Yesterday I came across this blog about Markus Frind, the owner of the Plenty Of Fish online dating site. The author of the blog say Markus makes over $10,000 with Google AdSense from Plenty Of Fish, which is completely reasonable since Plenty Of Fish is the 3rd biggest online dating site on the net. However, what got me to write this blog post is not that Markus makes $10K a day off Google – it’s because the author fell for Markus’s story that his site got so big because of ugly design or “Anti-marketing” as the author calls it.
Markus’s site didn’t get big because it was ugly and he most certainly didn’t use any anti-marketing method. If anything Plenty Of Fish’s marketing is anything by anti-marketing. The site spends of tens of thousands each month on Google AdWords and even does TV and radio commercials. I saw their ad on the season final of The Bachelor.
Now I ask you, what do you think was more responsible for Plenty Of Fish’s huge traffic, ugly design or a big marketing budget? I put money on the latter. Another thing to keep in mind when reading a blog post about how much someone is making – it’s not all profit. It would be nice if it was.