Starting my online dream, how should i resource the back and front end development?

before you hire one or decide on which programmer / designer you are going to choose, ask to see their portfolio. you will then be able to see if they have the skills that you will require for your design part of the project. thus limiting your risk.

you think thats better than separating the front and back end development?

And any thoughts on what languages are best for the back/front?

You may not have to separate the two, if your developer claims to be a designer also, then just check his portfolio.

Your backend will most likely be PHP and MYSQL, but it depends on your specs. Place a job on freelancer.com and see what comes up.

Dear Stillwander, Here's my honest opinion please don't be offended.

When I read your post I see that you have lots of excuses from starting your own business based on your story but then you have another excuse when you finally started implemented your plan.

I only see you are going in circles, you want to perfect everything. My suggestion is get it done, regardless of how you think your site is ugly. Then find someone to critic on it.

You will be surprise that it does not look that bad. When I was starting out I was afraid to launch my own product because I thought it looks ugly and imagined myself not selling one single copy.

I finally had the courage to launch it and the launch was not that bad.It's not the best launch but atleast I made some money.

So get em done! Perfection and Over thinking things will lead you broke!

You can start by hiring a web developer and design a simple one IMO then just tweak it little by little. At least you're going somewhere.

Wanderer,

Please don't do this - it will be a huge mistake. You don't need to spend very much money at all to get started and validate your business idea and model. Set aside $100 to get started. You can always fix, adjust, modify and perfect as you go.

Start small and lean, prove your money making ability quickly, then scale up from that point. To put your life savings at risk on a dream is not smart when you can test your dream for a song.

The very best to you,

Steve

Stilliwander, listen to Steve B.

I'm not entirely unfamiliar with your niche and what you're doing. The model requires a fortune invested to go the route you intend to take and, trust me, you've got more competition than you think. I have no idea what your niche is, but I do know this:

1. If it's a profitable niche, you'll have competition soon;
2. People will already be promoting this niche, but sending to other sites.

Some affiliates spend 5 figures a month promoting dating sites and the average newbie affiliate is in the game too, either using BH or GH/WH techniques.

I hope you won't take offense at this. You're highly-motivated, intelligent, and you're a dreamer. In other words: you're one of the guys who will do well. All I'm trying to do is protect you against a "possible" mistake.

What I would do is look at getting this idea off the ground without investing all your savings. There are cheaper, safer routes.

The back end will be very closely linked to the font end and therefore i would say you need someone who is going to work on both projects, from a development standpoint anyway. This way you can ensure continuity. A team who has both talented front end / UX developers and designers + some good back end programmers would also be cool, but likely cost you a lot more.

Drop me a PM with your budget for the project and a little more information about the website and ill help you where i can. I develop complex online production systems and bespoke CMS for a living and understand the scale of the job at hand.

A note on the language, i don't really think it is an issue, just make sure the setup you use is stable and secure. It will usually be a developers preference when it comes to what language to use. It will likely be a case of PHP or .NET for the server side with a MySQL DB back end. There are a lot of frameworks to choose from to speed up development so that could be an option to.

Anyways, let me know if i can help you scope this out at all.

Hey. If you really want to make a stable income why not use an affiliate dating site that is already established with thousands of members? I believe you can make some good commissions with them & would probably be pretty easy to sale with the right advertising. After this takes off, then I would find a freelancer that will build your professional looking site that can compete with the ones that are already out there. Just saying, but that would give you additional income & you wouldn't have all your eggs in one basket.

Hi
You are really inspiring. And it's a great idea.
But do you already have experience in internet marketing business.
Don't get me wrong. Your idea is brilliant.
But please please don't put your life saving right away in this project.

Start small . Make a website .
Learn SEO and get your site ranked as the first in google results.
I'm trying to help

stilliwander, really inspiring man.

But before you go out and spend your life savings, you might want to consider a few things.

First, you should look at what other popular dating sites are built with. Trust me, this will save you a ton of headache. These sites have already developed something that scales and solves a lot of problems that you will run into. So pick one that is similar to what you're trying to build. Here's a few I found:


Tinder : Helps you connect/hook up with people in your area

Database : MogoDb with mongoose - mongoose is faster than mysql, scales a bit easier (in certain situations), and is non relational. You would use mongoose if you don't have an exact idea of the structure of your data, or if you want a lot of flexibility.

Platform/ Server : Amazon EC2/S3 - Basically, this is like having your website in the cloud. By using amazon, they are able to scale quickly, pay as you grow, and not have to worry about downtime.

API : Node JS and Express framework - Without getting to complicated, I would assume that they use nodejs because it's fast as hell, scales nicely on Amazon's platform, and because it's easy to create an api in Node.

Bottom Line : If you are building a large location based dating website, with matching features. Than pay close attention to what Tinder is doing. If you just want a website that's super fast and scales well, than still pay attention to what Tinder is doing.


okCupid : Another large, matching based, dating site.

Database/ backend : C++ - I have very little experience with C++ but I would imagine that they used it because it's faster than Php. This is not a good reason alone, and if PHP's speed is a concern, look into Phalcon Php. It's built ontop of C (meaning it's very fast).

Front End : HTML, CSS, JS - they're front end is fairly standard stuff. You can find any front end freelancer who knows how to do all three.

Front End Framework - OkPub - It looks like they developed they're own framework. When you have millions in funding, you can do things like this. I wouldn't recommend it for you though. Just find one that is well tested and known by a lot of people ( angularJS, Backbone, Ember), or just don't use one at all.

Bottom Line : if you are building a standard, web based, dating site, with some social features, than look at Okcupid. They're not as worried about speed as Tinder is, and that's probably because Tinder needs to serve data rapidly (people do a lot of swiping on that app).

A couple other recommendations :

1) Find a developer that knows how to program on the front-end and the back-end : If you truly want to build a fantastic UI and UX, than this is a must. If you really want to hire two people, than make sure the programmer and the designer are working closely together. This is how great products get built. Think Apple.

2) Don't spend a lot of money : You said that you are building something basic, so you shouldn't be spending more than $3000 to get this project done. If however, you plan to have massive traffic and you need it to scale, than you might have to fork over a bit more.

3) Find a designer, who knows how to design for conversions : A dating site lives and dies by it's ability to convert visitors into users/paying customers. This is why you see a lot of shaddy tactics like fake profiles, and pay to message. If your site doesn't convert, than you are going to burn through cash like crazy.

Hope that helps, and good luck!

P.S some people are sending offers, i know thats against WF TOS, but theres others also asking to see my business plan. While im not naive enough to think everyone is just tryin to help and not trying to make money off me, i do believe alot of you out there are good people who want good things for others. Anyone care to give some hints and tips about keeping the turds away without dissing someone with a good heart?

Also when undergoing a general venture like this what to be wary of, for e.g developers putting in code to your site which copies your email list/db etc or content writers that will just paraphrase other material? Maybe this should be another thread

Validate the idea first. Just because another website is doing a similar thing does not validate the idea. For all you know they could be losing money each and every day. It costs a LOT in server and hosting charges to host a very active dating site like that. We'd probably be talking multiples of your total savings just to host a site that got wildly successful.

Instead go and try to find the traffic you would eventually be driving to the site. Create some type of simple lead capture page along the same lines of a dating site. See how that goes first and once people join your list survey them and get a lot more detailed insight into this niche before you go ahead and throw all your money at it.

I was walking into a casino and a man stopped me and said:

"give me 25% of the money you are going to gamble with today, I will keep half and give you the rest when you leave. That way you will have enough money to get back home."

I should have listened to him.

Use your money wisely. I do not know about the technical side but you are getting very good financial advise.Listen to it.

If you do decide to go ahead with this I think the best advice given above is to find a coder who would be interested in partnering up with you on this project -- you then own half the site each.

Having a partner with a vested interest in the project can be very handy down the line. Otherwise you are forever having to rely on 3rd party people who are just getting paid by the hour and thus have no extra incentive to do your work over anyone elses.

I would hold off on fancy designers and programmers, and make sure you create a product or service that sell and converts well first.

I always do all the graphics last, first I make sure I have an audience that buys and spends money, then I find out what they are selling and create a product they want, get it selling and converting well then make it all fancy with the money I make.

I'd be a little nervous going into something like this just because the lack of competition, I'm not sure the proof of concept is really there. Having 300,000 members doesn't really mean anything. Are they paid member free members?

I'd go with a safer approach considering your risking your life savings.

Find hungry audience

Find what they are buying and spending money on

Create an offer they want

Place it in front of them

Hey!
So ive gone through 70 possible developers, shortlisted to 8 and now down to the final 3. I need your opinions and advice. Ive been going through portfolios and interviewing with my more technical minded friend, hes away on holiday for a week but i also want your take on things. Here are the candidates:

John Tools(India): Has a very extensive portfolio,a company, good design and dev skills. Response times were average but were professional and well constructed.

Billy(India): extensive profile as well, a company and good design and dev skills. Showed the most interest in the project and communicated quickly and often. While not informal, the replies were not as thought out and well constucted/profesional as John Tools

Jack(Philipines): The creative type, a company, while they have completed some good development work it doesnt seem to be crazy complicated projects. However the graphical and user experience design is superb. When specs were offered they took a while to provide feedback which was kind of off putting but provided very details analysis of the specs, more than the others

All bids for the projects are around the same, completion time also the same.

What is your take on who to chose?

I would heavily research the 3 top competing sites and find out the likely hood of ranking and how much it would cost on paid advertising to get some traction in the market.

These sites rely heavily on traffic to make money and many of the sites have the market share of traffic

The first thing that would help is getting an aged domain with a high PR

Starting a website is the easiest part. Marketing it is about 99% of the puzzle. Even the best websites fail because the owners can't figure out how to get enough traffic.

Update:

Website 40% completed.
A bit of fear and hesitation contacting marketing alliance members to promote me. Ill pull by pants up and do it!
Competitors poping up left right an center, they are all still paid and only one had decent usability so im still in the game.
Shiny Object Syndrome comes now and then but my friend/mentor helps me swat them back down.
Launch date should be December 23.

Let's not underestimate the competition. They are there and they are huge.

PlentyOfFish
Tinder
Badoo
OkCupid
etc...

You are going to suffer from empty social network syndrome early on. That is something you should be planning now to address.

You may find it preferable to avoid being bogged down in the technical details. There are more profitable areas for you to focus as the executive of your firm. Find someone who knows all those details through-and-through, then hire them or their firm to complete it on your behalf ... while you turn your sights to more pressing details.

Ok so here goes…this will be painful growth but f it

This may be long winded so make a cuppa….

So i had made my business plan, drawn up a very decent spec doc and was now going out to market for a developer. I found a very skilled developer who promised the project for around $3000, india based freelancer.

Attempt 1:
-he asked for 2 months and $3000
-i made the mistake of not checking up on him since he would always say will provide working prototype in the end, 3 months pass and i have a wonky product packed with bugs
-i never appreciated the “testing phase”, thought you’d just test it yourself, tell the guy what was wrong and it would be fixed, BIG MISTAKE
-3 months of back and forth with bugs, due to his lack of understanding and me being an idiot and not taking testing as a documented process
-after a total of around 6 months i started seeing the design itself as very sucky, it was intended to be simple and beautiful but it sucked balls, graphically it was also very ugly since it was made by a developer. My design was also a carbon copy of some competitors, it was bullshit and a waste
-i fell into depression, 6 months and $3000 wasted on nothing
-i hated myself for being a failure and a loser, after a month or just a couple of weeks of sulking i picked myself up and said **** it, **** you, **** everyone and everything, i refuse to quit, I’m gunna lose everything before i accept quiting

Attempt 2:
-Took everything i ****ed up on, learnt from it, created a new functional design in 20 days as opposed to 2 months last time. Created an actual graphical design draft instead of a dry wireframe, done in 2 days
-new functional design reduced website from 28 functional pages to 5, this was a massive UX improvement and removed a lot of the bullshit and future bugs around the site
-went to market for a graphic designer “99 designs competition”, showed them by draft graphical design and required color scheme etc, got a bunch of results and developed the closest vision to mine, design was 100x better than the last attempt, its very important to get a seperate dev and designer i think, even from companies the best designer and dev are more likelyy not to be in the same place
-went to market for a dev, ended up with a very honest small company, cost of $1100 (much less functionality and complexity in new design) and graphic were now done separately, 40 days expected time to complete
-first testable design was there in 2 months, now i used a google drive sheet to write up all tests, the status, result, comments, screenshots etc, this was soooooo much better than before and very very helpful
-I was awol for 1 month and the company took 1 month working on issues so 4 months later the project was ready
-End of project gave to some test clients ( friends and family) and found that users still didn’t like the signup process of entering email password etc a total of 23 fields
-got depressed cause it felt like a shit product

Attempt 3:
-within 1 week got off my ass, stopped dwelling on the shit and tried to make things better
-slight changes made the site much more beautiful to use, down from 23 fields to 5 but still having all the info using Facebook signup, awesome responses received
-also realised the need for a mobile platform so spearheaded into getting a hybrid app, so a web mobile enabled version and then the wrapping into native wrapper
-took another 4 months because i had to be away for two months and 1 month dev lag and 1 month dev work, site is there in mobile version with still some bugs, hybrid wrapped app still in progress as finding a new dev has been filled with issues

Yes I’m a fktard and its been forever and i haven’t even launch, i suck i know but I’m not giving up, i think a big part f this is the fear to launch, if it launches and just sucks balls i lost, thus still trying to postpone everything

Now my goals:
-clean up desktop and mobile website
-get it wrapped into native container
-contact marketers
-launch
-marketing