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Match.com wants your money

The first thing that happens after you fill out the first page is that Match.com, asks you to buy a subscription. Before you even have a chance to fill out your profile or look around. You can ignore the plea for money and do other stuff, but so long as you’re not a paying subscriber, Match.com, keeps letting you know that you need to become one. For example, if you want to look at people’s photos, you need to be a paying subscriber to do that. Otherwise all you see is the face shot. Most red blooded American males are going to want to the bodies.

Back in the old days, everything on the internet was free, and online dating was no exception. AOL, for example, offered a free online dating service. Of course, I am the first to admit that giving stuff away for free is a really bad business model. So online dating sites are perfectly entitled to charge for their service.

When dating services first started charging, the model was that you had to pay to be able to email other users, but once the first email was sent you could email back and forth for free. This meant that only the initiator (almost always the man) had to pay for a subscription.

Match.com realized that they could make more money if they made both parties pay. Has this been successful? Yes, they are making lots of money, and even women are paying their way. In fact, I already received an email from a female subscriber, less than a day after I filled out my profile.

If you buy the six month plan, the price isn’t even so bad. Only $78 for six months. You can also go with the one month trial plan which is $30 for a month. A person who is cheap but willing to put forth a lot of effort could just buy one month and work the one month really hard. But I figured that this is going to take a long time, so I signed up for the six month plan. Hey, it’s almost worth the price just to look at the pictures of all the cute online girls.

posted August 02, 2005