 Ideas for monetizing a website I am developing?
ismarc: The problem with monetizing dating-style sites is the same as trying to make money with health care.  Your system is at its best when people have one short trip and don't come back.  This lack of repeat use means that it has to work so phenominally well that success stories are regularly referring their friends, or you need a unique method to suck as much money over that time period as you can (not to sound bad about it, but it's the truth).The ideal method would be to charge money upon "success", but there's no good way to measure a successful matchup.  Thinking about this...I think a reverse charge system may work (note, I haven't tried this and if you do go with it, be prepared for flaming fireball of doom, it's an off-the-cuff, not thought out idea, just top of the head thing).  Most sites seem to either charge a monthly fee, or they charge for communications.  Now, rather than charging someone money for TRYING to talk to someone, why not charge them based on people ACTUALLY responding.  Say, I have 5 message points.  I send a message to 10 people.  I still have 5 message points.  Let's say 3 respond.  I can use a message point to read each message, or I can just not read it.  If I don't have enough points to read a message, I only see that I received one.  Now, this should only count for messages that are from someone I sent a message to previously.This way, initiating contact is free, and responding to initial contact is free for the contacted.  The lack of needing up-front costs to start trying to meet people is likely to drive people to sending that initial message, and if they get a response, they now need to spend money to read it...and it really is a response from the person, so they most likely really want to read it.