Dating sites like OKCupid and Match.com are great if you live in a city, where you go on dates with matches and never seen them again if it doesn’t work out. But what if you live in a town with, say, 8,000 people?
Rural towns often tout the perks of being a community where everybody knows everybody, but that can be a real drawback when it comes to expanding your dating horizons. And OkCupid, while solving the “new person” dilemma, often matches farm folk with city folks who just didn’t get it. So Jerry Miller thought up a better way.
Miller created the dating site Farmers Only, which now boasts 1.5 million members — a number doubled in the last year — and 70-80 percent, he tells me, are in the agriculture industry now.
“We’re in every state. It’s amazing how spread out it is,” he said. “I thought for sure we’d be real strong in the Midwest and what’s known as the “Cornbelt,” and I was amazed how many people we had from California, Texas, Florida and New York State.
Farmers Only is one of the more successful niche dating sites that have cropped up in the last few years, and are just hitting their stride. I talked to a couple of founders, who are fine with being the little guy in the world of Match.coms, OkCupids, and EHarmonys.
