Considering the biased tone of your post, this sounds a bit too good to be true.
If you're not connected to the OP in any way and just liked his site, I apologise!
Unless you want to believe that Hany discovered this story, jumped through their registration hoop, was impressed by the UI and signed up with HN to post an appraisal - all of that in only 8 minutes after the story was posted.
Come on raja, you can do better than that...
Oh and btw, I flagged the story for that crap. Pull your PR-stunts elsewhere.
I like your site design. I like having the perfect princess in the search. I was expecting from the domain name that it would only be able to search for men.
I like how it automatically knew to put Waterloo as the city.
Some things to improve:
* Show results first.
* You need to be useful to the user first. If you can do it without asking for anything in return then even better.
* Take the drop.io model. Upload and go...no user info required unless they want to offer it.
* Get rid of the sign up. You want to make money 2nd and get users first. So no signup. Make it free then add value added services to service your members.
* Make it even more niche. Up to you how to do this.
* Focus on only a few major cities. Make it clear where you operate.
* Hook into other services - plentyoffish. They may not like this. But do it then deal with it. Afterall both you and they get exposure. Don't steal their users though. Remember your goal is to be useful to the user not yourself.
* If their match is somewhere else lead them there. Offer them to give you their email and you can help them more in the future.
Good luck
The best part is that the site is really well done from what I gathered with a cursory glance. The main issue I see is that it's basically built to attract gold-digging whores, which is fine, but why would any "established men" pay for this? I would imagine they have no trouble finding these kinds of women in real life.
The real niche here is "Rich but extremely socially inept men, slightly ugly but still shallow gold diggers".
Another problem I see is that many golddiggers try to market themselves as nice girls (and perhaps even perceive themselves as such) [1]. Going to a site like this kind of makes things more explicit than the participants want it to be, no?
[1] Men tend to be more honest with themselves in such matters, probably because self-deluding men never get laid.
Also, by the very name of your site you are likely to discourage the exact demographic you seek from joining. If I'm an established man, am I going to go to a site that will surely attract gold diggers? I can join the local city club for that.
Read up on the habits of the well off and be a little more subtle about it. oh and private jets are passé these days.
since these guys sound like the MBA types, like everyone mentioned, my guess is that their business plan goes like this:
Year 1: Get driveby registrations, who driveby, register, find out the site is crap, and leave.
Year 2: Open up search results, so that users driveby, find a few results, register, find out they didn't get a response, and leave.
Year 3: Have the core group of users, who use the site and actually have results. Start charging $49.99 for something.
Year 4: Become profitable
Year 5: Sell for billions, make profile on the site, and try to get laid.
Did you get around the chicken and egg problem?
Sorry, when I read sentences like that then I can only say: Instant MBA failure.
You're apparently trying to "produce" a dating site like others produce tin food. It doesn't work like that. You don't pour money into a few developers, stir, feed users until boiling - then serve with a strawberry for guaranteed hot exit.
I don't see a site that would create dating as a natural byproduct. I see only the byproduct - and a pretty bad one at that, for all the problems that others have already mentioned.
Room service gets tiring when you travel as much as I do. With Established Men,
I look forward to beautiful girls on every trip.
text does't show up properly in the chrome browser
how about some teaser listings?
nice layout and design
One of the guys I worked with knew the guy who ran that site. I thought it was a pretty funny name and concept, yours sounds much more refined. Took a quick peek at it, can't really give feedback since I'm at work but upvoted and may take a look later =)
An even more ridiculous site is ashleymadison.com. Its also done quite well.
The chicken and egg problem is the biggest. Until you reach "critical mass", whatever that is (1k, 10k, 100k), it is difficult to open the kimono and give potential new users a peek. That can definitely drive away traffic.
OTOH, you need more for people to go on. You need some sort of hook. In my case, I took multiple screenshots from key areas of the site and assembled a tour.
You guys sound pretty seasoned, so I'm sure this isn't news to you--just an idea. There are many ideas around conversion and most of them just take time.
The other issue that was a big surprise for me is the sheer number of scammers out there. I'm spending more time building features into the backend for identifying scammers than anything else these days (still early days yet). Aside from the IP geolocation technique, email addresses posted in their profile text, and the unique form of bad English grammar from the West Coast of Africa, I'd be curious to know how you identify them. The target demographic of your site is bound to attract a disproportionate number. (BTW, for the uninitiated, geolocation only works for the amateurs logging in from a cybercafe in Lagos--most of them know how to use proxies and emerge in places like Michigan or Colorado. Typical bad grammar: "I will like to know more about you".)
I think you force the signup box too early. Show me some matches in my area and get me hooked. Give guys a few pictures of pretty girls nearby and they'll give you any info you ask for.
It's a pretty nice design. A little bit overcolorful: trim down on the blues and greens up top, it seems a little bit like confetti. But overall, very good. If all you care about is getting people to hand you money, your design isn't going to be what turns people away.
Design is nice.
Overall, the whole thing is corny. I'm sure there is a market for it, but as someone who is a prolific member of other dating sites, nothing about it is interesting.
Why would I, as an established man, want to be harangued by a bunch of gold diggers? I can't figure that out.
