CALOUNDRA, AUSTRALIA, October 10, 2008 /24-7PressRelease/ -- In a candid and frank interview with site owner Matt Fuller, this inspiring success story, against all the odds can give fellow entrepreneurs and online businesses that are starting out some real encouragement.
Can you tell our readers of your experience with the internet and online dating? "Prior to starting this website one year ago, I had no knowledge or business experience with the internet, in fact I had nothing to do with the online dating industry at all"
So what inspired you to do this considering you came from a completely non related industry in the offline world. "The internet has always been of some curiosity to me. I mean, what offline business can reach millions of potential customers and can do so from just one location, I can't think of any. So I began to research online businesses with no real intention of the online dating industry at that time"
What was the final turning point that made you start an online dating service? "This might sound a little strange, however, I chose the singles industry because of its competitive nature, meaning that there was a great challenge to try and compete with the likes of aussiematchmaker and rsvp. I also new that if I did succeed that online dating was very lucrative and wasn't going to become obsolete any time soon. Online dating type searches on the internet are in the top 5 searched online industries in the world and this was the determining factor as to why I decided to go this way.
After one year online, can you summarize the progress you have made. "hookmeup now gets over 30,000 page views per day and has 200 new members joining every day so there is now a huge choice of singles for my members. Just 3 months ago there was an average of 50 new members per day so you can see how fast the website is growing. In the past year I estimate that I have spent 1000 hours doing search engine optimization to increase my rankings within Google. Any Google search phrase searched from within Australia containing the words free dating, dating, chat, chat rooms, internet dating and others, the site now ranks in positions 1-10 so my site is easily found by singles looking for online dating services. Prior to the website launch I was advised by people with vast experience in this industry that to achieve these types of rankings for such competitive search keywords was not going to happen as there were literally millions of other dating type websites positioned ahead of me that I would have to compete with. So after actually achieving this in 1 year it has been a very successful venture for me considering I knew nothing when I started and it also provides a nice income. I now rank within Google alongside all the major established dating sites in Australia and are in direct competition with them"
www.hookmeup.com.au is based on a similar free online dating Canadian site, plentyoffish. Both these sites are genuinely free to join and meet other singles and advertise Google services and other dating sites for revenue.
After some further research, it was found that the online dating industry is actually extremely competitive and there are millions of dating websites that have not been able to achieve decent search engine visibility and struggle to gain a large member data base.
There is much to be said about determination and self belief, just ask Matt from www.hookmeup.com.au
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