eHarmony Blog.com

Last week, eHarmony CEO Greg Waldorf finally admitted it, “It’s all about the money.”

So to help him out, I came up with five revenue-generating ideas for him. Why did I do this? Simple. If eHarmony closes shop, then people won’t visit eHarmony Blog anymore. That’s why this is so important. Everything is at stake.

Okay, since money is all eHarmony wants, let’s start.

Money-making Idea #1. Bring a friend to eHarmony, your friend gets a discount, you get one month free

This referral programme is very simple. Mobile phone companies use it. You essentially turn each member into an affiliate marketer.

Encourage people to blog their eHarmony experience. Give people with websites the widget on the right and watch what happens.

Also, change the “How did you hear about us?” box to ask the referring member’s email address.

eHarmony, ask yourself this, how did Facebook grow so large in so short a time? People invited their friends over.

Money-making Idea #2. Inline ads

Inline ads are those links you see inside of content (often green or made to look different to other links on a page) that have a little popup window that appears when your mouse comes into contact with the link (see picture below for an example).

Oooh yeah, put inline ads in member communications. That’d be awesome-rific.

Money-making Idea #3. Consumer profiling

Seen this kind of survey before?

Probably not as obvious as this example, but here’s the idea: ask Compatibility Profile test takers if they like Gardening, Genealogy, Golf, History or Horseback Riding … then make sure those ads are ALL you show them.

Then watch your pay-per-click revenue hit the roof. Oh no, wait, you ALREADY ASK about these five interests in the questionnaire. Well then, I don’t know why you’re not doing this.

Money-making Idea #4. Week-long subscriptions

eHarmony’s “most flexible plan” is $59.95 which is for one month. That’s too high. It’s too expensive for people. Solution: offer week-long subscriptions. Isn’t that even more flexible?

Here’s a price list I came up:

• 1 week for $24.75
• 2 weeks for $39.45 (amounting to $19.725 per week)
• 1 month for $59.95 (amounting to $13.787 per week)
• 6 weeks for $71.75 (amounting to $11.960 per week)

An experienced online dater can do well with a one-week subscription. One week is enough to reach Open Communication with one to three people. That’s enough, and she can turn off matching and resubscribe again when she needs people to date.

Everybody wins.

Money-making Idea #5. Reward members who get responses, reward members who are active

“Communicate with each one of your matches. If half of your matches across a month reply to you, you get $20 back!”

People join because they reviewed their matches and found some profiles interesting. People join because someone is interested in them and sent them communication. Therefore, great profiles and members who initiate make eHarmony money. #5 is simple — reward members who do the legwork. Rewards like this encourage members to …

• … perfect their profiles and photos and market themselves.
• … review their matches daily.
• … initiate communication.
• … keep their hearts open on matches that at first appear uninteresting.

All this work deserves a reward. $20 a month ought to do it.

Easy and with no R&D

There you go, eHarmony. Lots of revenue ideas. None of them would have you inventing an add-on product and then hawking it to the uninterested. (“Can I turn off the PPP ads? I beg you!”) I didn’t even touch on somehow recruiting your success stories — the 236 members who marry every day — to bring you customers.

What do you think? Which marketing idea will work for eHarmony?