Online Dating Cost: Who'll you'll meet and what you'll pay

Most online dating sites work hard to get you interested so you'll be ready to take the plunge and subscribe. This means that most of them offer some free services, and these can be pretty useful, especially if you are a woman, since most sites have more male subscribers than female. For instance, most sites allow you to join for free, and create your personal profile, which appears on the site. Paying subscribers can contact you, even though you haven't paid at all. This can work if you are fairly casual about dating, since it may take time for the right person to bother to contact you, and it can substantially reduce online dating costs.

Other free services often include a database search, so that you can check how many members are available in your area, and sometimes limited message sending options. For instance, AdultMatchMaker allows you to send 4 winks a day to members, and to reply to winks you get. However, if you find a profile you like, the only way to get into a conversation with them is by subscribing to a paid membership.

Subscription Based Online Dating

So what does online dating cost? Well, it depends on several factors. Large, well known online dating sites like Yahoo!Personals tend to be cheaper and better value than small online dating sites, which may offer much smaller databases. Yahoo! Personals charges $25 for the first month, and with longer subscription time it is cheaper. For this price you have unlimited access to profiles, and can send as many messages as you want. Other online dating sites offer more expensive subscriptions because they have online chatrooms where you can meet people more easily, for instance AussieMatchmaker, which charges $69.95 for 3 months.

Contact Based Online Dating

A few online dating sites, including RSVP and Lavalife, charge not for unlimited access but by contacts. This can make calculating the online dating cost hard to do, and often comes out very expensive. After all, if you pay around $40 for 6 'stamps', each giving you access to one profile, you may talk to all 6 of your options on the same day and not like any of them. On the other hand, if you are very busy, and not home often, stamps may save you money. Just keep in mind that they expire too, after 2 months or so. Also keep in mind that other members will be calculating their online dating costs too, and will tend to send less messages with this payment system, so you may get less interest in your profile.

When calculating online dating costs, a good way to evaluate each online dating site is by creating a free basic profile, and searching the database as though you had a full subscription. Every time you find a good match that you would like to meet, make a note of this. Do the same procedure for several online dating sites, and after a week or two, compare figures. You will usually find that your online dating costs will be lower per 'date' on one of the sites, and usually this will be the online dating site with better matches for your personal tastes. Then you can go ahead and subscribe, knowing in advance what to expect.