According to TechCrunch, PayPal has debuted its much awaited micropayments product .
According to a release
issued by the company, the new product is an “in-context, frictionless payment solution that lets consumers pay for digital goods and content in as little as two clicks, without ever having to leave a publisher’s game, news, music, video or media site.”
As I mentioned recently in regards to group buys, how do you think micro-payments will affect dating sites? I think they are perfect for free sites looking to explore a Freemium model, especially when $9.95 (common freemium price point) is not much less than a long-term subscription to a paid dating site.
The cheapest thing you can buy on Match is their anonymous calling feature at $4.99 a month. I thought they charged something like $4.00 to get your profile displayed in a red or green box. Thats a lot of money for three lines of CSS to tell the world how desperate you are to go on a date. Strange that I can’t find a link to buy this option anywhere.
What happens if Match starts charging smaller amounts for new types of services? (Feel free to replace Match with your favorite free/niche site).
I have a sell sheet for intellectual property that someone was trying to sell to dating sites last year which was basically a “pay to climb the leaderboard” type of functionality. As if anyone was going to pay for that with so much prior art out there going back many years.
Paying to show up higher in the search results is interesting, but bidding on people is more complicated. I’m a human being, this is not a charity event, send me an email and maybe I’ll write you back, but “holding out” for the highest bidder? Not so much. Are You Interested was the first site I really paid attention to that did this.
I’d like to see more sites running VIP sections. Sure you’re on Match/eHarmony/JDate, but you are *way* more interesting/cool/sexy than most of the people, so why don’t these sites identify you as such and ask you for more money to be placed behind a velvet rope? OKCupid sort of does this with their A-list, although there is no special section on the site for A-listers.
It blows my mind that people have been very vocal about wanting to differentiate themselves from everyone else and be better represented, and yet dating sites are too busy monitoring their ad spend and expenses to notice there is a big opportunity being overlooked.
Forget micropayments for a minute. If I’m on Match and I don’t feel like mixing with the unwashed masses, where is my velvet rope? They weren’t able to get anywhere with their premium $400/month service, perhaps a $9.95 VIP section is what people want. A few hundres thousand people at an additional ten bucks a month is a lot better than nobody @ $400. Of course there are ton of arguments to be had in terms of pricing features on mainstream web properties that could drastically change my proposed price points, but where is the beta of this stuff?
Lots of social media and gaming companies, along with just about every publisher on the planet, need a reliable and cost-effective way to charge small amounts of money for content. Could be a virtual fish, an MP3 or this very article (hmmmm!)
If you are a small or free dating site looking to drive additional revenue, well I’ve given you a ton of ideas here how to go about this. The question becomes one of product/service development. What the heck are you going to offer members that they will pay a few bucks for? Virtual goods for for some people, but on dating sites, not so much.
VIP area
Move up the search results
First email writing guidance
Additional insight into the other person
Best practices based on other person’s habits (OKCupid nails this)
Other ideas for clients only… Contact me if you want to discuss further.
PayPal Micropayments are going to be huge, perhaps for online dating. Its up to dating sites to get with the program and broaden their revenue bases, because subs and ads are just the tip of the iceberg.
As great as the top 10 dating sites are, feature-wise they’re all so risk-averse it drives me crazy. Perhaps the lure of micro-payments and competition from new upstarts will unstick them and churn up some useful new features.
