Lisa,
People like him are inspiration to all of us.
I heard about plentyoffish about year ago from my friend who told me that he saw his google ad sense check of almost half a million dollar in his personal blog. The guy who owns plentyoffish is from Vancouver. Him and his girlfriend runs the website. Imagine having a multi-million dollar company with only 2 employees. He makes a lot of money from dating banner ads too.
What set him apart was that he offered dating service for free. From 1000s of other dating sites out on the net he set himself apart by offering all the paid services for free that you have to pay for on other sites.
I wanted to copy his idea and making my own dating site after i heard and read about his success about a year ago. But then i read his blog, where he said that so many people are trying to replicate his success but don't get anywhere. The reason he said was that there are too many dating sites now and this area is too competitive with companies pouring millions of dollar on advertising. So someone from a basement can't really compete in this section.
With that being said one thing you have to note from his success that his success came from meeting the needs of people as you said. When it came to dating sites that need was...a free dating site.
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What's cool is that this site is not nearly as fancy as some of the more popular dating sites
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You're right Lisa. Making your site with cool design should be the least of your worries. I learnt this the hard way. People judge your site not based on you cool design but based on how useful it is. I wish people can realize this. With all the web 2.0 buzz and new community sites coming out (where half of them fail) these days people are too concerned with replicating that buzz by having a cool designed website than having a meaningful website.