Online Dating Blog

In my last article I discussed many on-going dating service promotions. Advertised promotions are a great way to save some money signing up for a dating site but it is not the only way. Here is another method to save some money:

1. Find a service you are interested in trying
2. Sign up for the free version of the service
3. Wait
4. Eventually you will likely receive an email offer from the site for use of the service at a discounted price

Obviously this method will not be for everyone. If you are anxious to start dating online you are not going to want to wait weeks (or possibly months) to see if the site will ever offer a discount. However, if you are on the fence about using online dating, this might be the perfect way to find extra discounts.

Photo by hill.josh

Why I Know Signing Up At Dating Services Works

I should probably explain that as a part of running this site I sign up for lots of dating services. Lots of dating services. Often it is out of a desire to see what they have to offer, or to see if the site has change, or to write a review on the site, or sometimes to review a profile if someone contacts me. Regardless, I have more dating accounts than would normally be reasonable. Because I have all of these accounts, I get to see many of these email promotions first hand.

Some Examples of Dating Site Special Offers:
To give you an idea, these are a few of the offers I have seen recently:

• Christian Cafe sent an offer for 3 days free and 25% off when signing up
• JDate offered 36% off of subscription prices during their Passover sale
• Chemistry.com offered 3 days free (basically a personal free weekend promotion)
• Matchmaker.com offered a 7 day free trial after some inactivity on my account
• Spark.com offered $35 off over a holiday weekend (if you signed up on that weekend)
• CatholicMatch.com has offered discounts for dates like St. Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day and Easter.
• DatingDirect offered one month for £4.99
• Lavalife send a promotion code to save 25% off a subscription

I could find more if I went further back in my email but I imagine you get the idea.

The Big Dating Sites Are the Exception

Perhaps not surprisingly, the biggest online dating services do not follow this rule. Neither Match.com nor eHarmony have ever sent a discount offer. Now to be fair, eHarmony has free weekends almost every month so technically by having an account you can take advantage of deals when signed up but that’s a little different than the other offers I see. If you sign up for one of the big sites hoping for a discount you might be waiting for a long time!

Update May 4, 2010: A reader wrote in to inform me that you can get good deals through Match.com using this method:

Just a note about signing up for a free account and waiting for discounts… match.com DOES offer them. I get emails offering 25% off regularly, after signing up free to browse.

You may have to set your profile correctly, because the mail always notes “Because you asked to be notified of Match.com Special Offers, we will send you emails such as this on a periodic basis.”

Thanks for the update J!

Additionally, I received an email from eHarmony over the weekend offering me 3 months for a very cheap price so it looks like I may have been wrong about my thoughts on the “big” services. It appears that all dating services may take advange of this tactic from time to time.