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PlentyofFish is another one of those quiet Canadian online success stories – perhaps because its owner, Markus Frind, is far from a PR-seeking machine and perhaps because it’s a business focused on the quasi-shady world of online dating. In any event, Vancouver-based PlentyOfFish is a huge business with revenue of US$5-million to US$10-million a year and 1.2 million active users. PlentyofFish’s success is pretty amazing given Frind essentially runs the business by himself, the site is no-frills (the company’s logo is certainly proof of that!) and the service is free – compared with $20 to $40/month charged by rivals such as Match.com and Lavalife. So where does all the money comes from? One word: AdSense. With so much traffic, AdSense has become Frind’s pot o’ gold tool. Don’t be too surprised to see PlentyofFish start to receive more attention after the Wall Street Journal wrote a mini-profile on the business in yesterday’s paper.
He’s in a remarkably sweet spot with his niche.
I’m guessing his ‘competitors’ are paying a hefty price to cut through the noise in the ads and get to the top which is good to start.
But he’s also not an either/or solution. It’s not like someone will use Plentyoffish OR lavalife. If one is free why not use both? So he doens’t have to fear advertising competitive sites…
Finally his users are very targeted and likely willing to explore most avenues to find what they seek so no doubt plenty of them click through all or most of the ads. It’s Brilliant.