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| New Serious Member Feature.
Posted: 4/14/2009 6:34:08 PM | I'm not serious member, but often wished there was feature to delete sent message or edit as you have suggested...I may consider paying membership in future...
(Shrinks back in corner b/c I'm not serious member yet...lol) | |
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| New Serious Member Feature.
Posted: 4/16/2009 9:46:29 AM | Today I noticed the main log-in page (my default , I know, bad!), it no longer says 100% free. Now it says "Free Online Dating" only. I noticed the Forums still say "100% Free, Put Away Your Credit Card." Just a matter of time....  | |
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| New Serious Member Feature.
Posted: 4/16/2009 11:01:12 AM | But they've ADDED LITTLE FISHIES to the main logo!!! If that's not worth paying for, what is?
Apparently not a serious member,
James, Seattle | |
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| New Serious Member Feature.
Posted: 4/16/2009 11:27:22 AM | But they've ADDED LITTLE FISHIES to the main logo!!! If that's not worth paying for, what is?
I knew there was something else different! Plus, they made "PlentyOfFish" whiter and easier to read. 
Serious "nonserious" Member
Hallie, Land of Plenty, Down Under, Florida | |
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| New Serious Member Feature.
Posted: 4/16/2009 10:39:37 PM | I think if you want to seriously improve the long term viability of a Serious Member option you need to offer benefits more inline with the purchasers' demands. What's the main reason someone would purchase a Serious Membership? Obviously the most common reason would to get more responses, more mail, and more profile views.
If you can't sell yourself in 8 pics, you probably won't be able to in 16. While being able to edit sent mail seems neat, it is unlikely to help most users; drunk messengers excluded. Currently your relying on the perceived prestige that a Serious Member supposedly has. Unless there is some hard evidence to support this, the perceived prestige will quickly evaporate. i.e. unless you can make truthful claims that a Serious Membership increases the average users response rate by xx% or such.
Therefore, I believe additional benefits for Serious Members should focus changes that would increase messaging rates. Only simple change would be to have Serious Members appear at the top of a search, much like premium eBay auctions or featured Google listings. Greater visibility increases the chances someone will see a profile and thereby send a message.
There are a couple of changes they made to [another dating site] that might be useful here. One is an estimated response rate. It basically lists whether a person replies often, selectively, or very selectively. The other was tag that alerted viewers to see that a person hasn't been contacted in over a week. While definitely not foolproof, these changes would help users better prioritize who to message to have the highest probability of a reply.
Basically you need to find more tangible benefits to provide Serious Members if you wish for them to either renew their subscription or to recommend it to others. Slight interface changes aren't going to cut it, especially in an increasingly competitive online dating market. There are already free dating sites out there that offer far more features and compatibility tools; these sites just don't have the user base that PoF has, yet. | |
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| New Serious Member Feature.
Posted: 4/17/2009 6:45:26 AM | I think that maybe POF has been affected by the economy like everyone else. Who knows what the Originator has to pay for in his own business and personal affairs. I like Pof and as soon as I get the money Im going to pay for this site.
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| New Serious Member Feature.
Posted: 4/17/2009 1:06:04 PM | Now this is just plain funny. I was noodling around the site and have seen this thread come and go before my eyes many times. I don't take any interest in pursuing the hard core dating aspect of the site and am simply interested in the forum posts becuase I like a good debate. I'm not serious about dating but I do classify myself as divorced and I have a male partner whom I don't live with and see sporadically. I like the status quo.
At any rate, this noodling around brought me to the questionnaire about whether or not I was serious member material or not. First of all, I go into this questionnaire, knowing full well I'm not wanting to be a serious member. I answer all the questions on the questionnaire, just out of curiousity to see what will pop up next (curious nature that I have). This questionnaire purportedly guages the consistency between a person's stated intention as a serious dater and the relationship attitudes and behaviours I seem to hold. Lo and behold, the next paragraph congratulates me and tells me the results of that questionnaire, indicating that I've come across as consistent in what I say and what I might do in a dating relationship. It futher states, unlike many who did not pass this test, I now have the ability to become a serious member.
It would be interesting to know just how accurate the statistics are of those "many" who didn't pass the test...or is this like many other commercial endeavours, such as "if you are one of the next 50 people to respond to this TV ad, you get x,y and z benefit". There are those who will be so excited that they qualified to become a serious member based on their perceived integrity that they'll throw their money to the site, just as those who would be all excited about being one of the first 50 to respond to the ad that they'd throw their money into it because they are deemed to be special because they "acted quickly". Gotta love smoke and mirrors when money's involved.
At the end, it goes on to state there are seven areas that "up your chances" of meeting someone by stating you have passed this test. Fortunately, for me, I know my own personal integrity, sincerity and relationship stability without having a test tell me so. However, there's a sucker born every day, I suppose, when money figures into the equation.
I'm not disssing this site at all. I love this site for the varied people who frequent it. I love the fact that there are those who find matches and I congratulate them for that success. I do, however, question the integrity and sincerity of a questionnaire designed to elicit money from those who are desperate enough to buy into something without knowing the actual statistics of how many have taken a "test" and how many have passed, based on an unknown criteria that remains unstated.  | |
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| New Serious Member Feature.
Posted: 4/17/2009 2:58:55 PM | RE: Msg 283:
Think of it like buying a lottery ticket. The person purchasing the "serious member" designation feels like they've done "something" to improve their chances just like the lottery buyer. | |
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Posted: 4/17/2009 3:04:57 PM | dave1234: yup...that's pretty much how I perceive it...but it's the usery that makes me want to poke sharp sticks in eyes thingy about it all...  | |
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| New Serious Member Feature.
Posted: 4/17/2009 3:13:19 PM | | I'd like to consider myself serious as it is, so I don't see myself shelling out $30-40 for that particular title. | |
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lisshe
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Joined: 1/10/2006
Msg: 288 | |
| New Serious Member Feature.
Posted: 4/18/2009 1:51:06 PM | | Did not catch that! Are you saying that because I am not paying to be a "serious member", I can no longer IM people on my favorties and they can't IM me?!!!!!! | |
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Posted: 4/24/2009 7:05:37 AM | | well, if my mail and potential matches don't improve, there's no need for me to even have a free profile on here. i'm not the worst looking thing i've seen on here, but i'm not getting mail from potential dates, and the ones that were potential either went poof or something else just as ridiculous. i'll leave my page on here though, just in case i do get to move to a different area. pay??? no way. | |
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| New Serious Member Feature.
Posted: 4/24/2009 8:37:34 AM |
well, if my mail and potential matches don't improve, there's no need for me to even have a free profile on here.
Ditto to that! In fact mine have been getting alot worse too! I also agree that we long time fishies deserve free upgrade as well. We're obviously the serious members!
ALSO their should be a completely separted chat room for USERS only looking for some cheap thrills as well! Those definetly dont count as being serious! | |
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| New Serious Member Feature.
Posted: 4/24/2009 9:01:53 AM | | I was curious about the upgrade thing. past the testing for serious status,but I don't use want or have a credit card.And I wouldn't pay so someone thinks I'm serious. I'm ready for that next step and if girls are just looking for a gold dot to see if a guy is serious or not, there missing out on the guys that can't/won't pay. I rather spend the money on us when we go out. But hey, no one has really been interested in me anyway so this is just my22 cents. | |
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| New Serious Member Feature.
Posted: 4/24/2009 1:40:41 PM | I was just wondering if even though I don't click on the ads (since I don't look at them anyway), does the site make money every time I view a profile, or post on a forum, or read a forum, or check my favorites, etc.
No, the site owner only gets paid when you click the ads. As you may know, and it was posted here before, POF's owner stated in an interview that he was making about $10,000 a day from ads. At one point, I think he was making about $900k a month. He has his own blog where he has bragged about how much he makes from his * FREE * site and showed a picture of a Google check for almost that amount. I think he stated he gets about 35,000,000 pages loads a day(?). Many people believe he is just a nice, generous guy for putting up a free site so people could meet other people. If he wasn't making big bucks, he wouldn't go to all the trouble to do it.
Every time an ad is clicked the ad owner pays Google, and Google pays a commission to the site hosting the ad (POF). This site lost a lot of revenue a little while back. As I recall, Google was sued because the original click-able area on the ads were designed to be large and allow readers to accidentally click on the ads, causing the ad owners to pay for unintended click-thrus. Google has since made the click-able area smaller, resulting in fewer unintended click-thrus, and less revenue. The "Serious Member" status was an attempt to make up for some lost revenue. The fact that he gave the memberships to so many for free, to convince others to pay, has been a real irritation for many. | |
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| New Serious Member Feature.
Posted: 4/25/2009 11:53:52 AM | Include filters for who's allowed to view your profile, and Ill sign up tommorrow!  | |
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lisshe
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Joined: 1/10/2006
Msg: 295 | |
| New Serious Member Feature.
Posted: 4/27/2009 3:39:44 PM | I don't know about anyone else, but I think that it is completely wrong to take away features that we have always had for free. The IM being the biggest. This is no longer a "free" dating site. Starting to get like the others, free to sign up, but if you want to actually mail anyone, you have to pay. Why not make the "serious" feature give you something you did not already have instead of taking away what we already had!!!!! There are so many people on here listed as "serious" that, after reading their profile, you know they are not! Money talks I guess and not their profiles.
As other people have already said, he makes a ton of money on this site. Not right to take away what was free for many years and make you pay for it all of a sudden. | |
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| New Serious Member Feature.
Posted: 6/20/2009 2:11:06 PM |
I was curious about the upgrade thing. past the testing for serious status...
Ha!! I just "passed" the "test" using a random number generator to fill in the answers.
-Didn't even read the questions. (Ok, I couldn't help but see one of the stupid things since I had to know how many "answers" I needed to come up with.)
I got the following (as proof):
Thanks for requesting the "Serious Member" designation for your profile. Part of that process was completion of a special questionnaire that gauges your ability to hold a relationship.
Congratulations… the results of that questionnaire indicate that you come across as consistent in what you say and what you might do in a dating relationship. Unlike many who did not pass this test you now have the ability to become a "Serious Member"!
Totally BOGUS and FRAUDULENT!
Heck, maybe my random number generator just got lucky...
Has anybody failed this "test" allowing you to give them money? | |
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| New Serious Member Feature.
Posted: 6/21/2009 10:41:22 AM |
I don't see in the point in the Serious member feature. You shouldn't have to pay however much just to show how serious you are. So, what are they trying to say? that those of us who don't want to pay or can't afford to pay to be a serious member that we're not serious?
My sentiments exactly. | |
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| New Serious Member Feature.
Posted: 6/21/2009 11:37:03 AM |
Check out this research paper.
http://www.columbia.edu/~ss957/whenchoice.html
When people have no much choice they don't know what to do and they can't commit to anything and they always wonder if they made the right choice.
This is why the serious membership works so well. People think serious members are a far better choice so they send more emails to them and also talk to more users
But if this is the case, then why start a free dating site in the first place?
I hope this post doesn't get deleted, but this is how I honestly feel about threads and questions like this.
It's starting to sound more and more, like you're regretting not charging folks for this site. I realize this is because costs for running this site, have probably gone up quite a bit over the years since you first started it.
I can't blame you for changing your mind over time and needing some revenue from this site. But instead of trying to get our opinions on "special options" if we upgrade, why don't you just come clean and admit that you'd like to charge a membership fee to all of us, instead of just some of us?
Come on Markus, you're a smart guy. Do you really think we can't see through this? We know what your intentions are with these types of threads and questions. You regret not setting up a fee system from the very beginning because your costs have gotten too high and now you're scrambling to try and make up for that by trying to make "upgrading" look good to more of us. That's why you're posting links to "research papers" in posts now, to "back up" your changing point of view on this.
Or maybe you've gotten too many complaints from whiny folks on here who don't think enough of us on here are serious about finding a relationship on a free site, even though many of us are.
Personally, I stick with this website, because it's free, because too many pay dating sites are a fortune and I simply can't afford them. I take every profile on here "seriously" whether they've upgraded or not. So to me, I don't care what special options you ad to the "VIP" or "serious" memberships, I'm still not going to upgrade to them.
One of the things I love about this site, is the amount of freedom we have with certain features that not even most pay sites allow. For example, the ability to have longer writing limits in the "about me" section. I tend to be long winded and I like that option, and I like that I don't have to pay for it.
I realize I'm guilty of complaining about this site from time to time myself, but I really shouldn't, because there's nothing to complain about. You set up a great site. But I won't upgrade no matter how many "special" options you add for paid members. I don't need to post more then eight photos. I don't need to change the color of my font in my ad. I personally, consider "extra" features a waste of time for most dating ads. But I like to stick to the basics.
Anyway, I hope my opinion further up doesn't upset you, but I've been getting the feeling for a long time now, since you started the "upgrade package" for members, that you'd really like to make this a pay site now, but don't want to admit it. So, you're "fishing" around to see how many of us might be willing to upgrade if you add more features. Again, I can't blame you for doing this. Websites can be expensive to maintain. But I'm just waiting for the day when you announce you've decided to make this a pay site, because it feels like it's only a matter of time. | |
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| New Serious Member Feature.
Posted: 6/21/2009 1:19:49 PM | Things I'd like to see...but not necessarily for just "serious" members.
Video profiles would be cool. You don't have to host them, just allow a linkage from youtube. Oh, just think of the good, bad and nasty videos that would be posted and you'd have to review. Hah, ha!! Perhaps it would be a smart requirement to only allow them reading their from their written profiles...and to keep their clothes on.
A feature that allows you to mark a profile to remind you not to contact them again in case the rejected change their photo or description.
How about mini clubs on the site? A motorcycle, dance, horse, baseball or whatever club; where like minded members can join and forum within and post photos. Another way than searches for like minded people to meet either for friendship or dating purposes.
Physical descriptions replaced with an actual score that takes into consideration, height/weight/number of hours working out each week. You get a score somewhere between Athletic, Fit, Average, Unfit and Lard butt. Something like that anyway.
An area for friends recommendation on the profile...even if they aren't a pof participant. Have them email it in and post their photo. | |
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