I bought the first SneakyFeelings.com ads last Friday on two separate blogs, dcist.com and wizbangblog.com. So far, dcist.com has been the winner in terms of traffic. (3 times the visits in 1/2 the page views) We've had 10 people sign up in about 2 days now; I think blogs are more a weekday, should-be-doing-work-instead type of thing, so next week will see more traffic.

An interesting thing I've been noticing: of the 10 people to sign up so far, 3 have filled out full profiles, and two have posted a picture. I think that many are just filling out the demographic data to get to the point where they can do a search, only to be stopped by the "subscribe" page when they click through the account setup. SneakyFeelings is unique amongst personals sites in that you can't view the profiles without becoming a subscriber; our thinking is that the free month trial and low $5.49 subscription rate should make it pretty affordable. We are striving to be different from the other sites that have separate "member" and "subscriber" access, since they require more oversight on the part of the site operators (thereby raising prices since they need monitors to approve profiles and prevent profile spam) and provide an bad experience for users, who can never be sure if the person they are writing to has an account that permits them to respond to emails. Then they end up sending personal email addresses in their messages and profiles, and lose out on the security that the personals site can provide.

In case you are one of those people who signed up but didn't do the PayPal thing, let me reassure you: You will not be billed for the first month of service. There is absolutely no risk in signing up, and you can cancel at any time on PayPal.com. Thanks for your patronage, and best of luck finding that special someone! :)

Making some last minute tweaks to the website. Two days ago I added affiliate IDs (so we could give partners credit) and yesterday I added promo codes so that we could provide special deals for groups we are going to target. Tonight I'm hoping work on the reference and "Send to a Friend" functions for profiles, and that will likely be finished tomorrow or Sunday.

I'm heading out of town for the weekend (Rehoboth Beach, yay!) so I'm going to wait until next week for the first big push of SneakyFeelings. I really want to be around in case it takes a dive. :)

Right now I'm waiting for Demi to get here so we can grab some food. Then it's back to coding for me and studying for her. Footloose and fancy free indeed.

Yesterday Jason (http://fetchfood.com) and I finished setting up the server, and I'm more or less satisfied it won't crash tomorrow. :) Now it's time to promote.

Dating sites are a tough industry since there is a lot of competition, and when you start out you have a traditional chicken and egg problem; you can't easily get new users when there aren't any on the site already to tempt them in. Yet a cursory look online reveals that every dating site has many thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of users. How do they manage to do it?

The major sites (match, yahoo, eharmony, maybe lavalife) advertise on many media, so it isn't hard to see how they have pulled it off. There are a number of smaller sites (udate, american singles) which advertise exclusively online. The rising trend seems to be tie-ins with existing sites. (F***edCompany.com uses such a service, and I recently saw that the Washington City Paper uses one as well) This is generally a good idea since these sites don't need to appeal to end users directly, which is costly and something of an imperfect art. Outside of this are the niche sites that appeal to particular demographics, such as jdate. They are able to get good word of mouth within those communities.

We certainly have some work to do to establish ourselves and overcome that initial "chicken and egg" dilemma, but we're confident that it will be done.

But hey, we're just kids after all; what is there to lose? :)

Today I bought the new SneakyFeelings.com server hardware from ServerBeach.com. They seem like a great, no-BS type of place. In a wierd way I am comforted by the occasional awkward wording and punctuation lapses in their FAQ, since it lets me know that there are real people behind the site and not just lawyers and robots.

A guy named Roger helped me out with my questions, and he helped me retrieve my friend Jason's reference ID from their database so I could use him as my reference. (Obligitory shout out: Jason it the VEEP of FetchFood.com, a provider of online food-ordering services for restaurants. Check it out, and order some Chinese!) He was very cheery and helpful, and didn't read from a script. Highly recommended.

Demi and I went back to her place to take care of her dog for a bit and get some clothes for her first day at clinicals. We also took pictures for the website; look under the "About SneakyFeelings" link in a few days and you'll get to see what we look like. Just promise not to laugh at my lack of photogenicosity. :)

Welcome to There's No Action!

So I'm working on a project right now called SneakyFeelings.com, and I wanted to have a place on the internet to talk about it and my other comings-and-goings, hence this website. This is my first foray into blogging, so you'll have to let me know how it's going! :)

A little about me: My name is Mike and I live in Washington, DC. I have a little company called 18th Street Software, LLC. Our initial product was a (what else?) content management system that we implemented for a project with a local music shop. The thinking was that we could make something beautiful and scalable and then sell it a bunch of times to other people and businesses throughout the metro area. In time, our many, many users and unparalleled web services architecture would allow us to roll out value-added services that would be impossible for the competition to match. We were able to sign up several solid customers, but we found that between the marketing activities and long implementation times (people bought websites in addition to the CMS service) it was a time-consuming and ultimately unsustainable model. When you are a small company making one-off products and not catering to the very top of the market, it's difficult to grow much.

Around the time I was tossing around new business plans, I met a (beautiful) girl named Demi on an anonymous dating site. She is a very hard-working nurse who also attends graduate school, cares for a sometimes-rambunctious dog, and maintains a gorgeous apartment in Alexandria. Not to gross out you kids in the audience, but it was one of those things where we knew we'd be together for a long time after the first couple dates.

In talking about my business ideas, Demi was particularly interested in one for a dating site. While the details were unclear at that point, the main features were to be a very affordable price and a feedback system for people who have been on dates. So we get to work.

A few months pass. I code the site at night and continue to work during the day, and Demi works and studies. She helps me get through the rough spots in the design, and provides moral support and optimism whenever I need a lift, which due to the sleep schedule is often. She also works out new marketing ideas and does the testing in what little spare time she has. I'm pretty sure she's a keeper. :)

That brings us up to today. We are about a week from going live and we couldn't be more excited. If you're reading this, we hope you will check it out!