Get Paid to Date: Strange Ways to Make Money
If you’ve ever wished that you could get paid to go out on a date, maybe you should sign up at What’s Your Price. This site matches “generous” users with “attractive” people (these are the site’s words, not mine). Generous users are those who are willing to pay for the date, while the attractive people are the ones who are getting paid. In other words you, the generous user, pay for the chance to go out with an attractive person. If you are the attractive person, you name the price you want for the date and pocket the cash after the date. For the “generous” people, the site claims to provide a large pool of “beautiful, gorgeous, hot and sexy people” (again, their words, not mine) to go out with. For the attractive people, you are given the chance to date other attractive people so you can avoid the schlubs.
While it is possible to make money with this site, you have to be “attractive.” I lost count of how many times the word attractive was used on the site. These doesn’t seem to be an objective standard that defines “attractive” listed anywhere on the site, though. The only qualification I could find is that you must have an “approved” photo. Just glancing at the pictures on the homepage, attractive seems to mean, “Bean pole thin, large up top, and willing to pose in your underwear, or similar.” In other words, very few will be approved.
While this may be a way to make money, it carries a heavy “ewww” factor. First, this is one short hop away from prostitution. Instead of girls walking the streets, they need only log on and post their prices. The site isn’t explicitly selling sex, which is how they avoid the law. They are only selling the date. But “date” can be construed in a lot of ways. Remember the scene from the movie “Pretty Woman” when the hooker hollers to the guys, “Hey, sugar, you lookin’ for a date?” and the guys say, “Yeah, baby, we’re looking!” That was just a date. Yeah, right. I suspect much the same applies to this site.
The site also lists the sorts of matchmaking they engage in:
- Friendship & Activity Partners
- Short & Long Term Relationships
- Sugar Daddy Arrangements
- Affairs & Married Dating
- Adult Dating & Casual Encounters
While the parts of this list might be considered true dating services, the rest of the list is pretty bad. Here is a site that will blatantly help you find your sugar daddy or cheat on your spouse. There are plenty of people who are looking for that sort of thing, but being willing to pay and be paid for it is getting pretty low on the morality totem pole, I think.
Do you, as the “attractive” person, really want to go out with a guy (or girl, since the site claims to work both ways) who “won” you only because he/she had the cash to meet your price? Seems like a pretty shallow way to begin any sort of meaningful relationship.
Of course there’s also the whole idea of placing value only on attractive people. I don’t deny that there are plenty of people in the world who choose dates and mates based solely on their physical attributes. But there is something icky about blatantly saying, “Hey, this chick who wants $200 for a date must be worth more than the girl who only wants $50.” The reverse is also true. The “generous” user who offers $300 for a date must be a better date than the guy who offers $100.
Bottom line: If you want to make money using this site, tread carefully. You may be going into it thinking you’re only looking for a date and some spare cash, but your generous benefactor may have different ideas. Just because someone has the cash to afford you, doesn’t mean that they are your dream match. Of course, if all you’re looking for is a quick hook up and you don’t mind being treated like a prostitute, this might be the place for you.
Scary.