Cost

Three of the major dating sites offer a guarantee. Here is a comparison of them in alphabetical order.

Match.com

The first one to offer any type of guarantee was Match.com way back in the summer of 2006. It was initially called the "Make Love Happen Guarantee" but has been shorten to "Match.com Guarantee". The way it works is, when you purchase a 6 month membership and if you don't find someone special in that time period, Match.com will give you an additional 6 months for free. To be eligible for the guarantee, during your subscription you must create a truthful profile with a primary photo that is visible at all times. You must also respond to or initiate email communication with at least 5 unique Match.com members for each month of your membership. This email must be sent through the Match.com service and does not include winks or instant messaging.

To find out if you are eligible for the guarantee extension you can check it out anytime on the Guarantee Program Progress Page located in your Account Settings on Match.com. To receive your guarantee you must visit the progress page during the last 7 days of your 6 month subscription. You would then answer the questions related to your eligibility status. If you qualify you can then accept your additional 6 months for free. If you did not qualify, a message will be displayed telling you why.

To find out more on this dating site and their guarantee, read our Match.com review.

Well it has been about a week since Plenty Of Fish (POF) offered its users a paid option that upgraded their profile to serious member status (see Story). There have been mixed reviews from the members of POF. Some complain about the 100% Free tag line on the site should be removed, while others have wondered if users with the badge would receive any more mail as claimed on the POF upgrade page. Most are just shocked that the site has started a paid membership upgrade. I haven't found any glowing recommendations of it yet.

Some members also have been angered that POF have been giving some upgrades away to get the ball rolling. The problem is, some of these giveaways have been to people who didn't know they received them. This has angered many long term POF members who felt left out. I think POF should of offered the upgrade free for a limited time to users that have been using the site regularly for a certain period of time. The upgrade would be offered for free but the user would still have to initiate it. I also would have made the free serious member upgrade for the 3 month term only. With a set of rules in place on who gets the free upgrade people would have less to complain about (but I am sure some still would).

I just checked and the PlentyOfFish.com paid membership option is now available. We first talked about this late last week (see Story). So to recap, according to PlentyOfFish.com this upgrade shows that you are serious about meeting someone. The real value here though, when you pay for the upgrade is your profile will now be highlighted in gold, in the search results. This means your profile will stand out from the others on the list. Advertising will also be removed from your main profile page and in its place a Gold Star will be presented. Thumbnail images from your profile will also contain a star icon.

What we didn't know last week was the cost of all this. Here is the break down (in USD):

• 3 months costs $29.40 or $9.80 a month
• 6 months costs $46.80 or $7.80 a month
• 1 year costs $71.40 or $5.95 a month

Once again PlentyOfFish is planning to offer a paid service. Their previous attempt with Virtual Gifts wasn't too successful. In my opinion it was due in part to the high cost of the gifts, which ranged from $9 to $30. This time around POF will offer an upgrade to the existing free membership which will last 3, 6 or 12 months. Markus, the CEO of PlentyOfFish is calling the new feature the Serious Member Profile Upgrade. It is designed for members to signal to the community that you are serious about meeting your match.

So what do you get when you sign up for the feature? Advertising will be removed from your profile and a Serious Member Star will appear on your profile beside your main profile photo. A star icon will also appear on any image thumbnail of you. Your search result as well, will be highlighted in gold to make it stand out in the standard search results and the gallery search results. We currently do not know the cost of the new features so we will just have to wait for a few days until the new feature goes live on the site.

I think this is a good move for PlentyOfFish as long as they keep the price down, at least in the beginning so the existing members can get use to it. I don't really see members signing up based on showing that they are a serious dater. They will sign up because their profile will be highlighted and stand out more from the crowd.

Will this new feature steal members away from paid dating sites? I don't really think so, most singles who move on from a dating site (Free or Paid) do so because they have run out of other members to contact. Becoming a serious member will not give you any more people to contact.

PlentyOfFish.com has had some features updated last weekend and has dropped the paid virtual gifts. The virtual gifts lasted a little more than a month and a half. The only reason given according to Markus on his blog for dropping them was, "not really core to what we are doing". Markus has been looking for more ways to make money on his site and this was his first foray into offering a paid feature on PlentyOfFish.com. Obviously people didn't use the paid virtual gifts to often. I'm thinking the prices where to high. It cost between $12 to $30 to send a virtual flower to a member. Maybe lowering the prices by at least half would have made a difference?

I'm thinking Markus still has some ideas up his sleeve for other paid features on his dating site. Maybe charging for better placement in search results or a profile highlighted option?

David Evans of the Online Dating Insider, had an interview with Mandy Ginsberg who is the Match.com GM for North America. She let David know about a few things that will be coming to Match.com in 2009. The main thing we have to look forward too is the new Platinum membership package. Not much is know yet, but apparently Platinum members will be able to contact all member types, including free users. This means members now have the ability to communicate with anyone on Match.com and they will not have to worry if the user can reply back or not without paying first. Other dating sites have started to allow this and I am glad to see Match.com following suit.

I could of sworn I wrote about Match.com's Platinum package before but I couldn't find anything mentioned on my site. Through a Google search I did find what I was looking for. Match.com currently does have a Platinum package. You can find it here and I believe it was started a couple years ago. It currently is a premium matchmaking service offered by Match.com but is not directly tied to the dating site. The service is only available in Dallas, Texas where the Match.com head office is located. This is a personalized service where you and a matchmaker work one on one to find your ideal match. I wonder if Match.com will be either dropping this service or renaming it to avoid confusion?