How to Fix the Free Dating Service Model
Published on September 16, 2009
Yesterday I discussed why the free online dating services have such problems: men who send massive amounts of spam searching for a woman willing to have sex. The services could cancel these men’s accounts but that really accomplishes nothing – they’ll just open another. It would appear that these free services will simply have to accept being plagued with the spammers…right?
I think not. I believe that these free services could implement a system that would remove all of these problems without introducing any real cost. How? Simple: the service turns from free to $1 for lifetime service. This purpose of this $1 is actually to get the user’s credit card account on file. This would allow for one of two solutions to be implemented:
Single Account Per Card
The first solution would be to only allow a single account to ever exist on a single credit card. If the user misbehaves, they are kicked out and now they must use a different credit card if they are to sign up again. This doesn’t entirely solve the problem but I think it would discourage much of the harassment. At the very least these men would have to slow down when they ran low on credit cards or find a way to get new ones. I believe that this would be too much of a hassle for most of the men (considering they barely take the time to write more than a single line in their emails).
Charge Per Harassment
This solution is far more fun. Implement a way to report harassment in the online dating service. Whenever a user receives three reports of harassment that are then verified, their credit card is charged $5. This would require that the harassment occur within the emails of the dating service so they could be verified, obviously. To be fair, an upper limit should be placed on the amount that could be charged in a single week for the poor sap who sends 100 “wanna get naked” emails out at the same time wouldn’t be charged $500. The charge could even be looked at as a service fee for having to investigate the offending user in the first place.
Image by Photo8
Why Free Services Would Never Do This
Of the two solutions, I like the second better because there is a feel of justice to it. I suspect no free service would want to get anywhere near either solution, though. Free online dating services generate profit through ad revenue and anything that would discourage sign-ups would hurt this revenue. Even the threat of being charged a single dollar would be enough to remove some of the subscribers which I think the service providers would see as unacceptable.
I think that’s a mistake though. What free online dating service is known for its success rate? What if there was a free service that actually had reliable and legitimate profiles that allowed its users to pursue success without all the hassle of the current system? What if there was a free service known for the fact that people actually had success with it? Wouldn’t that drive up the user base? I’m sure most of the free services out there bring in more money than I will in a decade (or ten) so I’m sure they don’t need my advice but I still think they’re going about it wrong.
Author: Brad
Brad initially struggled with online dating but over time became quite successful using it. He met his wife using online dating and has been giving advice and helping people improve their results since 2007. He has written a Free Online Dating Guide to help others find success with online dating. You can learn more about his personal experience using online dating and running this website here.
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