How to make money from dating and social sites?

How to profit from your new dating site? Our successful customers always run their sites in free-for-all mode until they get the initial users base they need. Promotions such as "first 5000 users will receive a free lifetime account" help as well. After you have a few thousand users it's time to make some money! Here are a few ideas:

1. Ads. There are plenty of sites making money by offering their services for free and placing revelant advertisments. You can easily include AdWords on your pages by pasting the code in the corresponding file. With AspNetDating 6 you can do that directly from the admin tool as well. The ad supported model is suitable for social networking sites, community sites and sites where the users are looking for casual dating and will probably not pay for subscription if there was one.
2. Monthly subscription. This is the most common approach and it offers a great revenue stream if used properly. Ideally you should be able to customize every aspect of the subscription process and that's why we've made everything customizable in AspNetDating. You can set which areas are available to free members and which require paid subscription. You have the option to give free trial, set free-for-women, set whether free members can reply to paid ones, create daily, weekly, monthly, yearly subscriptions with different levels such as silver, gold, platinum and each level can have different features and limits - e.g. 20 photos for silver, 40 photos and 5 videos for gold. The subscription approach is suitable for sites where members are actively searching for a partner - such as marriage sites, russian brides, etc.
3. Credits. This is an alternative approach where the user does not pay for a monthly access but rather for a specific action. For example you can charge 1 credit per message or per contacted user. The functionality can be easily extended to charge for other actions such as viewing video, viewing explicit photos, etc. The benefit of this approach is that the users do not feel that they are wasting money if they do not use the site for a while. Rather, they are confortable that they can take their time and use the site whenever they want and pay only when they actually use it. The result is more loyal and more returning users.
4. Extra services. Once you have your user base you can use your site to advertise additional services. Some multi-language sites offer translation services, others have shops where members can order flowers or buy ringtones. There are many possibilities depending on the location and general interest if your users.

At AspNetDating we are always open to ideas and do what we can to help you succeed! Do you know other revenue streams? Feel free to share them