9 ms·

Month-to-month is just as bad. The ideal business model for a dating site, from the users' perspective, is a one-time advance payment. This puts the business in

by derefr 6y ago

Month-to-month is just as bad. The ideal business model for a dating site, from the users' perspective, is a one-time advance payment. This puts the business into the situation where they have an incentive to get you satisfied as quickly as possible, so that they can spend as little time/money on you as possible, so that your value to them doesn't go negative from allowing you to spend too much of their time/money. This is, as it happens, how professional matchmakers tend to charge.

Pet_Ant 6y ago
Sure, but if it doesn't have rundle potential it's not a modern business.
behnamoh 6y ago
IMO the ideal business model from users' perspective could be pay-as-you-go, where you pay for each individual you want to send message to (e.g. $1.99).
- SkyBelow 6y ago
  That would incentivizing matching people with those whom they want to message but aren't likely to start a relationship with.
- dheera 6y ago
  Maybe ideally yes, but that's assuming you only had the option to message them through the platform. You could always message people for free outside the platform, considering any profile worthy of messaging probably lists enough information to find them on, say, LinkedIn or Facebook, and users likely often drop their personal websites or Instagram/Twitter IDs on their dating profiles.
- imtringued 6y ago
  If you wanted to go down this route you would pay per date, otherwise what are you paying for? Sure, the algorithm may jinx it by sending you on more bad dates than you wanted, but it would get you further than just a message.
  - cratermoon 6y ago
    > pay per date Hmm, I'm pretty sure that's been a business model for a very long time.
    - IQunder130 6y ago
      We need an uber for ____
- bayesianbot 6y ago
  There are a lot of dating sites at least in Scandinavia/central europe, where men pay per message (or usually buy message packs, it ends up being around 1€ a message IIRC). The (mostly) men answering these messages, pretending to be women, get paid around 0.15€ per reply. And obviously writing messages where they try to prolong the conversation and turn down real life meetings or changing to other (free) messaging system "for now"
  - dheera 6y ago
    Why does the system charge men and pay women to message, instead of just charging everyone to message? I would have thought that of all places Scandinavia would not price-discriminate users based on their gender ...
    - IQunder130 6y ago
      If you're running a business things like actually pricing based on the market you've got rather than the one people idealistically wish you had start to make a lot of sense.
    - dqh 6y ago
      It might be because men unfortunately, as a group, disproportionately misbehave in these situations. Sending unwelcome dick pics, sending aggressive messages to people who don’t show any interest in them etc. I’ve wondered myself if charging us to send messages might rein in the antisocial behaviour a bit.
      - robertlagrant 6y ago
        This isn't why, at all.
        dqh 6y ago
        Care to elaborate on your certainty? Have you ever spoken with women about their experiences with online dating?
dheera 6y ago
> This puts the business into the situation where they have an incentive If the payment is a one-time advance payment, I would imagine this disincentives the business to truly do their best, since they already have your money. I would think, idealistically, maybe the best model would be an advance payment but with a money-back guarantee of say half the payment if you don't find a match through them. Legally establishing that you don't find a match could be troublesome though, since the "couple" that actually liked each other could both claim they didn't match, get their 50% back, but you as a business would have no recourse if they got together and lived their lives happily ever after, behind your back. You don't have "rights" to their personal life together as a business. Unless of course it was a government-run dating service that had marriage, housing, and financial records of everyone. That might work. And for many reasons it's in the best interest of the government to get as many people married as possible.
- derefr 6y ago
  You don't need a refund. Just presume an efficient market of such companies, where the matchmakers who actually make matches have better reputations, and the ones who don't quickly go out of business. That's how most single-shot service-provider businesses work. (At least, the ones with clear success criteria. Psychics and the like never lose reputation, because there's no standard to measure their claims against.) The one thing single-shot service-provider businesses (including professional human matchmakers) will do, though, is to calculate a quote for their service, corresponding to how much trouble they think your account is going to be for them. They don't usually bill more if it turns out to be even more of a challenge, but they do refine their quote process after each experience. Though also, back to refunds: a refund guarantee doesn't need to be part of an explicit business-model, to be part of the effective business model. Dating sites charge people's credit cards. Large one-time charges from unknown companies you don't have an ongoing relationship with are exactly the type of thing that banks/credit-card companies are happy to do charge-backs for. Whether they offer refunds or not, the system will offer refunds for them — and kill their business by taking away its payment-processing if too many users ask for said refunds.
  - pdpi 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

by derefr 6y ago

Pet_Ant 6y ago

Sure, but if it doesn't have rundle potential it's not a modern business.

behnamoh 6y ago

IMO the ideal business model from users' perspective could be pay-as-you-go, where you pay for each individual you want to send message to (e.g. $1.99).

SkyBelow 6y ago
That would incentivizing matching people with those whom they want to message but aren't likely to start a relationship with.
dheera 6y ago
Maybe ideally yes, but that's assuming you only had the option to message them through the platform. You could always message people for free outside the platform, considering any profile worthy of messaging probably lists enough information to find them on, say, LinkedIn or Facebook, and users likely often drop their personal websites or Instagram/Twitter IDs on their dating profiles.
imtringued 6y ago
If you wanted to go down this route you would pay per date, otherwise what are you paying for? Sure, the algorithm may jinx it by sending you on more bad dates than you wanted, but it would get you further than just a message.
- cratermoon 6y ago
  > pay per date Hmm, I'm pretty sure that's been a business model for a very long time.
  - IQunder130 6y ago
    We need an uber for ____
bayesianbot 6y ago
There are a lot of dating sites at least in Scandinavia/central europe, where men pay per message (or usually buy message packs, it ends up being around 1€ a message IIRC). The (mostly) men answering these messages, pretending to be women, get paid around 0.15€ per reply. And obviously writing messages where they try to prolong the conversation and turn down real life meetings or changing to other (free) messaging system "for now"
- dheera 6y ago
  Why does the system charge men and pay women to message, instead of just charging everyone to message? I would have thought that of all places Scandinavia would not price-discriminate users based on their gender ...
  - IQunder130 6y ago
    If you're running a business things like actually pricing based on the market you've got rather than the one people idealistically wish you had start to make a lot of sense.
  - dqh 6y ago
    It might be because men unfortunately, as a group, disproportionately misbehave in these situations. Sending unwelcome dick pics, sending aggressive messages to people who don’t show any interest in them etc. I’ve wondered myself if charging us to send messages might rein in the antisocial behaviour a bit.
    - robertlagrant 6y ago
      This isn't why, at all.
      - dqh 6y ago
        Care to elaborate on your certainty? Have you ever spoken with women about their experiences with online dating?

dheera 6y ago

> This puts the business into the situation where they have an incentive If the payment is a one-time advance payment, I would imagine this disincentives the business to truly do their best, since they already have your money. I would think, idealistically, maybe the best model would be an advance payment but with a money-back guarantee of say half the payment if you don't find a match through them. Legally establishing that you don't find a match could be troublesome though, since the "couple" that actually liked each other could both claim they didn't match, get their 50% back, but you as a business would have no recourse if they got together and lived their lives happily ever after, behind your back. You don't have "rights" to their personal life together as a business. Unless of course it was a government-run dating service that had marriage, housing, and financial records of everyone. That might work. And for many reasons it's in the best interest of the government to get as many people married as possible.

derefr 6y ago
You don't need a refund. Just presume an efficient market of such companies, where the matchmakers who actually make matches have better reputations, and the ones who don't quickly go out of business. That's how most single-shot service-provider businesses work. (At least, the ones with clear success criteria. Psychics and the like never lose reputation, because there's no standard to measure their claims against.) The one thing single-shot service-provider businesses (including professional human matchmakers) will do, though, is to calculate a quote for their service, corresponding to how much trouble they think your account is going to be for them. They don't usually bill more if it turns out to be even more of a challenge, but they do refine their quote process after each experience. Though also, back to refunds: a refund guarantee doesn't need to be part of an explicit business-model, to be part of the effective business model. Dating sites charge people's credit cards. Large one-time charges from unknown companies you don't have an ongoing relationship with are exactly the type of thing that banks/credit-card companies are happy to do charge-backs for. Whether they offer refunds or not, the system will offer refunds for them — and kill their business by taking away its payment-processing if too many users ask for said refunds.
- pdpi 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]