If you’ve tried Plenty of Fish (POF), you’ve likely come across a gold badge on some profiles indicating a person is a “Serious Member.”

I’ve had a few guys ask what I thought of becoming a Serious Member on POF, so I wanted to take just a minute to give my opinions on becoming a Serious Member.

What is a Serious Member?

There are two types of members on POF – regular and serious.

Regular members can email other members of POF as well as read emails from other members.

Serious Members (Platinum Members) can do everything regular members of POF can do, but get some added benefits, which we’ll talk about in just a moment.

To become a Serious Member, you must first take a multiple-choice questionnaire and based on your answers, be judged as looking for a serious relationship rather than casual dating and just meeting new people.

If you are judged to be looking for something more serious from POF, you have the option to become a Serious Member. The prices for becoming a Serious Member range from $5.95 to $9.95, depending on the length of membership you sign up for.

Even if you aren’t determined to be looking for a relationship or something more serious, based on the questionnaire, you can still become a Serious Member if you’re willing to pay the monthly fee.

POF has given away free subscriptions for becoming a Serious Member to women in the past, and might still be doing so.

What do you get for your money?

When you become a Serious Member, a golden (or platinum) badge will be displayed on your profile letting everyone know that you are “serious.”

Little golden badges will also be displayed next to your subject line when you email someone and next to your thumbnail when your profile picture is displayed in the photo lineup at the top of various POF screens.

When your profile blurb is displayed among search results your profile will also have a gold background to distinguish you from regular members of POF.

Your profile will be displayed at the top of local search results if you are a Serious Member. POF claims that by displaying your profile at the top of the results that your profile will be seen more often and will receive up to nine times more “first contact” emails.

As a Serious Member you’ll be able to have up to 16 pictures on your profile (rather than being limited to only seven). You’ll also get credits so you can send other members gifts as well as change your profile theme.

You will also be able to see if women you emailed opened your email.

Is Becoming a Serious Member on POF Worth It?

Having a badge on your profile that says Serious Member lets it be known that you are serious about meeting someone with whom to have a long-term relationship with and possibly get married to.

That could be seen as desirable to a very small minority to women on POF, but it is more likely to make you look a little desperate.

Most attractive women have many guys orbiting them who would be willing to commit in a heartbeat. So a badge indicating you could potentially be another orbiter ready to propose isn’t going to make you more attractive.

As I mentioned earlier, there is a small number of women on POF (or any dating site for that matter) looking for a husband. And that Serious Member badge could help you meet more of these women.

But rather than sending out the bat signal that you’re looking to get married tomorrow, wouldn’t it be better to find out your compatibility with someone first?

And I’m sure there are some attractive women looking to get married soon, but I’m guessing that most of the women that are looking to get married tomorrow would probably not be your first choice.

Beyond that, it gives me the chills to realize there are women out there for whom the title of being married is more important than the person they are actually married to.

So do I think it’s necessary to become a Serious Member to meet women on POF? Absolutely not.

And even if you are looking for a relationship, all you have to do is check the box labeled “Relationship” for the profile question asking what kind of interactions you’re seeking on the website.

What About the Other Benefits of Becoming a Serious Member?

Being able to determine if your emails were opened could help you out when you are split testing your emails.

But if you’re emailing women you know are active on the site, it is very likely your email will be opened as long as your email subject line is something other than “Hi” or some derivative of that.

You can determine if a woman you emailed has been active on the site by looking in “Sent Msg” under the column for “Last Online.” That will tell you the last time a woman was online.

Some searches also display when a woman was last active on the site.

As far as the other “benefits” of becoming a Serious Member, such as credits for sending other members gift or changing your theme, they are useless.

Those benefits are not going to help you meet more women.

As to the claims made by POF that you will receive up to nine times more “first contact” emails, that could definitely be useful if it is true, which I don’t know whether it is or not.

Regardless, my strategy for meeting women online isn’t based around which women email me first, it’s based around which women I want to meet and subsequently email.

Being able to display a few more pictures on your profile would be cool, but it’s not worth $6 bucks a month to me to do that.

In conclusion, I do not recommend becoming a Serious Member on POF.

Please remember this article was only about a paid premium membership on POF.

Paying for a membership on Match.com is still worth it because you can’t send or read emails without paying, and there are so many attractive women on there.

If it was possible to read and send emails on Match.com without paying, you can be damn sure I wouldn’t be paying there either.

Brandon Duran

Tags: Plenty of Fish

This entry was posted on February 13, 2011 at 10:32 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.