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Dating sites have a unique business model where a successful user no longer needs your product. So how do you make money from that? Charging monthly fees crea

Dating sites have a unique business model where a successful user no longer needs your product. So how do you make money from that? Charging monthly fees creates perverse incentives. It will be in their best interest to avoid giving you a good match while trying to make it look like they're trying. A one-time fee will make a user feel ripped off if they never end up landing a date. You could try a model where you pay them once you go on a date (Or some other metric of "success"), but users could easily lie. I met my wife on OKCupid back in 2010, so I haven't had the pleasure/pain of using Tinder, but from what I know of it, it worries me. OKCupid was designed from the ground up to actually show you matches that you might be compatible with on a personality level, while Tinder is rather superficial, making appearance the most important. In other words, you're less likely to find a successful long-term relationship on Tinder. As a side note, it's always seemed rather paradoxical that dating sites have far more men than women on them. I would think that the numbers would be more equal, since the population split among the sexes is pretty close to 50/50.

anticristi 6y ago
Here is an alternative business model: Make it easy to get a match, but optimize the match so that a break-up happens after a pre-determined time. This way, the dating app can genuinely claim success and you have returning customers. I can already hear a pitch deck being presented to VCs.
jfengel 6y ago
Successful users go off and create more users. The lead time is long, but the supply pipeline is already in place. New users become ready every single year, and they expect to be in the target market for a decade or so before pairing off.
- Sohcahtoa82 6y ago
  That's a good point, actually. If a dating site is so good at finding matches for people that there are tons of success stories, it's free advertising. Look at me, just coming out and talking about meeting my wife on OKCupid. I think eHarmony's biggest problem was that they're too expensive. The article estimated that 96.25% of the profiles were dead, meaning less than 4% of their users were paying. I imagine they could have turned that way up by charging $10/month instead of a ridiculous $60/month. Less profit per user, but make up for it in volume.
xtracto 6y ago
What if they charged you a "hefty" one time fee, and then every month that passed, they gave you back a % of that fee, until you got a match? Their incentives will then be aligned. The problem there will be to know when someone got a match.

anticristi 6y ago

Here is an alternative business model: Make it easy to get a match, but optimize the match so that a break-up happens after a pre-determined time. This way, the dating app can genuinely claim success and you have returning customers. I can already hear a pitch deck being presented to VCs.

jfengel 6y ago

Successful users go off and create more users. The lead time is long, but the supply pipeline is already in place. New users become ready every single year, and they expect to be in the target market for a decade or so before pairing off.

Sohcahtoa82 6y ago
That's a good point, actually. If a dating site is so good at finding matches for people that there are tons of success stories, it's free advertising. Look at me, just coming out and talking about meeting my wife on OKCupid. I think eHarmony's biggest problem was that they're too expensive. The article estimated that 96.25% of the profiles were dead, meaning less than 4% of their users were paying. I imagine they could have turned that way up by charging $10/month instead of a ridiculous $60/month. Less profit per user, but make up for it in volume.

xtracto 6y ago

What if they charged you a "hefty" one time fee, and then every month that passed, they gave you back a % of that fee, until you got a match? Their incentives will then be aligned. The problem there will be to know when someone got a match.