Cost

Perfectmatch.com recently started offering a new membership plan which is a step higher than their Premium membership, called Platinum. What is the difference?

• Preferred Search Results - Your profile will appear higher in the search results than other members.
• Highlighted Featured Platinum Profile on your profile and in search results.
• Members with approved profiles can initiate communication with you and respond to your emails.

I have been after dating sites for a while now to allow free members to communicate with paid members and I am glad to see Perfectmatch.com has come around. On a per month basis the Platinum membership is actually cheaper than the Premium membership (around $33). What Perfectmatch.com did is offer Premium memberships for 1, 2, and 3 month terms. Platinum memberships are only available for 4 and 6 month terms.

If this membership name sounds familiar to you, Match.com also has a Platinum membership (see Story).

To find out more about this dating site, read our review of Perfectmatch.com.

I found another expensive matchmaker. The first one I talked about 10 days ago was named Janis Spindel (see Story). She charges clients upwards of $50,000 for her services. This new matchmaker named Samantha Daniels runs a matchmaking service called Samantha's Table whose clients are mainly financial whizzes and bankers from Wall Street in New York. She charges clients close to $25,000 a year for her matchmaking skills.

Daniels clients have shifted somewhat from the big banks and hedge funds. With the recession in the past year her clients now deal more with asset management, private equity, and venture capital. A lot of her current clients are from companies in the Goldman Sachs Fortune 500.

Samantha's Table revenue so far this year has climbed 30 percent. Daniels attributes this increase to people wanting a stable personal life in the midst of the crisis of the economy.

For the full article on Wall Street's matchmaker Samantha Daniels, read CNNMoney and for another traditional matchmaker, who is much cheaper, read our review of It's Just Lunch.

First the largest free dating site PlentyOfFish.com, decided to offer a paid upgrade service 6 months ago (see Story) and now the second largest free dating site, OKCupid is doing the same. Members who upgrade their free membership on OkCupid are called A-List users. As an A-List user you get the following 10 perks:

• The ability to attach photos to messages.
• Create both public and private photo albums (reminds me of an adult dating site).
• Store up to 5000 messages.
• Send messages to users who have a full inbox.
• Save multiple search settings.
• Access to A-List forums.
• Ads removed from the website.
• Advanced search features.
• Give awards to other users and read and write reviews about them (testimonials).
• A little more exposure (you may be placed in the special A-List Matches column of results).

A few of the perks have left me scratching my head. First of all I am not sure why someone would want to store 5000 messages. I know there are some OkCupid fanatics who will want this but, it is not really a selling point for general use users. Sending messages to users who have a full inbox is also a little weird, at first I thought, why would I want to send messages to someone who doesn't even check their mail? On my second read through, I realized this feature is aimed more for users who file away all messages they receive (for the 5000 message users) and not for the user who's mailbox is full because he never logs in.

In terms of advance search features, A-List members can now filter by Match Questions, Data Persona and Popularity Ratings. You can also custom order your search results by personality traits. Another nice feature is the Similar Users option. If you have found someone you liked and they are already taken you can use this option to find other people who are just like them.

The cost to become an A-List user is $9.95 USD per month and you will be auto billed every month until you cancel. The first 1000, users are also offered a free T-Shirt in a number of different colors. I was offered one today when I visited the signup page. Dave over at Online Dating Insider blogged about OkCupid A-List users on August 12th, which was 5 days ago. I guess this means that the A-List user memberships are not really flying off the shelf yet.

It appears that free dating sites are hitting a wall in terms of revenue generation. Online advertising dollars were in decline before the economy turned south and since then, we have seen the 2 largest free dating services start to offer a paid membership on their websites. Both of these dating sites offer their paid members some useful feature but I think they missed the point of online dating, as I had mentioned in a previous post about Plenty Of Fish going paid. Users of online dating sites want to be noticed. They are on a dating website for a reason, to find a partner. The best way for a dating service to do this is by displaying their profile to more interested members. Both dating sites visibly mark members who have upgraded but as far as I can tell none allowed me to search just for these type of members. I also think these members should be displayed higher in search results than free members (if they fit reasonably within the search criteria). This not only would give upgraded members more responses, it is also a winning scenario for free members since they would be seeing members who are most actively seeking a partner first.

To find out more about this dating site, read our review of OkCupid.

Minyanville took a look at Spark Networks latest financials (see Story) and decided to do an article on it. Spark Networks as a whole is not doing very well but JDate has been holding its own in the recent downturn of the economy, even with the advertising budget lowered by $150 thousand. JDate is really the only viable online dating solution for someone who wants to date someone within their own Jewish faith. One thing they mentioned which might get JDate members attention is that apparently they may be considering lowering subscription fees which were last raised back in April 2007 (see Story) to bring in more members.

One thing the article talks about, which I disagree with, is that the subscription model for online dating is not viable any more due to free dating sites. While their example of a free site like Plenty Of Fish has seen increase visitors of 69 percent according to Compete.com (not 100% like the article suggests) most other free dating sites have been either losing visitors or just holding their own. With the recession over the 6 month mark, I think a lot of the popular paid dating sites are doing remarkable well by keeping roughly their current visitor levels, while sales in other industries plummet. Subscription based dating is not going anywhere, and these sites have their place in the dating industry, just like the free dating sites.

For the full article, read Minyanville (Note: I experienced problems viewing this page in IE 8). For more on the dating site, read our Jdate.com review.

Digital City asked the question: Are Free Online Dating Sites worth it? It is a short article but it does raise some valid points. There are thousands of free dating sites out there and while this dilutes the pool of potential partners, there are a few dating sites which do stand out. The author made a mistake though, they list Date.com as a free dating site. Date.com is a good dating service and does offer a free trial but their full membership costs money. Read our Date.com review for more information on this service.

For both the pro and con column the author mentions the $0 cost of free dating sites. On one hand, a site may have more members joining because of being free but the problem with this is, the lack of commitment to finding a partner some of these members may have. They could of joined just for the "fun" of it. The other downside is, no cost dating makes if simpler for people to join who potentially may want to scam you.

His final suggestion, which I agree with is, to cast your net wide and join both free and paid dating sites (using a free or guest trial which all have). On the sites you join, do a search and see how many potential matches live in your area. This point, for most people is the most important quality of a dating site. A dating site can have all the bells and whistles but, if there are no members in your specified search area, then what's the point.

For the full article, read Digital City. For a list of free sites, check out our Free Dating Sites category.

I just noticed on the Indian dating service, Shaadi.com Matrimonial, that they now offer a 100% money back guarantee. They are confident to offer this guarantee because of their successful track record of matching singles. Shaadi calls the guarantee an Unconditional Guarantee - 100% money back, but there is a few conditions.

The first condition is, If you do not have at least 1 accepted member in the first month, Shaadi.com will refund your entire Premium Membership fee, with no questions asked. A accepted member is considered to be either a member who expressed interest in you and you responded positively OR a member who responded positively to your interest expressed.

You are also expected to fill in all details of your profile, create a partner profile, upload your photo and actively communicate with members.

For more information on this online dating site, read our Shaadi.com review.