Plentyoffish goes shopping

Plentyoffish's Markus Frind announced on his blog today that he's looking to acquire a complementary PAID online dating property.

I’m letting hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues slip through my fingers every year by sending people to competitors sites.   Given what everyone else in the market is doing now the only real choice we have is to acquire a mass market paid dating site or build one myself.   I am looking for something I can take and build into a huge site to rival the other top sites.    So if you are selling a site feel free to contact me!

Frind admits in his post that he's got a lot to learn about running a paid site and that he'll have to step it up if there is money on the line.

1. There are a lot of differences between free and paid, on a paid site people expect limited high quality choices.   On a free site users expect unlimited choice.  This is why things like personality testing work so well on paid sites  and on free sites are considered more of a joke…  User expectation is so different.
2. Site design for POF is fine as a free site,  but if i use that design on a paid site users would consider it a joke and not pay for anything.

Frind's new strategy doesn't come as much of a surprise considering his experimentation with paid late last year. Industry consolidation is rampant and leaders in the paid camp are experimenting with free sites, so maybe Frind is right to think that there is an opportunity to create a major paid site in 2009.