MinuteRun
Junior Member
- Jun 27, 2022
- 104
- 31
I come from a Balkan country and I launched an SMS dating website. It has been a month and this is what I've learned. This post is more about me sharing my experience and knowledge.
What is an SMS dating website?
It's a website where people can publish an ad by sending an SMS message. An ad can be in the format: Looking for woman for X in city Y.
Why an SMS dating website?
Balkan people mostly use Badoo, Tinder and some other local dating websites. But I've seen those SMS dating websites (not many) but they have an ad published daily. I thought they were fake, but they seemed so real.
Each SMS is 1€, so it's not much and people can publish an ad from sex to dating. It's super easy, everyone knows how to send an SMS so I don't have to spend time teaching people how to use a website, it's nothing new, it's common and well-known so people don't have to get familiar with UI/UX. Also people can be contacted directly by phone since the phone number is published on the site. Of course, there are downsides but I focused on upsides.
I've seen a bunch of FB dating groups where guys mostly publish how they want to meet women, those are active groups between 10k and 100k members. I found 250 groups.
Expenses
I had to rent a premium SMS number which cost me 30€ per month for one country so I decided to launch only in one country. Basically that is all, there are no other expenses. I coded it myself so there was 0 cost there and I have my server which I pay yearly, but that is something really low, around 100$ per year.
Marketing
And now marketing, which was the hardest and still is the hardest part.
1. Facebook ads - I ran FB ads only for 1 country for a month. I was targeting men and women above 30 years old, I was targeting especially older audience because there are more singles willing to pay for an ad and they have a hard time adjusting to the new apps.
So this was a big failure.
2. Sending private messages to people on other dating sites. I was targeting Badoo and some other local dating sites and sites for sex. For each site I had to buy a membership which was between 5 and 10$ per month. In total I tried 4 different sites. I created a bot that was sending messages to people. I tried to make it feel real and not spammy, so I was sending messages naturally, like every 5-60 seconds between messages.
I found a problem there aswell:
- Most dating sites ask to purchase some package in order to send messages
- Most sites delete profiles regardless of whether it's big or small spam
- Sites have a daily limit for sending messages
- People do not respond to messages and often ignore them
- Sites ask for profile verification, so it's very difficult to create female profile, I had to go with a male one
- There are fake profiles on many sites, mostly from women so even if I sent messages nothing happened
3. I tried to purchase existing FB dating groups but nobody wanted to sell.
4. I paid the admins of those groups for an ad (most of them were not interested). They posted an ad but reactions were low. I think I got no SMSes from them
5. This one was left untested. I created 2 female FB profiles using AI generate photos and got in total 15k friends/followers. The plan there is to contact each of them and refer them to the websites and post statuses on FB about website. But that method is totally not scalable.
What is an SMS dating website?
It's a website where people can publish an ad by sending an SMS message. An ad can be in the format: Looking for woman for X in city Y.
Why an SMS dating website?
Balkan people mostly use Badoo, Tinder and some other local dating websites. But I've seen those SMS dating websites (not many) but they have an ad published daily. I thought they were fake, but they seemed so real.
Each SMS is 1€, so it's not much and people can publish an ad from sex to dating. It's super easy, everyone knows how to send an SMS so I don't have to spend time teaching people how to use a website, it's nothing new, it's common and well-known so people don't have to get familiar with UI/UX. Also people can be contacted directly by phone since the phone number is published on the site. Of course, there are downsides but I focused on upsides.
I've seen a bunch of FB dating groups where guys mostly publish how they want to meet women, those are active groups between 10k and 100k members. I found 250 groups.
Expenses
I had to rent a premium SMS number which cost me 30€ per month for one country so I decided to launch only in one country. Basically that is all, there are no other expenses. I coded it myself so there was 0 cost there and I have my server which I pay yearly, but that is something really low, around 100$ per year.
Marketing
And now marketing, which was the hardest and still is the hardest part.
1. Facebook ads - I ran FB ads only for 1 country for a month. I was targeting men and women above 30 years old, I was targeting especially older audience because there are more singles willing to pay for an ad and they have a hard time adjusting to the new apps.
| Period | 30 days |
| Clicks | 1670 (11.38%) |
| Reach | 14673 |
| Money spent | 29$ |
| Number of sent SMSes | 0 |
So this was a big failure.
2. Sending private messages to people on other dating sites. I was targeting Badoo and some other local dating sites and sites for sex. For each site I had to buy a membership which was between 5 and 10$ per month. In total I tried 4 different sites. I created a bot that was sending messages to people. I tried to make it feel real and not spammy, so I was sending messages naturally, like every 5-60 seconds between messages.
I found a problem there aswell:
- Most dating sites ask to purchase some package in order to send messages
- Most sites delete profiles regardless of whether it's big or small spam
- Sites have a daily limit for sending messages
- People do not respond to messages and often ignore them
- Sites ask for profile verification, so it's very difficult to create female profile, I had to go with a male one
- There are fake profiles on many sites, mostly from women so even if I sent messages nothing happened
3. I tried to purchase existing FB dating groups but nobody wanted to sell.
4. I paid the admins of those groups for an ad (most of them were not interested). They posted an ad but reactions were low. I think I got no SMSes from them
5. This one was left untested. I created 2 female FB profiles using AI generate photos and got in total 15k friends/followers. The plan there is to contact each of them and refer them to the websites and post statuses on FB about website. But that method is totally not scalable.
