how do people feel about paying for hook up apps?

[TDJ6]

i started hooking up in the old days ... aol chat, yahoo chat, craigslist, adam4adam.
when grindr came along i had that too... but also bbrt.
all of this stuff was completely free of charge.

i forget when grindr started charging... maybe like 2015?? but i have only ever paid for grindr and scruff when i'm on a vacation.

ANYWAY... i hate these paid memberships because it comes off as very elitist to me.
i just set up a sniffies and they are bombarding me with "upgrade account" messages which drove me tho this thought.

but i was just curious what peoples thoughts were on this ... because obviously alot of people don't mind and really do pay for the services.

 

[Boaxy]

I don't use apps, I think it's stupid. You can pay for profile boosing. The only exception is maybe with Straight apps, to me I guess it makes sense/it's a good perk to pay for. because they can be tedious, you can pay for your profile to be bumped/priority on the algorithm/grid, and also your messages with have priority against other people, I feel that's actually pretty cool.

But with gay apps being how more niche they are like for example Grindr, (I don't use Grindr, and haven't for like a decade and longer lol) basically you're gonna see a very small fraction of guys (some you probably seen/are friends with IRL remarkably) so it's kinda pointless to pay for a profile boost on a gay app, when the gay apps are already kinda niche/barren imo, not saying they aren't guys you can connect with on these apps, but still, and yeah.

I don't know. I think it's kinda crazy, but if people want to pay for membership on apps, that on them. To me I honestly if I was going to pay for a dating/personal service, I rather do it right, and pay for a matchmaking or some type of professional dating coach/dating events/dating service business. Which even this might be pushing it, but still. So yeah.

 

[winesthel945]

but i was just curious what peoples thoughts were on this ... because obviously alot of people don't mind and really do pay for the services.

Some of the apps have useful features that need to be paid for. It's really up to you whether those features provide value to you.

But with gay apps being how more niche they are like for example Grindr, (I don't use Grindr, and haven't for like a decade and longer lol) basically you're gonna see a very small fraction of guys (some you probably seen/are friends with IRL remarkably) so it's kinda pointless to pay for a profile boost on a gay app, when the gay apps are already kinda niche/barren imo, not saying they aren't guys you can connect with on these apps, but still, and yeah.

Not used Grindr in a decade? It shows as your information is very out of date. Grindr is not niche, it's very general audience and has been for a long time. Even Scruff is barely niche any more. Growlr, BiggerCity, Jack'd, Recon, all are pretty niche.

But all apps are subject to the audience and community you're looking at. For example, in San Francisco, Jack'd is about evenly split between Asian men and African American men, but in LA it's probably 70% African American and 20% Latino, with the rest scattered.

Some of the apps hide useful features behind a paywall, but some are just clearly trying to nickel and dime users. Growlr for example only shows you about 50 profiles and then demands money if you want to see more -- if the Growlr community is of interest to you (it's mostly bears and chubs), then it might be worth it. However, their app is garbage from a user experience perspective, so while you might get to view more profiles, they're not investing any of that money into a better product.

As for the question of boosts, it really depends. In a densely populated location like downtown San Francisco, LA, Manhattan, Brooklyn, downtown Atlanta, etc., you can scroll past 200 profiles and not be beyond more than perhaps 2-3 miles. A boost will often make you visible to people outside of that vicinity in a way that you might never be visible to them otherwise. Personally, I have used boosts and made good connections with people I never saw in nearly infinite scrolling.

Your mileage may vary. But anyone giving out absolute answers here clearly has no actual experience in these.

 

[LPSG Simon]

it comes off as very elitist to me.

This is actually part of the marketing. There's prestige in being able to show to the membership that you're one of the elite members. Assuming that the app you're on shows that to other people.

At the end of the day the companies are in it to make money, restricting features is a major prong in how that's accomplished (it's called the 'free-mium' business model).

Grindr is now owned by a Chinese gaming company who bought it for the traffic to show their own ads to, so it's not very likely that bringing people together altruistically is really something that's at the forefront of their minds.

Back to your original question - There are generally two kinds of customer who use these apps (goes for porn as well): Those who will pay part time or consistently because they're there for the whole experience and dont want restrictions, and those who will use it forever and NEVER pay. You really can't convince the latter to get on board because their resistance to purchasing is constitutional, you can only use them for eyeballs for ads and try to maybe get more uptake on occasional purchases through pain points in the experience.