millions of people, it's bound to happen," he said. "It's
like getting struck by lightning." He said nothing like this has happened on the
site before. Frind was never served with a search warrant and voluntarily looked
through Bennett and his girlfriend's message traffic. He said he wouldn't
hesitate to look at a user's private messages again "if a crime has been
committed or someone is in danger." See discussion at PlentyofFish Forums -
http://forums.plentyoffish.com/datingPosts5895133.aspx
Last year 12% of newlyweds in the U.S. met through the Internet. So we can
assume a similar number of Canadians did. Clearly there are plenty of fish
available out there and tonight we're profiling one of the biggest nets that
catches them. She was HorseLady3, a small town B.C. girl. He was HappyDaddy, a
Vancouver chef whose search for love took him on the Internet. "I needed an
escape because the separation from my marriage was kind of hard." It wasn't long
before the two found each other. "We hit it off and we haven't looked back
since." Markus Frind is the Vancouver web guru who just happens to be one of the
world's biggest matchmakers. His site, Plentyoffish.com brought together
HorseLady3 and HappyDaddy and thousands of other couples and he runs it all from
his tiny Vancouver office. "I am the largest website run by one person. I'm
doing about 600 million pages a month." His website is part of a new wave of
companies making money on content generated not by them, but by users. The
biggest example is YouTube, the online video site that Google recently bought
for $1.65 billion. Like YouTube, Frind's site is free to use and is bringing in
a heap of cash. [Google Adsense] ads make him more then $10,000 a day. "The
tellers always look at me real funny. They're like are you some kind of
criminal? Why do you come in with a $900,000 check? I suppose if I went paid,
this site could make hundreds of millions but it just wouldn't be fun anymore
and I would have to hire people and I don't know, I just like what I'm doing
right now."
October 1st, 2006 - Tricity News - Canada: Online Dating Convenience
With work and kids and soccer practices and doctor appointments, how and when do
people find the time to connect with one another? It's hard and that's why
internet dating sites such as plentyoffish are so popular with singles of all
ages. "The internet dating thing is huge - it's almost like a candy store!" a
user exclaims, noting she could converse with - even date - several men at once.
Supernova2006 was produced in concert with the University of Pennsylvania's
Wharton School of business. It brings together such luminaries as Jonathan
Schwartz, CEO of Sun and Craig Newmark, of Craigslist. "There's a frenzy of
startups," said Markus Frind, founder of PlentyofFish.com, a free one-man online
dating service in Vancouver, British Columbia. "How many news readers do you
need, or calendars?" he asked, referring to online products that many companies
have bet their businesses on. Frind's online dating service faces its own array
of competition. But he insisted that he is making a profit from online
advertising -- as proof, he has posted the image of a $900,000 check from Google
on his blog -- and declared "I'm probably the only company here making money."
According to Jupiter Research, more than 17 million people viewed online
personals last year, and about 2.5 million paid for them. (It's usually free to
browse; the money kicks in when you want to connect with someone.) There are
several major sites to choose from, including the aptly named Plentyoffish.com.
_____________________________
Blogs on PlentyofFish
December 16th, 2007 - CaryNC - Business in Cary NC, Durham NC, Chapel Hill NC,
and Raleigh NC business-Plenty of fish raked in plenty of sales
POF is a social network, and these web 2.0 extravaganzas top the charts as some
of the most vitiated sites in the world. Some examples of popular social
networks include MySpace, Face book, Orkut (owned by Google), Friendster, Yahoo
360 (owned by you guess it Yahoo!), and Hi5. What I thought was very interesting
about Mr. Frind’s network is that he was competing in an established and also a
very very very competitive market. However, he innovated and added a rare flare
that wasn’t found, and that is simple, he made it FREE.
Kawasaki rounded up four people who were at the right place with the right idea
at the right time. By making money with virtually solo operations, they are the
lucky ones who make it look so easy.
This is incredible! Look at this. PlentyofFish has beaten MSN and Facebook on
the Compete.com Top Ten U.S websites ranking (based on the parameters below -
not just traffic). Not just that - look at the other sites on this list - Pogo -
a games site, followed by two gay date sites (ha ha) and a site dedicated to
scribblers. And the avatar playground for kids GaiaonLine is performing well
too. Markus Frind has this to say about his site's listing.
PlentyOfFish is the success that it is because of several converging Web trends.
Servers and server software have become simple and reliable enough that they can
run on their own, without a lot of babysitting. What's more, a remarkably
sophisticated economic infrastructure now exists that allows busy Web sites to
make lots of money, certainly enough for one person to live very well.
I caught up with Markus today via email and asked how the business is doing now.
He didn't want to get specific about earnings, but he said that POF will earn
$10 Million + next year (which puts it at around $30k per day).
While much larger pay sites, such as Match.com or Eharmony.com are setting up
hundreds of servers, paying hundreds of staff and forcing people to pay at
minimum $30.00/month, PlentyOfFish.com has done all of this for FREE, with no
staff and a lot of help from Google Adsense. Truly a prime example of success in
this Web 2.0 world.
17 Tips on Building a Lucrative Online Business or Website - The quoted text is
extracted from some of Markus’s blog posts as well as interviews over the past
few years. All of the specific references are left at the bottom of the post and
do visit them to read more, if you’re interested.
He strikes me as the kind of “normal guy” who is just very humble about what
he’s done. What has he done? He launched POF in 2003. Today it earns north of $5
million a year, 600-700k relationships started (including my current one … I’m
not just a blogger I (was) a client!) and it’s all still run out of his spare
bedroom.
These days, 20+ employees and millions of capital can be more of an impediment
than an advantage - especially if you count the happiness factor. I count Markus
as one the few who are showing us the business models of the future.
PlentyofFish is another one of those quiet Canadian online success stories -
perhaps because its owner, Markus Frind, is far from a PR-seeking machine and
perhaps because it’s a business focused on the quasi-shady world of online
dating.
As humans one of our biggest weaknesses is becoming obsessed with what is not
important. We spend 90% of our time on that little 5% — and that is why so many
of us fail. PlentyofFish is an example of what happens when someone understands
that its not the fancy design that brings in visitors, its something else. He
understands that search engine traffic is important, but its even more important
to have visitors that come back to your site again and again.
On Saturday 10th February I attended Community Next ( communitynext.com) in
Silicon Valley. From the final panel: PlentyofFish contrasted executive opinion
on the final panel on two points. Markus believes that advertising is actually
very important in building an online community. Other speakers (HororNot, Fark,
Hi5, Slide, Suicide Girls) did not. Markus stated that 'passion' is not as
important as 'cold hard analytics skills.' Other speakers believed that passion
for the site was their primary success factor.
Jobster, which has raised nearly $50 million in venture capital, is making a
dramatic business model shift starting tonight, by making all job listings free
(and much more). Their goal is to do what PlentyOfFish is doing to Match.com.
Ranking online dating sites purely on visitor traffic is flawed; membership is a
prerequisite to use the services, and member activity is the foundation of
successful matchmaking. Member visits reveal actual engagement. Plentyoffish.com
showed that free services can be successful; 9th in terms of visitors, the site
leapt to 5th in member interaction. More importantly, it was one of 5 sites with
more than 10 million member visits, putting it in a class with much higher
trafficked sites and besting its next competitor by a multiple of 2x.
Markus happened to stay in Saturday night and caught the email from the US
Marshals and was able to quickly turn it around. What might have taken hours at
some dating sites, took minutes...and the bad guy got nailed. Nice! Well done
Markus.
Markus Frind is a one-man wrecking machine. He has single-handedly disrupted the
world of online dating with a super-easy-to-use, free dating site - PlentyOfFish.
PlentyOfFish averages 20 million page views per day or 600 million per month.
With Google Adsense running on the site, Frind averages approximately $10,000 a
day in revenue from ads alone. Markus lives in Burnaby (a suburb of Vancouver),
is in his late 20s and enjoying life. He has no intention of maximizing his ad
dollars as he is comfortable where he stands.
Markus Frind may be Canada's most successful Internet entrepreneur, although he
doesn't have a huge profile or an appetite to build one. He runs
PlentyofFish.com, one of the world's most success online dating services.
The following is a list of the Internet's eight biggest Google AdSense
publishers. This is a list of individual site owners. Big corporate AdSense
publishers like AOL are excluded.
#1: Markus Frind: PlentyOfFish.com
Plentyoffish.com is the biggest free dating site on the Internet
Markus Frind, the founder and sole proprietor of the massively successful online
dating site Plenty of Fish, has an interesting theory in one of his recent
posts. The post is mostly about how Markus's site ranks compared to other
international dating sites (answer: number three), but the interesting part for
me was right at the end, where Markus says that searches for info on new homes
correlates extremely well with real economic data such as housing stats. I think
he is on the right track, and that search data will become (is becoming) an ever
more important indicator of consumer behaviour, or potential behaviour.
How many CEOs of online dating networks can you name who have done advanced math
research that led to someone getting the Field's Medal — often called the Nobel
Prize of mathematics? I can think of one: my friend Markus Frind, the guy behind
PlentyofFish.com, one of the top dating sites in the world. Markus recently
posted a description of how he came up with an algorithm that isolated 23 prime
numbers in succession for the first time, and how that research was in turn
cited by Terence Tao in a paper he did on prime numbers, a paper that helped
contribute to him winning the Fields Medal.
Mark Brooks: Plentyoffish is free and has snuck up on the Canadian market and
has now established itself in the American market. It's #5 on the Hitwise USA
rankings for May 2006, no less.
Markus Frind: Plentyoffish is driven by the community. There are one million
people who have moderating powers in the Plentyoffish forum and several thousand
people attending parties all over the country every week. And it's all organized
and done by users. So unlike the paid sites, Plentyoffish is run by the users.
What you say you want and what you actually want are two different things. It
hardly ever corresponds on a dating site. So I just track a user and see what
they're actually doing on the site and then show them matches based on their
actual surfing preferences. My site is deceptively simple but no one knows just
how complex it is under the surface.
Markus Frind rocked the Internet world this week when he posted a photo of his
latest Google AdSense check for nearly $1 million CAD.
Markus Frind: I created the first real free dating and the first one that
actually worked. Just like Google created the first real search engine that
worked.
Markus Frind claims he's earning $10,000 per day from Google Adsense from his
dating website, Plentyoffish.com. External data sources do seem to back him up.
Markus is basically a one-man band running a website that, by his latest traffic
figures, is two and a half times bigger than digg.com. Digg.com gets 200 Million
page views per month, but Markus says plentyoffish gets 500 Million: "It is
around 2 hours of work a day and that stays steady because as the site grows I
automate more and more. Some of that work I get my girlfriend to help me with,
she is far more diplomatic when answering mean emails. From what I can tell i
should have no problem running it by myself even if it gets to 3 times its
current size."
On the hardware side, Markus gave me these details: "I have 4 servers.
1. DB server
2. Web server, handles 1 million pageviews an hour at peak. No static pages at
all, way to slow. All pages are Gzipped on the fly.
3. Mail Server. Handles 1 million emails/day and also has a web server that
handles a Instant messenger. That translates to 4-5 million polling pageviews/hour
at peak.
4. Image server, Like all major sites it serves images to a massive content
distribution system/cache.
5. Outbound traffic is 70 to 100mb/sec If it was uncompressed it would probably
run at 140mb/sec"
Use function over form to build an emotional connection with users. Blend ads
into content, No flashing crap, make the site useful. Basically all those things
that everyone knows you are supposed to do, but very few people actually do.
There is no magic bullet, but you should always test new designs or new text to
get the result that you want.
For the most part the [online dating] industry wants to ignore the fact i exist
and they are just hoping that I will go away, so they don't have to explain to
investors why profits are vanishing. I think in the future paid dating will
account for 5% to 20% of the overall online dating market. Currently 68% of my
membership in the United states has paid for a dating site in the past, draw
what conclusions you will.
At the Northern Voice conference I met Markus Frind, founder of Plentyoffish.com.
He's Google's #1 Adsense user in Canada. His site is pulling in more than
$10,000 per day from Google, he told me, and has millions of passionate users.
Tens of millions of page views EVERY DAY. What's the secret to his success? Ugly
design. I call it "anti-marketing design." He says that sites that have ugly
designs are well known to pull more revenue. Google. Is it pretty? No. Craig's
List? Pretty? No. MySpace? Pretty? No.
