S___. If there were a recipe, do you really think there’d be so many dating sites that tank? I think not!

The fact is, there’s no recipe for success in this industry. A few early-comers, giants such as Match.com and eHarmony, managed to grab a huge share of the market and grow it to the point that they’ve capitalized themselves into seeming invincibility. Even though they don’t excite members like many newer “Web 2.0″ social networking ventures, singles know the brands and subscribe for lack of a better alternative. A few free online dating sites such as Plenty of Fish are also wildly successful in terms of the bottom line, but they make all their money from selling advertising space. So POF users actually occupy an e-billboard, and use the site mainly as a well-trafficked chat room. Hats off to the owners of these and any other successful online dating ventures.

Nevertheless, most singles I’ve met who are active in online dating would agree that dating sites are as inadequate as search was before Google. They all use the same simple-minded model. They seem to have approached the problem by thinking about how to do database matches instead of how dating works in the real world.

Maybe there’s no recipe for success, but we at flirtysomething know you need these three ingredients:
1. to start with active, intelligent, creative people who want to enjoy the journey as much as the destination;
2. to offer a site that enables these people both to represent themselves and to interact in unique and satisfying ways;
3. and to keep costs as low as possible.

Most dating sites that fail do so because they fail at one of these. Many of the most successful dating sites eventually fail because they lose sight of one of these. But a new dating site that is run by and for good people, that offers a sleek, intuitive, and fun online dating experience to singles, and that keeps overhead and membership fees as low as possible will probably succeed. That’s what we at flirtysomething have cooked up.

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