Can anyone tell me what kind of conversion rates (visitors to free profiles) a brand new dating site could expect to enjoy? Caveat of course being a good/decent site?

Interested in knowing if having somehow a pre-purchased/affilaited user base would make a difference, i.e. if one were to launch with a good site and zero users what kind of conversion rates would they expect?

Also interested in comparing that to established site conversion rates.

And finally, does anyone know for actual profile posting (as opposed to basic email / username gathering) what a good % of completed profiles to started/unfinished profiles would be?

Not to scare you... But you'll see a 0% for much longer than you would have imagined. Unless you don't block Nigeria, Ghana and Russia. If you forget to do this, you'll see a flood of money come in and then be shut down a couple months later owing a ton in charge backs. Its a great way for credit card companies to make money ($26 a pop). Also realize that these countries are all using proxy servers now, so your fraud system must check for proxy servers, because these wonderful visitors now route their IP's through a US computer so it looks like they are in say Texas... Yet the distance will read 3650 kilometers from Houston.

After a few hundred thousand free members, you should start to see 3-5%. Then it might go up a bit more.

Sorry, but I'm choosing to stay anonymous on this one. It's not easy money...

Don't believe everything people say because frankly it really depends on the market you are in. I have several different niche market sites and they all get different conversions. I have a site that has 4000 members and i get one out of 9 that pay. It's really niche though. It's not main stream. Now, for main stream then yeah, those numbers would be correct. If you have a main stream site then you need hundreds of thousands but who wants to start a main stream site right now anyway? The money is in niche markets.

Michael Pennington
http://www.DatingSoftware.biz

Agree that money is in the niche market however mainstream sites can also enjoy growth and revenue if the site was 100% FREE for members to use and generate revenue from advertising.

Club Intimate (www.clubintimate.com) is being launched using the same concept. Club Intimate will be 100% FREE and 150% Sexy!