Craigslist, Plenty Of Fish plus some others are examples of sites that took a really minimalist approach to design but managed to pull in a massive market share through fulfilling a customer need. Revenue from advertising paid the bills.

We wrote about ugly design before, how in some cases it actually increases conversion rates. It's odd but sometimes ugly is beautiful...

http://sparknlaunch.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/keep-it-simple-...