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2008 was a good year, now #13 in the US.

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Re: 2008 was a good year, now #13 in the US.

#31

Post by bisi »

The point of it all is that POF is the number one dating site in the U.S and last time I checked he was making over $10 million a year ...obviously he is doing something right . The reason why a lot of people fail is because they don't want to acknowledge a formular that works and instead spend "plenty of time" trying to discredit any news that looks too good .

Thats a formular thats working - He has few servers 1 or 2 employees and he makes millions ... just learn from what he is doing and hope that you can be as successful . Dont spend time saying that the number one dating site sucks because that sounds silly because it is number 1 for a reason and that reason is not luck .

You have to change the way you think by studying the way other successful people think . If they way you think is not bringing you success then maybe you should consider thinking like people that are successful think .

Goooooooooood Luuuuuuuuuuuck

Re: 2008 was a good year, now #13 in the US.

#32

Post by dzohrob »

timr wrote: post #24

This is absolute nonsense. Alexa doesn't place POF anywhere near the top 100 US websites (they have it at 466, actually). Now, I'm not claiming that Alexa is the gold-standard for accuracy, but if you're truly a top-20 site, you're going to be so immense that nobody would confuse you for a top-500 site. It's like confusing an aircraft carrier for a tugboat. For whatever it's worth, here's the Alexa 10-20: 10. AOL 11.…

Read the fine print -- it's top sites by pageviews, which is a very different (and less meaningful) metric than top sites by unique visitors.

That same Alexa data you quote has POF at 168 in the US and 466 worldwide, with 21+ average pageviews/visit (Compete has them closer to 30). According to that same data, Flickr has ~9 PVs/visit, and CNN has ~3.5.

It's not inconceivable that with a few differences in the data between Hitwise and Alexa, you could come up with POF in the top 20. It just shows you how meaningless pageviews are as a metric of success or engagement.

Re: 2008 was a good year, now #13 in the US.

#33

Post by Timothee »

jkkramer wrote: post #27
samson wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to get over whatever that emotion you want to call it that is causing you to react like this, and come to the realization that regardless of what you think of the design or even genre as a whole it is one person operation doing what he's doing.

Reading the comments, I'm confused by the apparent hate. When I saw the article, I thought, "Hey, isn't this a mostly-solo operation? That's impressive." Am I missing something? Is it just that people think the site is low class?

I agree. This site's story is pretty inspiring to me. I don't know all the details but it really seems to be as simple as: one guy decides to create a website from his home, it becomes very successful and he makes millions.

I think the hate is mostly jealousy coming from the fact that this guy didn't seem to know what he was doing (he admits it himself), and that the design is pretty plain (now. A few years ago, it was actually terrible) but still made it huge.

I'm thinking that the story sounds actually similar to Craigslist but Craig Newmark is royalty: I suppose one difference is that the PoF guy talks about how much money he makes a lot more. People never likes that...

Re: 2008 was a good year, now #13 in the US.

#35

Post by timr »

dzohrob wrote: post #32
timr wrote: post #24

This is absolute nonsense. Alexa doesn't place POF anywhere near the top 100 US websites (they have it at 466, actually). Now, I'm not claiming that Alexa is the gold-standard for accuracy, but if you're truly a top-20 site, you're going to be so immense that nobody would confuse you for a top-500 site. It's like confusing an aircraft carrier for a tugboat. For whatever it's worth, here's the Alexa 10-20: 10. AOL 11.…

Read the fine print -- it's top sites by pageviews , which is a very different (and less meaningful) metric than top sites by unique visitors. That same Alexa data you quote has POF at 168 in the US and 466 worldwide, with 21+ average pageviews/visit (Compete has them closer to 30). According to that same data, Flickr has ~9 PVs/visit, and CNN has ~3.5. It's not inconceivable that with a few differences in the data b…

Nice catch...didn't see that. He's definitely stretching to make the claim, if he's using percent of US page-views as his metic.

POF's page-view count per user is so absurdly high that you really have to wonder what he's doing to get it there. The other major dating sites (which have roughly the same modality of search-and-view) all have page-views/user of around 10-13. It's awfully suspicious that he's managed to double that number....

Re: 2008 was a good year, now #13 in the US.

#36

Post by staunch »

timr wrote: post #21
rms wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Early SEO (when it meant a lot more than it does now) + the network effect. An incredible success, and as strong an outlier as ever exists. http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2006/06/14/how-i-started-a...

He also spammed the hell out of craigslist, iirc. There was a period of about a year where you couldn't go into a craigslist dating room without seeing fake posts that linked to POF profiles.

Yeah. I think there's a pretty dark side to the rise of POF that Markus has been less than forthcoming about.

Re: 2008 was a good year, now #13 in the US.

#37

Post by symptic »

timr wrote: post #35
dzohrob wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read the fine print -- it's top sites by pageviews , which is a very different (and less meaningful) metric than top sites by unique visitors. That same Alexa data you quote has POF at 168 in the US and 466 worldwide, with 21+ average pageviews/visit (Compete has them closer to 30). According to that same data, Flickr has ~9 PVs/visit, and CNN has ~3.5. It's not inconceivable that with a few differences in the data b…

Nice catch...didn't see that. He's definitely stretching to make the claim, if he's using percent of US page-views as his metic. POF's page-view count per user is so absurdly high that you really have to wonder what he's doing to get it there. The other major dating sites (which have roughly the same modality of search-and-view) all have page-views/user of around 10-13. It's awfully suspicious that he's managed to do…

His site is so simple that if every action takes you to a new page it almost feels seamless. Most other sites make sure the convenience of taking you where you want in one click is accounted for, but for a site running off of AdSense, more pageviews = more potential clicks, so you can argue he's stretching it for the sake of chart rankings; I argue it's to maximize potential revenues.

Re: 2008 was a good year, now #13 in the US.

#38

Post by symptic »

matthewking wrote: post #8

He's done unbelievably well, apparently in 2006 he was making $10k a day from adsense, you can only wonder what that is now.

I assume it's less. AdSense was roaring more so back in 06' but has settled and matured now. A lot of publishers who minted earlier on are now looking for better alternatives once more.

Re: 2008 was a good year, now #13 in the US.

#39

Post by jasonlbaptiste »

staunch wrote: post #36
timr wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He also spammed the hell out of craigslist, iirc. There was a period of about a year where you couldn't go into a craigslist dating room without seeing fake posts that linked to POF profiles.

Yeah. I think there's a pretty dark side to the rise of POF that Markus has been less than forthcoming about.

how the hell is that dark? he's at number 13 or even 130, it's still a huge success. he didn't rip anyone off here. most startups in the consumer space that have a big rise have some form of what purists would call a "dark side".

Re: 2008 was a good year, now #13 in the US.

#40

Post by webwright »

dzohrob wrote: post #32
timr wrote: post #24

This is absolute nonsense. Alexa doesn't place POF anywhere near the top 100 US websites (they have it at 466, actually). Now, I'm not claiming that Alexa is the gold-standard for accuracy, but if you're truly a top-20 site, you're going to be so immense that nobody would confuse you for a top-500 site. It's like confusing an aircraft carrier for a tugboat. For whatever it's worth, here's the Alexa 10-20: 10. AOL 11.…

Read the fine print -- it's top sites by pageviews , which is a very different (and less meaningful) metric than top sites by unique visitors. That same Alexa data you quote has POF at 168 in the US and 466 worldwide, with 21+ average pageviews/visit (Compete has them closer to 30). According to that same data, Flickr has ~9 PVs/visit, and CNN has ~3.5. It's not inconceivable that with a few differences in the data b…

Isn't it safe to say that Pageviews is a pretty terrible measure of engagement (especially when comparing sites)? Pageviews can be a measure of how ajaxy your site is as much as it's a metric of engagement.
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