Comments on: Online Dating Targeted Discounting Strategies

By: Anita Spooner

Anita Spooner — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 04:58:41 +0000

Oh boy, here’s another time when a bunch of smart people are making this little lady feel like a silly thing. Can I ask you all a question? If you had a sister who was older than you are and almost 40 and was not seeing anyone – what place would you tell her to use? My sister asked me and since then I’ve been looking for a place to tell her to use. She goes out with fellows from time to time, but not ones that she met on the computer. My job was to help find her a place on the computer to find a guy to go out with. It has been sure interesting looking at all of the computer sites and learning about going on dates on the computer but I don’t think I know what place she should go to. You being all smart could maybe help me.

Careingly.

Anita

By: relaxedguy

relaxedguy — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 03:13:27 +0000

That was mean but funny. How about if you can’t spell you get a discount (hint hint). I just finished Freakanomics, good read.

By: Jon Manning

Jon Manning — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 03:03:55 +0000

Dave,

Sites such as these should be looking at plain and simple ‘value-based’ pricing strategies.

If you’re ugly, your listing is free. If you’re geogeous, you pay a premium.

A cost-per-click pricing model will easily solve this.

Steven Levitt almost talks about this in his book “Freakonomics”, but I suspect it was a bit to politically incorrect to publish.

Jon

By: Sam Moorcroft, ChristianCafe.com

Sam Moorcroft, ChristianCafe.com — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 01:55:56 +0000

Dave, I never ceased to be amazed at all the “new” trendy ways of doing business that get bandied about, e.g. “targeted discounting strategies”. What a bunch of MBAish mumbo-jumbo (I never really fit in when I did my MBA way back – I was too much of a straight-shooter to get caught up in the meaningless-nothing-to-do-with-actually-making-money-slogans). Mind you, most MBA’s are useless as entrepreneurs.

We’ve had 15-20 different pricing schemes set up (all automated) for the longest time, depending on where you are in the cycle. Was it complicated to set-up? That depends – everything is relative. It seemed pretty intuitive to us to do.

Are we just clever geniuses or is everyone else out there missing something? I regularly scratch my head at just how dumb a lot of sites are (small to large, niche to generic), have been, and will no doubt continue to be.

With competition like this…