iPsych.org

Last year I tried out a few online dating sites and partnership services. It was partially successful and very illuminating. I think, in some cases there is a difference between what is best for paying members and what is best for the income of the service providers, and in those cases, the service providers seem to think of themselves first.

There is an old saying that if you do not play, you cannot win, which is true. But on the other hand, it does make a huge difference at which table you sit down to play and who your fellow players are. I would not go into a monastery to find a woman, nor would I visit a retirement home. And no matter how many good tips I get from a swimming teacher, I would not try to learn swimming from one who keeps the water temperature at 4°C.

If I ever wanted to make money this way, here are some rules I would adhere to:

Guiding Principle: You want to make money

Axiom: Only paying members can bring money.
Consequence: Encourage as many users of the site to become paying members. Non-paying members must think it is worthwhile to become paying members, e.g., by receiving a lot of messages from potentially interesting possible partners but being unable to read/answer unless they become paying members.

Axiom: Your resources are limited because staff costs money and you want to make it, not spend it.
Consequence: Delegate as much of the task to recruit new members to become paying members on the users of your site. Control only a few key structure (e.g., moderate a forum if you offer it) and structure your site/service so that the affordances of the site/services do the rest.

Design

Invest in a beautifully designed, professional looking website

Public reason: You are good, you have many high potential singles, and you owe it to your users.

Private reason: Users take the quality of the page as heuristic cue for the quality of the singles on your site and your service in general. Compare it with dating: nobody wants to look at an ugly face, so use makeup … or a mask.

Use Models for the Website Design

Public reason: You can hardly show images of the singles who have registered — that would violate their privacy.

Private reason: Models — who still look like they could have registered — will draw members, because potential members think that they can find similarly looking people on your site. As a beneficial (for you) side-effect, this will raise expectations, making it impossible for normal looking people to find a partner. Consequently, members will stay members longer, searching in vain for someone who likes them, despite their physical appearance. It will also give them a reason why they cannot find a partner — in their heart they will know that they do not look as good as the “singles” on the start page. This will make them search the fault in themselves — instead of on the site itself.

Unsharpen profile Images

Public reason: Users want anonymity. Never mind, that they could simple not upload an image or send it per mail to the selected few that interest them.

Private reason: Nobody writes an ugly person. Given that most users will not recognize their own ugliness, you have to help them here. Like at Homer Simpson’s photo session, Vaseline on the lens or a strong unsharpen effect is often needed to make images attractive. The model shots on your site will lead users to imagine someone beautiful or handsome form the distorted shape they see, even if the person is a cousin(e) of Igor in real life.

Assist in flirting

Use a matching service

Public reason: You have so many members, users need assistance in finding the right partner. There is scientific research on love, why not use them practically.

Private reason: If member can pick for themselves, e.g., via a well-designed search function, they might find what they are searching — or find out that you do not have what they offer — and consequently have no further use for your service. Once they leave, you will not get any more money and they will not help you in growing your membership numbers. So ‘help’ them and give them only a part of the available singles to choose from. BTW, be vague about the success chances of your scientific method — if it were a really good questionnaire and people could be matched so easily, you could be hold responsible for a lack of success, if people with high matching scores do not “match” in real life. Luckily, psychology is a probabilistic science and there is no guarantee for success.

Feature new, not-yet-paying members in your matching results

Public reason: New members are not yet engaged in flirting with other members. It is only fair to point these out to other members, so that they might write them, make them feel welcome.

Private reason: New members often test the service and they are not paying — yet. By showing them first in the list of matching results, they get a lot of messages and are forced to become paying members if they want to read them. Do not let it bother you that you could equally well feature the paying members based on the amount of message they have received, thereby featuring long-term paying members who have paid you a lot of money but have not gotten anything from it. Honoring the paying members would be nice of you, but it would not be sensible for your profits (which are nicer).

Communication

Everyone must pay to read a message

Public reason: You offer a service, and only those who are truly interested in finding a partner should be able to communicate with each other. How can one be sure that someone is truly interested? Simple, this person invests in the service by paying money for it.
Attention: Avoid the counterargument that there are other ways to assess investment, e.g., by a filled out profile.
Attention: Avoid the counterargument that you ‘missed’ to inform the sender of the messages, whether the recipient is or is not ‘truly interested in finding a partner’, by indicating whether this person might answer the message or not (see ‘Do not tell your users who are non-paying members (cannot read/reply to messages) and who are paying members (can read and reply)’).

Private reason: Reading one of the standard online-dating-pick-up-lines or one full of neurotic insecurities will not convince a non-paying member to become a paying member. Consequently you have to get the money before they read the same uninspired or sexually explicit messages. Don’t let it faze you that no postal service works this way. After all, didn’t Julia have to rub her nurse’s back to get the message from Romeo?

Unsharpen messages

Public reason: You help non-paying members to decide whether they should become paying members by showing them the length of the message and let them for an impression of it. Insist that you have faith in your users that they can form an impression, no matter that they can only see the general form but not read the words.

Private reason: By not only telling them that they got a message, but displaying the message, albeit not readable, the recipient will imagine that the message might contain the best flirtation letter in the history of online dating, perhaps even dating in general. Your user’s imagination is your strongest ally — and you can hardly be blamed for their imagination that is not covered by your terms of usage.

Make sending messages free (within limits)

Public reason: You offer new users to try out your service and let them see whether they get a response.

Private reason: If you offer 10 free messages this means that 10 people get a message they cannot read unless they pay for the service, i.e. you have a good chance of getting a handful of paying members.

Offer pseudo-communication that can never be used to arrange a meeting

Public reason: You have to give anyone, no matter whether they are paying members or not, a way to signal interest. That is only fair — so you offer “Smiles”, “Flashes”, “Questionnaires” or similar message that cannot be used to send personal information (e.g., like an eMail address or time/place for a meeting). They have to pay to do this.

Private reason: Pseudo-communication gives the illusion of communication, prevents members with poor social skills showing off their lack of skill, increases commitment in the service and in the recipients, and in the long run, senders and receivers have to become paying members to reach anything meaningful.

Offer a forum (but moderate it)

Public reason: You want to make users feel at home and show them that you care for them. Of course, this forum cannot be used to bypass membership fees, so you have to moderate it, not only to prevent non-paying members to give out their contact addresses, but also to prevent spam and other smut in the forum.

Private reason: It is a low cost offer that has positive public benefits. People who want to discuss your service will do it on your ground (where else could they go?) and by moderating it, you can prevent “smut” like negative critique of your services.

Offer a “special member” or VIP-club like badge

Public reason: Members who are very active and really use the service a lot should be rewarded. They should have it easier to find someone, given that they are obviously searching very hard.

Private reason: You want your members to do your work in encouraging other non-paying members to become paying members — and you can cheaply pay them with a small 10 x 15 pixel image. Make sure the members know what they should do to get it: write a lot of messages to new members (highest likelihood that the recipients are still non-paying members and might be convinced to become paying members when they get a lot of message in the beginning), log in often (needed to send the messages), and become a paying member (it is not enough that they convince others, they themselves should also lead by example — and pay).

Make your members responsible that they get only a few replies

Public reason: Well, it is true (enough) and you do everything you can to help them with flirting tips on your site and professional (but expensive) coaches. But, additionally, people are not as friendly as they are in real life when they are searching for a partner online — and many do not send even a simple personal reply if they are not interested no matter how nicely written the message was.

Private reason: Your system is build in a way that you earn much money even if it hurts the members’ chances of getting a reply. For example, you encourage them to write to new members which get too many messages to reply to each and every one. You do not give them any information whether the recipient can answer or not. Your member database consists of many ‘rarely active’ members. It also takes time, even if a non-paying member decides to become a paying member, so even in this case an answer will not come quick. The system is stacked against the paying user, so make them feel responsible. Claim that people are often more unfriendly online (true … enough … you, for example), insinuate that users lack flirting skills by offering ‘flirting tips’. But whatever you do, never tell them that many recipients are non paying members and cannot even read the message (much less reply), i.e. that many of those carefully crafted and personal flirt messages could as well been put into the trash bin.

Membership

Men and Women have to pay the same amount

Public reason: Insist that you take a stand for equality between men and women this way, because both have to pay the same amount.

Private reason: You do not get anything from non-paying members. Your users might, if the non-paying members could answer. But you are not in the business to make them happy, you want to earn money. So no matter that only 10-30% of the paying members are women, do not offer women a discount to attract women — this might be nice for the male paying members, but bad for your income.

Never let anyone know your real membership numbers, nor their distribution

Public reason: These are private internal numbers — the business is hard and not everyone plays it as fair as we do.

Private reason: You have it made when you reach a large number, e.g., 1 to 5 Million. You can advertise with this number. However, when someone would brake down this large number, it would drop down sharply: gender (approx. -30-70%), age (approx. -50%), geographical region (approx. -95%), children (approx. -20%) — using these to filter the number of matches would make it clear that only a tiny amount of those people would actually be of practical interest for the user. And most would not be interested in the user. They must never ever find this out.

Count all created profiles as valid members

Public reason: You offer a service, they registered, they are members of your exclusive service. If they have not used it in the past month, they might use it in the next. After all, you cannot kick out a person who has filled out a questionnaire (or not), and asked you to be a member of your service, only because this person is absent. He or she might have an accident or is on vacation.

Private reason: You need a high membership count to attract other members. Counting all profiles unless they were explicitly deleted help this goal.

All members are equal, but some are more equal than others

Public reason: They have registered, they are members, whether they pay or not. Payment or not merely affects what they can do, not their status as members.

Private reason: You can give a high ‘membership number’ for advertisement purposes, no matter that a large part of these members cannot communicate with others (to arrange a meeting, see ‘Offer pseudo-communication that can never be used to arrange a meeting’). This will attract other people to become users … errrr members. Use some fancy name (e.g., “premium member”, “gold member”) for those who pay and actually can communicate freely.

Do not tell your users who are non-paying members (cannot read/reply to messages) and who are paying members (can read and reply)

Public reason: This would be unfair to non-paying members. They would not get as many messages as paying members and would be unfairly excluded. After all, if they receive a convincing message, they will become members.
Note: The sentence is true, because a “convincing message” is meant as a “convincing message to become a member”. And it might as well be this way, if the recipient could read the message in the first place (see ‘Everyone must pay to read a message’).

Private reason: Who would write a message to a person who cannot read or answer it (yet? ever?)? If users could distinguish between those two kinds of membership, only paying members would get messages. If only paying members get messages, then the non-paying members have no reason to become paying members. It is better that a paying member sends 9 out of 10 messages down the drain because the recipient cannot answer them, than if these nine message are not sent and there is not at least the chance that one of the nine becomes a paying member in consequence.
Attention: Avoid the argument that paying members deserve to be highlighted as paying members because of their payment, which makes them non-equal to non-paying members. Sure, they deserve to be ‘better’ but for your income, they are actually worse — they already have paid (often many months in advance).

Do not allow your users to exchange their membership status information (e.g., on their profile page)

Public reason: see above

Private reason: see above. Besides preventing spam/smut this is the main reasons for checking every profile information that is entered or changed.

Offer Cheap Guarantees (“x contacts guaranteed or free membership extension”)

Public reason: You want satisfied customers who get messages and responses from other singles.

Private reason: You define contact as “getting a message” and/or “getting a response”. Given that the whole service is structured to increase the chances that newbies get messages (new customers are featured, those who are new and non-paying cannot be distinguished from those who are paying members) it is very likely that new customers get more than 5-10 messages within a few weeks. And given that a “response” does not mean positive response, every “sorry, no interest” message counts as “contact”. Even in the worst case, you do not give them the money back, but keep them in a service that has proven useless for them. Consequence: this guarantee guarantees that you appear in a positive light while costing you nothing.

Use technical issues or ideals to deflect critical questions about the fairness of your service

Public reason: Sure, new, non-paying members are featured and they are not even marked as non-paying. You would like to do things differently, but you cannot please everyone. And there are technical limitations of what you can do.

Private reasons: Most users cannot program and do not know how hard (or rather: easy) it is to change database queries or sorting orders. If this fails and you have a technical competent users, use ideals like equality. That always throws them off. Do not let it irritate you that non-paying and paying members are not equal, given that the one group has not given you money (yet) while the other one did. The ideal is enough — you want them all to give you money.

This concludes this short overview of how you can earn money with online dating services.

Note: No, I would not try to earn my money this way, but some people do. No matter how sincere they try to be to others, I think they know the kind of deal they are offering. It’s strange — and sad — the Internet could offer a really good dating service. It could lead to people finding love, start a family, or even a partner for a little while. No matter what you search, you could probably find it, even if you ‘just’ look for some company or sex. But in the end, the only person who gets screwed is the paying customer — and not in the way he or she intended. Pity.