Valentine’s Day brings to mind flowers, chocolates, images of hearts, gifts and dinners in a fancy restaurant. The restaurants are booked in advance; e-commerce websites are working beyond hours to get the Valentine’s Day gifts delivered on time and dating websites & apps are getting unprecedented traffic. The youth is on an adrenalin rush, leaving no stone unturned to make their special someone feel even more special. With plastic currency in their wallet and mobiles in their hand, they have to wait to plan a memorable rendezvous or communicate their heartfelt emotions instantly.

The dating websites and apps have turned the new Cupid helping singles find their soulmates. Gone are the days when beautifully written letters and wired telephones were major mediums to connect hearts, the new age tech-savvy lovers are spoilt for choice when it comes to communicating feelings to their beloved. The technology has become the new matchmaker. From heart emojis on Instagram to apps and virtual reality to personalized gifting, technology is facilitating romantic unions like never before. Dating is a billion-dollar industry in India and growing year on year with no sign of a lull. Its immense potential inspires businesses to land their feet in it. Here, we deliberate on how to set up a dating business.

Map your audience

The online dating space is abuzz with options, and you have to sail against the stream to get a footing. It is very tempting to consider people from all geographies and ethnicities as your audience, but if you don’t have enough resources, it is wise to start small and expand. Define a niche that is least addressed and make a strategy accordingly. But here is a flipside of this model, your profits will dwindle as you address a small audience.

Have a business model ready

A business model is a sine-qua-non for the success of any business. Some websites offer free subscriptions to acquire customers. However, you won’t make more money by offering a free subscription, but it will set the wheels rolling. But if you have a small budget, targeting a micro- niche audience with a subscription-based model would be more beneficial.

Be best with the technology

Taming technology has always been an Achilles heel for businesses and they are always on a lookout for a service provider to impart them architectural infrastructure for their business. Most of the businesses who want to throw their hat into the ring are puzzled by the questions like how to create a dating website. As user experience is at the forefront of any online business serving a perfect website is the only way to stay in the business. Any glitch in your app or website may result in losing the customers forever. From design to content and navigation, everything should be aligned in a way that your audience can have a great experience with your website.

You can also integrate chatbots to impart it a liveliness. As most of the people access websites through mobiles, serving a responsive website will give you an edge. As the search for dating website reaches its peak during Valentine’s Day make sure your website is efficient enough to handle that traffic. When it comes to building a dating site, technology has a significant role to play, but it doesn’t mean that those who are not good at technology can’t get successful. From booking a user-friendly domain to choosing a hosting company and creating a great design to optimization; several skills are required to make your dating website a success. Here a good digital agency could be your saviour. There are a good number of digital agencies that can help you be the next Tinder.

Here we walk you through the technological process:

• Selecting a niche

Selecting a niche is first good step to set up an online dating website. The online dating space is too crowded, and competing against big players would require a lot of time and effort. But here is a way out. You can select a niche or even a micro-niche where the chances of your success are very high. Creating a site for seniors, widowers, divorces or even for a region could be considered.

• Finding a website name

While finding a name for your dating website, you must know that the name should be short and easy to remember. It is good if the name of your business is included in your domain name. Select a name and check if it is available.

• Get a good hosting

While running a website like this, you must refrain from having a shared hosting. As a lot of people sharing the space, the speed of your website may get slow which will eventually turn off your audience. Instead, you should go for a dedicated hosting that gives you more options.

• Select a platform

For building an online dating website that offers full features. There is a good number of platforms that can be used for this purpose. Drupal and WordPress are some of the popular platforms.

Get the members even before you start

Most of the participant-based businesses face this problem and your new business can also face this. Your website needs participants to keep the business running but people could be sceptical about signing a dating platform which is used by a very few people. So, one of the major tips for launching an online dating website business is having a group of people ready to register with you in the early phase. Pamper these trailblazers with free memberships and other perks. Besides, you should also adopt a good PR strategy to send your message across. Distributing the news about the launch of your website and its various features will attract a large audience to your website. Nurture them by offering them a free trial or even free membership. Once your website becomes a known name, you should try to reach your target audience through Facebook advertising and Google AdWords campaigns.

Market your website

Once the website is created, focus it on marketing so that it can reach to more and more people. Doing PR, advertising in newspapers and TV are popular means of letting the world know about. Besides you can also make your website get maximum eyeballs on the internet through, content marketing, social media marketing and Google AdWords. Once you have the overview, get into the details of how to market your dating website well.

• Branding your website

It may appear a costly and time taking affair but branding a website is an effort worth it. Plan a branding strategy that helps make your website synonymous to online dating so that people can start searching by the brand name. Design, content and marketing strategies are instrumental in positioning a website as a brand.

• Getting Traffic to your website
  
  As your business is online, you must get a large amount of traffic to your website to get conversions. You need to devise an excellent digital marketing strategy to attract quality traffic to your website. Guest posting, blogging and directory submission may attract free traffic to your website while you can also get paid visitors by running ads on Facebook, Google AdWords and Twitter.

• Start earning from your website

Now, as everything is in place, it is time to start earning for your efforts. To do this, you must have a well-defined marketing strategy. You can get paid for your efforts in ways more than one.

No doubt, the purpose of building an online dating website should be earning from the subscriptions. Some features of your website may be free to all, but you can ask to buy the subscription from the customers who want to start a communication. Studies suggest that subscription to dating websites increases around the Valentine’s Day. So, grab the opportunity and capitalize on demand.

Besides the subscription, which is the mainstay for the website income, there are alternative ways that can also be used for monetizing your website. Affiliate offers are one such way that lets you earn from your website. As you have the traffic, you may offer related products and services to your website, and if anyone purchases these you will be paid a certain amount. There are several affiliate programs you can join. In addition, Google AdSense can also be good sources of income.

Maintaining quality

Starting an online dating website is easy but maintaining the quality is really a tough nut to crack. You have to be exceptionally good with the quality control. You must make sure that your website is not used for sexual abuse and the data your members have submitted is in safe hands. There should be a system to keep tabs on the abusive behaviors of the members. Online dating is a credibility-based business, and no business can survive once it loses the trust of the customers.