…

http://OpenSourceDating.com

Thanks for asking what we are working on. I have been working on a one man show for quite a few years in the industry. I started one small dating site and sold the domain for 250k but I don’t want to mention the name. For years I was very successful marketing online dating sites primarily by directing traffic from adwords. However, competition has become fierce in that industry.

Now, I have purchased what many people think is the best online dating domain name on the internet. EDATE.com

eDate is an online dating site that is offered totally for free and the revenue model will be based off of adsense, dating affiliate programs, key targeted banner affiliate and direct advertisement programs.

The site is currently undergoing major script modifications which will improve performance, navigation and overall aesthetics. I am determined to offer excellent customer satisfaction and support while providing a top quality online dating site that is 100% free with no catch.

Please keep your eye on eDate.com in the future as membership is already growing at an exponential rate.

Thank you all for reading,
Justin

Though I get great feedback from my friends, I am a one person show at BeeThere. Doing so was a conscious choice on my part, to save time! In three months, I went from the idea to having a launched website full of navigable concert listings. I developed all of the core software, from the ground up which includes a web crawler that finds and identifies almost a hundred thousand concert references per week, and a search engine featuring dynamic navigation functionality, context-sensitive advertising, and personalization. I’m also expecting at least three patent grants.

Ironically, I don’t think any of this would have been possible in such a short time frame if there were more people involved. Just getting more people involved would have taken too much time.

I credit much of the effectiveness of the one-person show, to the combination of open-source software, and the fundamental nature of software to encapsulate complexity, and to be distributed easily. That’s a long topic though, so I’ll leave it at that.

Now that the core software is developed, I’m spending more of my time doing marketing and biz dev, and I can definitely see more value in having additional hands. Being a master coder, and being a master website marketer, are two very different virtues. (Any master marketers out there?)

I’ve seen many times that one person can build great software. I’ve also seen many of those businesses stop there. Sometimes the software is fundamentally viral such as social-networking/dating-services, greeting-cards, or free email-services which can include ads at the bottom of each email, etc. Some of those services have clearly hit tipping points while remaining very small. Otherwise, I can’t say I’ve seen too many one-person companies build a large business.

I’m not pessimistic at all. This is a great situation for the one-person show. We just need to keep in mind nobody makes money from building great software, or a great site. People make money from selling what they have.

[ I didn't get rich for inventing ethernet, I became rich for selling ethernet ] -Bob Metcalfe IEEE Magazine ~1996

Thanks for the great column Dan. This is actually the only one-person blog that I subscribe too.

-Carl

Plentyoffish has 14 million pageviews a day. That is more traffic then digg.com, slashdot, Del.icio.us combined have. T0 make 10k a day off that kind of traffic is on the very low end of what is possible. I’m sure now that i unblocked, alexa and comscore from ranking my site properly I will get a lot more attention

Hi Dan,

My name is Gideon Marken, I’m a ‘One Person Show’ who runs a music site/service for independent artists and music fans at: http://www.ArtistServer.com

I’ve been doing this since 2001 on my own, and last November, the site was listed in Time Magazine as one of the “Top 20 Music Sites” on the Web: http://www.time.com/time/2005/onlinemusic/4.html

I started this because I was an artist on the original mp3.com in 2000, when I felt that the site was not doing what was best for the artists. That thorn, has grown now to a collection of 5,000+ songs, 14,000+ artists and music fans, 130 ringtones, and currently sees 21,000 unique visitors per month.

While my stats aren’t so impressive yet, I have been doing a lot of development to build up my platform and am now poised to overtake the majority of my competitors. Since music sites and services tend to offer a wide range of different services, it’s difficult to see who offers what, and to what degree. To help clarify this, I’ve put together a set of charts to help people compare: http://www.MusicHostingServices.com – You’ll see there are few sites that come close to the tools and functionality that ArtistServer offers.

I do the work for free, as there isn’t enough revenue yet to cover a salary. The good news, is that I am starting to break even and am looking for others who have the skills I do not, to help round out a team. I’m also considering investors.

I make a living doing contract programming work for small companies, which has allowed me to juggle in the development and mangement work on ArtistServer all these years. This has been a great arrangement for this initial building of the services, but the site is now at the point where it could use my attention full time.

ArtistServer is also a leader in mobile solutions for unsigned artists. I was the first out of my competition to:
- have a mobile site
- offer ringtones
- provide a tool for transfering rigntones to your phone

And… later this year, I’ll be launching a new extension to my service which should bring some attention to my platform – something I call “Fan Blogging.” Here’s a diagram: http://www.artistserver.com/files/FanBlogging.png – there’s more info on my blog: http://www.gideonmarken.com/index.cfm/a/9/blog/699/

Is there more? Yes! I also launched http://www.IndieMobile.com just two weeks ago – this site is an extension of ArtistServer – it only contains the ringtones – which are free.

One last item – one big difference between my site/service and the others? I wrote mine from the bottom up to be a 100% brandable solution which allows me to offer the same exact solutions that ArtistServer has, to anyone. In less than 30 days, I could launch a new site for a record label, a tour, a station, or portal, etc – any company wanting to get involved in the social media space. Want to compete agaist MySpace or TagWorld? I can make that happen – I just need a team.

Doing it yourself is a life enriching experience you can’t put a price on. I love what I do and couldn’t imagine doing anything else. I don’t love the struggles of being a one person show, but I do love the opportunities it’s provided me.

Although, the time is nearing for me to start building a team. I’m estimating that by the end of this year, I should have the site/services scaled beyond what one person can handle. Anyone out there?

Thanks for asking

- Gideon