Upendo (Not Real Name Yet) is designed to be a dating-focused social networking service, to be founded in and headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria. We intend the site to be operated within Nigeria and with time expand to other countries in Africa in the years to come as we grow.
On Upendo, users can register and signup for free and connect with everyone. As soon as members sign up they can chat, upload photos, search for people from different locations registered on the site. A great feature is the âEaringsâ where users can share and refer their friends or people to signup to the social dating network, or interact on the network and get rewarded with points. These points would be grouped in ranks such as ASPIRE, BASIC, PRIME and PLUS. Each rank has its threshold hold point, for example the Aspire rank might require you have up to 3000 points while the Basic 7000, Prime 15000 and the Plus 30000. Depending on the rank, users who get have the points can decide to use it and ask a fellow user on Upendo out (go out with an upendo user/toast) and get their date outing taken care of by Upendo (i.e Aspire could get a cinema ticket outing with partner, Basic could get a dinner outing to a restaurant with partner, a prime user could get a spa session, amusement park outing and so on).
Also users can update their profile, update their post and interact with their profile wall like Facebook.
Dear Alex Good Journey, someone already told you dating sites donât work in Nigeria; to some extent, that might be true (especially with the features you are envisioning). Moreover, what makes this different from Badoo, cos I see none.
Yes I have been told that dating sites donât work and that for dating site to work, you need something to captivate users. That is why I mentioned we want to introduce gaining of points to the system. That is something Badoo doesnât do. The more users refer and interact on the portal, the more points they get and at a certain threshold can convert that to a dating outing with any of their friends they ask out on the dating portal and our team would take them out, all expense paid for either dinner or an outing where they can get to connect better with themselves. Badoo doesnât do this
You are missing it. Because dating sites havenât been successful in Nigeria doesnât mean it canât work.
The âPoint rewardâ is not a USP for me; your USP should be tailored to the userâs end and revolve around the site; If am looking for a partner to date, I want to see a selling point that will make me find a reliable partner, and is not available elsewhere; Badoo
List out reasons dating site donât work in Nigeria and find a lasting solution to that problem;
i think if you want to have a successful dating site in nigeria, you dont have to throw your doors wide open to every tom, dick and harry, you need to have some sort of mechanism to filter people that donât meet a particular social status(am not talking of very rich people here, i am talking of people who could pay their bills at least and not some secondary school or even college people ) and age bracket except you want your dating site to look like the shitty ones we currently have filled with under aged kids an all.
@ValentineO thanks for that nice point. We would work on some form of verifying ones account status, perhaps letting users register as working class or not and those who register as working class needs to submit documents to prove that before he or she can be verified. Perhaps we can even employ offline verification
Iâve tried running a dating site in Nigeria and here are my thoughts:
Marketing:
its very expensive and it would cost you more. Itâs not just about acquisition cost. You also have to spend more money to engage users and keep them coming back.
Facebook Ads worked well for us when we started and that could be cheaper/expensive for you, depending on how much funds you have.
Partnerships:
in a bid to reduce marketing cost and grow our backlink profile, we partnered with sites that had sizable userbase in Nigeria in similar or same category as ours. We used Mobofree due to some connections with one of their employees (affordability). The results were good too. Other sites that we tried working with but didnât were 2go and Eskimi (that has lots of daily users too)
- Revenue:
this was the most disappointing part for us. We tested the ads model where users advertise their profiles at N100 a piece for xx amount of hours, but the income was extremely small (the telecos took the bulk). Such income could become substantial if you have millions using the site on a daily basis - so we dropped it. Having millions of users meant an increase in acquisition cost.
My advice:
1.) Create something that is easy to use and has little to no impediments especially when users want to login and signup.
2.) Find a way to create offline events and use the app/website as a way of staying in touch or of meeting new users
3.) Donât see sites like Facebook as competitors but as allies. Create a Facebook group. Post regularly there. Facebook Groups are great ways of keeping in touch with your users and it also gives you, a platform to share articles or announcements with the users. This is cheaper and more effective than advertising every time or sending newsletters that they might never read.
4.) Ignore the desire to buy ads but if you must buy ads, go for ads that would deliver huge number of subscribers. Like 500-1000 subscribers per day.
5.) Go with a premium host (especially when running advertisements causes a spike in traffic)
6.) Try your hands on Google adsense but familiarize yourself with how it works and the number of clicks you need to have to achieve the milestones or goals you want.
yes i know, but sometimes you donât need crowd(and in cases like this you really donât need one), what you need is quality of service. Imagine having 5000 Nigerian Students who cant pay for value added services(I hope you plan to make money from this someway), and end up making your site look like some children party and even making you lose some serious minded potential users Or on the other hand having 500 to 1000 users who would really pay for value added services.
And also i donât know your definition of youth, but someone [quote=âValentineO, post:7, topic:8140â]
who could pay their bills at least and not some secondary school or even college people
[/quote]
can still be a Nigerian Youth(or is the economy so bad this days) and also uses social media
@ValentineO
We plan on introducing points to the system. These points would be grouped in ranks such as ASPIRE, BASIC, PRIME and PLUS. Each rank has its threshold hold point, for example the Aspire rank might require you have up to 3000 points while the Basic 7000, Prime 15000 and the Plus 30000. Depending on the rank, users who get have the points can decide to use it and ask a fellow user on Upendo out (go out with an upendo user/toast) and get their date outing taken care of by Upendo (i.e Aspire could get a cinema ticket outing with partner, Basic could get a dinner outing to a restaurant with partner, a prime user could get a spa session, amusement park outing and so on). What do you think. Also we donât plan on charging users (how many Nigerians pay for services like such online), but plan to use adverts and make money
@Jimi yes thanks a lot. On marketing we are planning to use the Facebook and Instagram ads. Also we plan to use Nigerian Adquet ads (basically because they donât have a lot of advertisers but have a lot of blogs under them so we are sure of our ads reaching out that Google where we have to fight for slots with heavyweights like Jumia, Konga and so on.)
On partnership we havenât thought of that yet. Really not going to be easy. Perhaps we would partner with relationship bloggers and get their readers cause that is basically our niche.
On adverts we plan doing that you said and also showcasing adverts of firms as well.
On events, well as time goes on we might most likely do that. Organize love events and so on.
We want to start as a website first before slipping into mobile apps. And basically we are starting with low budget (no heavyweight following us). Do you really this Dating site in Nigeria can be fruitful?
HmmmâŚ
Thereâs got to be something unique about your dating site and i just canât see it. I tried my hands at starting a dating site a while ago (hasnât everyone?) and just had to stop. Even those with heavy pockets couldnât crack it e.g Spark.
Youâve got to charge⌠If you want to make money of this and itâs not just a side gig or hobby because youâre going to have to basically âpayâ people to use your service.
Unfortunately you wonât get enough people to pay for this service.
What i would suggest is, go the Match Making Route.
Its much manageable, you can incorporate your points system.
You can carry our background checks etc
and You will get paying customers.
