Entrepreneurial Cupidby Glen KorstromMarkus Frind is one of the worlds most successful Internet dating site entrepreneurs so when he announced last year that he was getting married, many people wanted to know if his Plenty of Fish website helped him find Mrs. Right.After all, friends describe Frind as a shy guy who avoids business and technology sector networking events. Until 2008, he operated his business out of his apartment.Walls in Frinds roomy 3,800-square-foot office in the Harbour Centre Tower are lined with posters showing faces of people who found love and marriage by using Frinds Plenty of Fish website.Frind, however, met his bride, Annie, eight years when the two worked at the technology consulting company RLG Netperformance. They married in Mexico in April. The next month, Plenty of Fish attracted 6.1 million unique visitors, according to Internet research organization comScore Inc. Only Jiayuan.com (6.6 million) and Meetic (6.4 million) had more unique visitors in May than did Plenty of Fish.Frind hired two experienced programmers in the past month and is looking to add more programmers to his 18-person staff.The main reason that he decided to move his venture out of his 900-square-foot Coal Harbour apartment in August 2008 was that he tired of police coming to his door.Unscrupulous members of his free website sometimes sought revenge on an ex-lover by arranging false dates and giving the former partners street address to new contacts met through Plenty of Fish. Police got involved when these pranks targeted the same person repeatedly. Frind said he provided authorities with offenders IP addresses but that skilled hackers can easily disguise that distinguishing number which identifies what computer connection was responsible for the misdeeds.Combating Internet hackers consumes most of Frinds work day. He spends the remaining time trying to devise the ideal algorithms to determine what site members make the best matches. Because his is a free website, he also spends time pondering new ways to generate revenue.Most of his tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue comes from advertising. What frustrates him is that he believes that his users are spending about $40 million annually on other dating websites.He is trying to tap into that willingness to spend money to seek love on the Internet. Frind launched a new premium member program in March 2009 that costs $80 per year and promises users that their chance of finding someone will increase 230%.What I basically want to get at is, What is the main reason people are buying the upgraded membership? and How can we make that membership better for them without pissing off the people on the rest of the site who arent paying anything? said Frind.Another of his new initiatives is enabling members to buy virtual gifts for other members.Sitting back in one of his boardrooms chairs, Frind demonstrates his analytical mind. He muses aloud about wanting to understand how his sites members use these gifts. Do they buy their new girlfriend a virtual gift before the two both leave the site? Or, do suitors buy virtual roses for a love interest as a way of showing initial affection? Youre not going to get anywhere if youre not analytical. This is a highly competitive business, Frind said.His analytical prowess has long been one of his core strengths, said Peter Rawsthorne, who taught Frind computer science when Frind completed a diploma at the British Columbia Institute of Technology.His understanding of the technologies is really strong, to the point of being able to optimize the technologies even greater than the vendor can, Rawsthorne said.Indeed, Frinds craving to understand what drives customers to visit a free dating site and, more recently, to spend money has helped propel the enterprise he built from scratch.Frind bought the Plentyoffish.com domain in 2000 but did not develop the site until February 2003.Born in the tiny village of Hudsons Hope in northern B.C., Frind was fresh from BCIT and, in 2003, was jumping from one job to another while the technology sector remained mired in a malaise.Valentines Day was nearing and Frind feared that he would be laid off.Almost immediately after developing Plenty of Fish, Frind started to make money. Initially the cash came from what he calls affiliate partnerships.People would click a link on his website to go to a pay site such as Amazon.com. If that person then bought something at that pay site, Frind made money. By spring 2003, he generated about $100 per month this way. He kept tweaking his website and added Googles AdSense script in June 2003. The next month, he generated $1,000.When that grew to $5,000 in October, he quite his job and focused full-time efforts on improving his business.In early 2004, he made $16,000 per month.Plans are in the works for him to release an iPhone app within weeks.He doubts that this alone will help him substantially grow his current revenue of more than $1 million per month.Doing that will likely require him to either:create a sister website that primarily has paid memberships; orconvince current Plenty of Fish users that it is in their best interest to upgrade their memberships. Targeting niche demographics such as gay daters and religious people who want to find someone who share their faith is not an option for growth, he said. Frind likes appealing to the mainstream.Various niche daters use his website but Frind believes that altering his sites design and its carefully constructed algorithms to please them would not be cost effective.Instead, he uses innovative marketing to keep his site in the public spotlight. Pointing to a framed gift from Lady Gaga, Frind reveals that he partnered with the pop star and helped fund her video for the song Telephone. Police officers in the video about a female prison are cruising the Plenty of Fish website while on duty.You never know what works until you try it, he said. Most companies are too afraid to try new things. We like to try new things.gkorstrom@biv.com